“THE CLUB IS ABOUT FEELING FREEDOM”

Chicago, New York, Berlin and now London… wherever the wildest dance floors are, she’s been there playing the bangers. Paul Flynn learns the house rules from the queen of clubs

Born in Chicago, feted during her years living in New York, currently resident in Berlin and soon to pack a fancy suitcase for a move to London, the wondrous Honey Dijon is not just a handy map of sophisticated nightclub culture. DJ, producer, remixer, Comme des Garçons-endorsed style mogul (her fashion line, Honey F***ing Dijon, is available at Dover Street Market), recording artiste in her own right, house music evangelist and transgender icon, Honey is an encyclopaedic bank of queer culture. She is about to release her — frankly banging — new album, Black Girl Magic, a second long-player fashioned with her closest musical ally, Luke Solomon, which introduces a grand guest list of collaborators drawn directly from the counterculture over which she has long presided.

This has been quite the year for Honey. Working with Madonna on her greatest dance floor hits compilation, it turned out, was merely a dress rehearsal for co-writing and producing two of the highlights on Beyoncé’s Renaissance album: ‘Cozy’ and ‘Alien Superstar’. That record drew a smart, ferocious line of house music culture from its Black, gay beginnings in Chicago through to its current beat-matched global supremacy, selling it to Walmart America without compromising an inch on its diversity. With Honey’s guiding hand, Queen B had never sounded more audaciously in touch with the underground.

This autumn, Ms Dijon debuted a new monthly residency at the Panorama Bar at Berghain, the lawless Berlin benchmark by which all other nightclub culture is currently adjudicated. With one hand on the tiller in preparation for her entrée to London, we chatted in a Manchester hotel room. Tonight Honey is headlining Homobloc, the 10,000 capacity queer rave. In honour of her top girl billing, she has brought over voguing house originator, Javier Ninja, and insisted he gets a catwalk right beside her DJ booth. Honey is not the type to pull a drawbridge up behind her. She stays true to the original tenets of house music. She is the very spirit of Chicago, in all its greatness, wherever she may wander.

‘I look at all these headline slots and they tickle me,’ she says, prepping herself in a towelling robe in advance of the bacchanal that awaits. ‘It’s so funny. I’m not different than when I was DJing in my bedroom. For me, it’s all about the music and it doesn’t matter whether it’s 50 or 50,000 people. The club is about finding and feeling freedom.’

So as party month enters full seasonal sashay, what better child of the night than Honey Dijon to school us in a 12-step programme on how and why the party matters more now than ever?

1. Bring the respect

‘A party is the last place you should have rules. The only rule that I uphold is not being disrespectful to queer people, and especially not to women. At Panorama Bar, I see topless women, queer women, lesbians, cis women, all dancing freely, expressing themselves sexually without the predatory male gaze. I think it’s very important for queer people and women to celebrate themselves and their sexuality without shame, judgement or fear. That’s what the club is for.’

2. Bring the bad taste

‘Bad taste goes a long way. Chic is a bourgeois word and the club has no place for the bourgeoisie. Beauty, yes. Bourgeois chic, no. Divine, to me, is one of the chicest people to ever have walked the Earth. So bad taste? Yes. Cheap bad taste is essential to the club.’

3. Bring the humour

‘I miss humour in the party. There’s that song by Uncanny Alliance, “I Got My Education”, which opens with the monologue: “Miss thing, miss thing, miss thing, miss thing, she had to pawn her diamond ring/went on down to Burger King and found they weren’t hiring.” So good. The club should not be serious. It should be about play and fun. I purposely, on point, play a lot of queer music in straight spaces because I want them to gag at it. I’m a representative of joy. That’s my job.’