The coolest job of summer?
MEET THE PEOPLE PAID TO PARTY
it was hard to believe it was actually her. That she was the one, soaring sky-high on a billboard in Ibiza’s Old Town. It meant she had made it. She couldn’t keep driving, so she pulled off the road and screamed into the warm air. Then she burst into tears.
Lucy had been just another club kid who loved to go out and dance until the early hours, after all. But then one night, dancing on tables, she was spotted. Spotted for, arguably, the greatest job on earth.
Next time you’re in a sweat-soaked club, look up at the dancers high over your head. You might not realise that they have the same star power as the DJ behind the decks. Today’s top podium dancers are on billboards, posters and flyers, where superstar DJs once were. Not only that, but they’re also fronting modelling campaigns, starring in their own documentaries and flying across the globe.
It’s a world I know well: I made my podium debut in Canada when I was still a teenager, and by my 20th birthday I had torn apart podiums for high-profile clubs in Miami, New York, Montreal and Puerto Rico. I’d danced in everything from cling film to chain mail, been suspended in a birdcage over two notorious Mexican gangs and landed a full-time stint in Cancun. But to make it in Ibiza, like Lucy did, is to reach the peak of your career. Dancing for world-famous DJs like Carl Cox, Erick Morillo and Martin Solveig, at the world’s top clubs, in front of huge energetic crowds… it’s all yours. If you can make it through the hundreds of others vying for the same spot.
But no well-edited CV, pithy interview answers or pimped-out LinkedIn profile will help you. The most sought-after quality for an Ibiza podium dancer? An otherworldly magnetism that makes you stand out in a sea of thousands. Some dancers are highly skilled, a few have been training for years, others are simply “spotted” in the crowd for the way they move and offered the job on the spot. So what does it take? I tracked down the most iconic names in the industry to find out.
DO THE HUSTLE
When Lucy, known as Lucy Fizz to her fans, stepped out onto a podium in Sydney last year, the audience were chanting her name.“It was the biggest crowd I’ve ever danced for, and when I came out, I got louder cheers than the headliner! There are no words to sum up what that feels like.” Growing up in a small town in northern England, just a couple of years ago Lucy was spotted dancing on bars and is now being flown around worldwide with Glitterbox, the nightlife collective that has put on events in London, Ibiza and New York.“When I told my family what
I did for a job, my grandma and grandpa looked at me like,‘Lucy, get your life together.’”
Podium dancers all have a dance style that’s unique and hard to replicate. Some are choreographed, some spend hours in the studio and others naturally move in new ways each time the beat kicks in. Renowned for her stamina-defying sets (Lucy has been known to fly from a London dancefloor straight to Ibiza without a break), when pressed she describes her style as a mix between Flashdance
and… an orchestra conductor. “The music unlocks something in me that brings me to life,” she reveals. “I never want it to stop.”
For Nadia “Shabby” Chabane, her flexible dancing style led to her being spotted in Ibiza club Amnesia over a decade ago.“A guy came over and asked me if I wanted a job,” she explains. “Not long after, all the other clubs were talking about the way I danced. I was crawling around and using my flexibility. Soon, other girls were bringing their mates who wanted to be podium dancers to watch me and pick up my style.”
Today Nadia auditions dancers for the island’s most prestigious clubs and has sparked the careers of countless dancers along the way.
“I put on a track and let them go. As soon as they start dancing, I’ll know whether they have it or not,” she explains, outlining what she’s looking for.“It’s something that gives you goosebumps, something different.
You can feel it, and as soon as you see it, you can’t look away.”
Once you’ve booked the job, know that the workload as a professional dancer is heavy, expectations are high and the cash low. There’s huge pressure to level up your image each season in order to keep your job, as well as to bring something new to the podium every single night. For Lucy that meant being inventive, covering herself in chocolate for an Easter gig or using neon fun fur to dress up as a Furby for Glastonbury.
“Every penny you make is going back into your look,” says The Mx Fit of those early days on the scene. Today, they’re an Ibiza fixture, known for dancing in everything from ’70s sequinned flares to Dolce & Gabbana denim thongs, as well as working as a stylist, model and, recently, starring in a documentary with Billy Porter called Where Love Lies.“Now I have one woman who does all my wigs and dreads for each night I perform. My aesthetic is very pro-Black and high fashion, but when I started, it was more what I call ‘broke but cute,’” The Mx Fit laughs, adding that there was a lot of precarious rhinestone placing on their naked body.
The Mx Fit was first spotted dancing in London at debauched celebrity haunt The Box, and they were poached for what seemed like a dream season in Mykonos. “When I got there, I was sharing a mattress in a room full of cockroaches and what little money I got paid was robbed,” they say. “Eventually, I came back to London heartbroken, jobless and homeless. Sometimes I was awake for 24 hours at a time, performing at night, then showering and working at a gym in the day.” But, thankfully, it paid off. Six months after that hellish season in Mykonos, Glitterbox called. The rest is sequin-strewn history.
Having the stamina to survive on almost no sleep is another key skill a dancer must possess. On an average shift, most dancers begin at 9pm, working pretty much non-stop until 5am at the earliest. Fuelled by the music, most barely take a break. They may then also have to promote the party up and down the beach the very next morning. And becoming more well-known doesn’t guarantee a day off – if anything, your popularity means you have to graft even harder. Some dancers fly in and out of The White Isle weekly to make ends meet from side gigs elsewhere.
Looking back at her busiest season in Ibiza, Nadia confesses, “I’d go to DC10, rave, then go straight to dance at Cocoon. Sometimes I’d sleep, sometimes not. I’d go straight to Carl Cox, then be back at Space, and then Fridays back at Amnesia. I loved the giant podium there so much I would wait until my shift was over when I had it all to myself and dance for an extra hour.”
There are a lot of new dancers who will take work for free, and a handful of promoters and agents looking to capitalise on that. But Indie, who is currently one of the podium-dancing scene’s youngest and hottest rising talents, understands why. In three years, Indie has danced for clubs, festivals and parties in Lebanon, Italy, Spain, Greece and others, but she’s quick to point out that her success didn’t come easy.
“As much as those dancers are f*cking up the market for us, I understand the pressure at the start to say yes to unpaid opportunities so that you can build your name,” she says.
Making yourself known in a heaving inbox of emails is never going to help you stand out as a dancer. So not only is it a challenge for dancers to get the pay they deserve, but to earn a spot on the podium, they need to be seen, make connections, be memorable and, most of all, hustle like hell.
Circling back on her own journey, one on which she battled doubt and discouragement, quit and then started again, Indie continues, “If you want to make it in the dancing world, you have to push [any doubt] aside. Some nights I might be up on the podium with period pains, but I’m still standing on that stage and rocking it.”
FOREVER IN THE SPOTLIGHT
It might be a hard slog to get to the top, but once you’ve made it to the dizzying heights of Ibiza club fame, near enough every DJ and club has your name inked at the top of their guest list, and anything you want to decompress with and lose yourself in for the night is free-flowing.
“SOMETIMES I WOULD SLEEP, SOMETIMES NOT”
As a result, a lot of new-generation podium dancers see it as a way get paid to party. But the temptation to release comes with a price: many won’t last – they’ll take too many drugs, drink too much, run out of money, or all three.
Having witnessed this, Lucy is quick to offer up insight.“I partied for 10 years. What I hadn’t done was go to New York as a professional dancer to perform at incredible clubs like House Of Yes, or dance in Australia for thousands of people chanting my name. Now, by fully being present, I get to do that! What I’ve accomplished so far as a trans performer, dancer and LGBTQ+ ambassador for clubbing… this is everything to me.” She’s now made the pivot to sobriety and has plans to launch her own dance agency.
This job is a passport to experience life at its very fullest. It’s hard work, yes, but once you work out your own flow, it’s worth every moment.“That feeling when the bass is pummelling in your chest like a heartbeat, and you step out onto the podium… there’s nothing like it,” says Nadia.“Even talking about it now, I get shivers.” But it also offers something else, something even more rewarding than wild stories and nights that you want to last forever. It unleashes who you are. There may still be some people who want to attach pathos to the dance profession, assuming that it must signal low self-esteem. But every dancer I spoke to confirmed that being a podium dancer brought empowerment. The music ignited our freedom of expression and led us to discover the truest versions of ourselves. Not only have they become phenomenally strong dancers off the back of that, but they’re also stomping out stereotypes and elevating the scene.
“I have become so powerful and dancing taught me that. It gave me so much confidence,” Indie proudly explains.“My biggest rush is sharing that confidence with other women. When they come up and tell me that my dancing made them feel sexy and fierce, or when I step out to do a solo in a club and women in the audience are already shouting my name, that’s respect, that’s why I work so hard.”
“As a dancer I’ve always felt I was doing people a service,” says Brooklyn, a Glitterbox dancer who took to the podium while heavily pregnant last summer, making worldwide news. “When I’m performing, I feel like I’m helping people share in my happiness. The power dance has to unite people no matter who you are, where you’re from, who you prefer, or what language you speak, that’s the kind of pure love the world needs right now. People need to lose themselves in the music and just share joy.” Because what, if anything, is more powerful than that?