Comment by mellosouls 10 days ago
As a dancer I had hoped from the title that the article would be a discussion of the death of dance in clubs.
It alludes to the record being popular on dancefloors but given that most these days are full of people waving their phones packed tight as sardines, or tiny spaces full of drunks and lechers none of whom can dance in either case, it seems a moot point that it's still popular...
Clubs with policies like Fabric exist in other cities as well, to me they are usually a sign of a good club.
Berlin clubs, at least the ones worthy going to, have the same policy of no photos, and heavily enforce it.
I've seen quite a few people booted out from sticking their phone for a picture twice, it's one of the things that can really put a sour feeling on a dance floor. If I'm there to be free and dance my heart out the last thing I want is to be conscious of perhaps getting filmed while doing so. Personally I have politely asked many people to not even try that in those clubs.
I've seen the same policy in some clubs in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Paris, Brussels, Vienna, and the list goes on. If you can manage to go clubbing at places that enforce such policies I'd say you're 80-90% there on finding a good dance floor.
Regarding Fabric in particular, I just happened to see this today: https://old.reddit.com/r/Techno/comments/1giwz2l/dear_fabric...
> and yesterday was Halloween weekend so it opened up the possibility to come across a bunch of drunk clubbers just looking to get fucked up
I think they're understating this part, I thought it was universally understood that the Halloween weekend is absolutely the worst time to go clubbing.
Lots of new people that don't particularly care about the music + masks is just a bad combo for the regular clubbers, regardless of the venue. Whatever issues the venue is facing on regular nights are gonna reach new heights that weekend.
It’s weird to hear folks new to London talking about the scene being good when it’s been so heavily decimated in the last 15 or so years.
I just want to go back in time to the monthly Bangface nights at the ‘werks and the early DMZ shows at Mass.
That makes sense given you've been in the scene for some time. At the same time, I think both are true: scene is "good" compared to other geographic locations of where I am from (i.e. Seattle Washington).
I was a house dancer in NYC before COVID. The shuffle dancing scene was still alive. After covid I'm not sure - it's definitely less so. I've moved to other dances since then. Outside of the specific groups no one is interested in dancing. Clubs are just packed with high and drunk people who look like they barely care about life.
I have come to strongly prefer outdoor parties as a more congenial environment for actual dancing: when there's room to move and fresh cool air to breathe, you can really get into the flow in a way that's hard to find in a club.
Depends on where you live, in some very significant countries going outside is potentially deadly. sure I've been outside at -30 in just a light jacket, but that was only possible because I was exercising hard (ice skating) - while some dances are like that, dancers tend to want to have some slow dances as well and that means warmer temperatures.
Fellow (house) dancer here and couldn't agree with you more. Luckily, however, I recently relocated to London and though I rarely stay out late these days, I did go to a venue called Fabric and I bring this because there's a policy (moderately enforced) of "no phones" and in fact, prior to entering, they will place little stickers on camera lens. Of course, some individuals will inevitably whip out their phones to capture a video or photo, at which point an (disguised as civilian) employee will demand that they put their phone away. So again, moderately enforced.
All that is to say, dance in clubs still exists...just rare to find.