Life under quarantine fuels digital dance parties
NEW YORK—WITH New York’s nightlife spots closed, digital dance parties are all the rave, as DJS stream sets while revelers don their nipple pasties and disco ball facemasks for clubs online.
The city that never sleeps has seen more than 90,000 of its residents test positive for the potentially fatal coronavirus, whose rapid spread has severely restricted public life.
But clubgoers are finding new ways to stay up all night long.
The velvet rope is tight at Club Quarantine, one of the internet’s hottest spaces that requires a $10-cover charge—$80 will get you a private video room with more exclusive performances—and has seen pop celebrities, including Charli XCX, drop by.
And celebrity DJ D-nice has drawn massive virtual crowds to his marathon Instagram Live sets, including everyone from Rihanna and John Legend to Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.
The Brooklyn venue House of Yes—known for its drag shows, burlesque, aerial performers and elaborate costumes—also has gone digital, hosting parties via platforms like Zoom, Twitch and Instagram.
The club’s cofounder Kae Burke said New York’s social life shutdown felt “like watching a 20-car pileup in slow motion.”
But the first online session closed a hit: “I did not expect to have so much fun—i ended up dancing in a costume for three hours straight,” said Burke. “It completely blew my mind ... it felt like I was with my friends.”
At first, House of Yes kept its requirements for entry as tight as those of its physical space, demanding partiers to wear costumes—and the more intricate, the better.
But in the quarantine age, they decided to relax the rules to ensure inclusivity, especially for the regulars stuck at their parents’ house without glittering get-ups.
Jacqui Rabkin, a brain behind the club’s digital concept, said that on the whole participants are still bringing their A-game.
“We’ve had people in like massive unicorn costumes, we’ve had people with pole-dancing and aerial equipment,” she said, saying one crew brought a smoke machine with elaborate lights and puppetry.
Rabkin said taking the dancefloor digital also allows the New York club to expand its audience as far as Europe or Asia.
It brought a sense of normalcy to the venue whose social media content was often censored for participant self-expression that skewed mature. “We’re just too sexy for everyone,” Rabkin laughed.
New Yorker Nickodemus is among the many DJS spinning vinyl for the digital sphere, an antidote to stressful times that he hopes can offer respite to others. “New York has always been a party for me. If I’m in the city, I’m Djing,” he said
The coronavirus pandemic has dealt the entertainment industry a serious blow, with major festivals canceled, tours pushed back and many artists, crews and club workers unemployed.
House of Yes is operating online with a “skeleton crew,” Burke said, and held a fundraiser to be able to distribute tide-over payouts to the dozens of employees they were forced to lay off.
For now, online parties are free, but if the shutdown persists, the club will consider charging for its digital dances, Rabkin said: “Keeping the party spirit is key to getting through virus-plagued New York’s depressive lull.”—afp