Last New Year’s Day, my brother dragged me, admittedly hungover, to the Pickle Factory in London, Bethnal Green, for the last day-rave there before it closed forever. I forced myself out of my bed, because my brother is usually right about where to find the best and grooviest house music that we both love. It was a small, intimate dance floor. Stepping into that place at 2pm on the 1st of January felt very wrong, until I was immersed in that dancefloor, smiles bouncing around, and that feeling flew out the window. There were barely any phones visible, and it was one of the first times I had gone clubbing and really seen people dancing. Proper dancing. The kind of dancing my dad explains characterised every night out in the 90s (and it seems like there were many). A stranger danced over to us, one of those ridiculously effortless movers that you can’t keep your eyes off of, and took us each one-by-one to dance in a circle. I was mortified. I was grinning uncontrollably. My hangover was positively gone.
That feeling I felt that day, totally transported from the outside world (I completely forgot it was daytime) and in a small sweaty room that felt like a hidden microcosm of joy and togetherness, is the sensation I look for when I go clubbing. And it is rare. I’ve only felt it a handful of times, and it’s usually at festivals rather than clubs. It has definitely happened in Sneaky Petes. But even if only for 3 minutes on a dancefloor, when everyone feels in it, the DJ drops a tune and you just have to turn to whoever the hell is next to you and shake your head in amazement, the whole night is made.
So why is that sensation so rare? According to my dad, who admittedly might be rosey-eyed about his dancing days (which are still not over), dancefloors when he was young were a place where you truly connected with people and the music. And the notable transformation between then and now isn’t the music. In fact, if anything, DJ’s are more and more often sampling 80s and 90s dance music. It isn’t the people. A club full of students is a club full of students no matter the year. More and more, videos are coming up on my social media of clubs, whether in London’s Fabric or Ibiza’s new UNVRS, taken from behind the decks, of a crowd unmoving, and millions of phone torches up in the air filming. And what is interesting is the flood of comments on these posts, one stating “yeah, this is very sad”, and another “Let’s bring the dance culture back”; there are hundreds. It seems that this is a feeling shared between many, and I am not surprised.
Phones seem to be taking over the dancefloor, with people standing still, because who wants a shaky video to post tomorrow? And once one person stops moving, you are taken out of the moment, remembering that you are in a sweaty room with sweaty people and loud music, and the magic is lost. The social contract of the dance floor is broken, transforming the room into spectators rather than participants. This is an issue that affects DJs as well as club-goers, and discussions about phone bans in clubs and on dancefloors have been prominent on dance scenes. In Edinburgh in 2019, the FLY Open Air festival implemented a phone ban, in which attendees put phones in lockable Yondr phone cases. Even London icon DJ Fat Tony, has collaborated with Ray-Ban Meta to create glasses that can film, aiming to support dancers in “remaining present” in clubs.
Fat Tony’s “solution” seems questionable. It seems like a great length to go to in order to get people to look up in a club. But more importantly, I feel he is missing the point. Yet another tech solution that hasn’t quite acknowledged the root of the problem. I have certainly been guilty of whipping my phone out on more than one occasion, to film a tune I know I will want to hear again later. But I have been making a conscious effort lately to limit the amount I film in clubs. Because to reclaim that feeling of connection and togetherness between strangers on a dancefloor, it is down to those strangers on that dancefloor. It’s possible for this sensation to become more than a rarity in clubs. Togetherness cannot be engineered.
“Death Disco at the Arches, Glasgow // October 2011” by Death Disco ddxxx is licensed under CC BY 2.0.