July 13, 2023 • 45 mins
Danceteria wasn’t just a nightclub. It was an artistic incubator at the heart of New York’s early 80s cultural renaissance. It became a space for musicians, artists, and activists to seek inspiration. It was the club where Madonna performed on stage for the first time and Keith Haring painted art straight onto the walls, And in the midst of the AIDs crisis, it became the place New Yorkers escaped to find community, joy and the chance to lose themselves on the dancefloor.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
In the nineteen seventies, New York City was in the
middle of a crisis. There was an average of two
hundred and sixty five crimes a week committed in the
subway in the first eight months of nineteen seventy three,
and Central Park became a place where many people got
mugged and assaulted. It was one of the most dangerous
places in the city, and even though New York held
(00:24):
its first gay Pride parade at the start of the decade,
there was still widespread discrimination and violence against the city's
queer community.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
And then came the eighties.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Things did change in November nineteen eighty with the election
of Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
That's Tim Lawrence, who's written books about the history of
New York's nightlife. The eighties were a time of relative
optimism in the city. Ronald Reagan had introduced a plethora
of anti tax policies during his presidency that had caused
a Wall Street boom, But while the boom ushered in
a decade of financial prosperity for some New Yorkers, it
(01:15):
left a lot of people behind.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
At the same time, Ronald Reagan was cutting taxes for
the rich and also spending on welfare.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
The city was experiencing a financial uptick, but a lot
of working class people were really struggling. Cuts were being
made to welfare, their living conditions weren't improving, and the
divide between working class New Yorkers and wealthy New Yorkers
was just getting wider and wider.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
So the politics of the early nineteen eighties shifted very quickly,
you know, inequality rows. The communities that suffered most from
the slashing of spending on welfare tended to be working
class communities.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
While the wealthy had more money to spend and certain
parts of the city were flourishing, working class people were
still struggling the way they had in the seventies, and
for many people it was getting worse. The crack epidemic
was sweeping lower income communities, and the AIDS epidemic was
slowly beginning to emerge. The stakes were high for young
people living in the city, but New York had always
(02:22):
had a way of inspiring art and bringing together creative communities.
During the most socially turbulent times in the city's history, it.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Was probably the peak of New York City parsi culture
in the twentieth century. In terms of the sheer number
of venues and the number of people who were going
out every night, the creativity of the DJs and of
the music that was being produced.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
The city was about to step into a creative renaissance.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
The culture and the music that came through was vibrant.
The scene was just absolutely percolating.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Dozens of new clubs opened in New York during the eighties,
like Limelight and the Palladium Tunnel and Paradise Garage. We'll
hear more about those last two in future episodes, because
in the eighties, the city's party scene was thriving.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
You know, I had just moved to New York from Detroit.
I came here to go to school in eighty one,
to go to Fit Fashion Institute of Technology.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
That's Jules Perez, who spent her early twenties in New
York during the eighties.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
You know, it was all fashion, drugs, and music at
the time and art, and that was what really drew
me to New York. There was so much creativity being
thrown at you from all of those different angles all
the time.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Moving to the city allowed her to find her truest self,
something her hometown couldn't help her with. There was so
much creativity and freedom in the clubs she went to
and the people she met there gave her the confidence
to really express herself. So she experimented with music, art,
and fashion, getting involved with the goth scene and learning
(04:04):
more about the city's different subcultures.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
But it wasn't all fun and games. I mean, I
can remember standing on a street corner, you know, just
dressed the way I dressed. I think I was waiting
for a cab and I was wearing this amazing I'll
never forget it. It was a red sleeveless sort of fleece
dress from Trash and Vaudeville that had graffiti, black graffitio
on it. And I had a wide belt on in
probably some Trash and Vaudeville kitten heeled boot.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Trash and Vaudeville was an iconic store that sold punk
rock clothing. I know because I used to shop there
quite often. So Jules confidently stepped outside and she felt
incredible as she walked around the city wearing the clothes
she loved. After all, she was in New York, right,
she could where was she wanted, listen to what she wanted,
and freely roam the streets. But her New York fantasy
(04:53):
didn't last. As she walked down the street in her outfit, a.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Car drove by me really slowly and stared, screaming at me,
it's not Halloween, this isn't Halloween. What are you dressed
like that for? And somebody threw a lit cigarette butt
at me. So, you know, there wasn't the acceptance then
that there is now.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
New York City wasn't a magical utopia where you could
be whoever you wanted to be whenever you walk down
a street. But there were some spaces in the city
where people could come as They were nightclubs with dance floors,
where Jewels could really experience freedom, where she could wear
what she wanted and listen to the music she loved
(05:34):
while surrounded by some of the city's most vibrant people.
And once Jewels started going out to those clubs, she
couldn't stop.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
We went out pretty much. That's the reason why I
dropped out of it. We went out pretty much, you know,
five six nights a week. We were out all the time.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
And she wasn't the only one.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
There were a lot of people who were just starting out,
who had come to New York from all different places
specifically for that purpose.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Some of the most creative young people from across the
country were moving to New York and jumping straight into
the nightlife scene.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
They kind of congregated in New York, and that really,
you know, that really had a hand in building the
scene there. So you know, it's almost like taking the
most creative people from all of these towns all over
the place and then depositing them all in one place
and watching everybody just sort of roll with it, you know,
and you end up with just this massive scene of creativity.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And one of Jules's favorite clubs became a magnet for
some of the most creative people in the city. Jules
would take the subway into Manhattan, walk to Chelsea, and
then take a turn down into twenty first Street. She
would hear the muffled sounds of music leaking out on
the windowsills as she walked closer, and feel the energy
of the club exuding out onto the street as she
(06:58):
took her final step towards door. This was Dance Materia,
the club in Chelsea that would go on to become
a launchpad for iconic musicians, an incubator for some of
(07:18):
the greatest artists of the era and the heart of
a creative renaissance.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
It was this hype of activity.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
It was this massive melting pot in everybody's you know,
musical careers and artistic careers and fashion careers.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
It was a dance floor fill with ideas and inspiration,
frequented by artists who would become legends and musicians who
would become icons, all mixing and mingling together under the
club lights as they danced to the songs they loved
in the city that didn't always love them back.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
It was a place where queers and people of color
and women who felt as there was kind of, you know,
outside discrimination would congregate in order to experience it as
a space of freedom.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
But there was also an uneasy weight on that dance floor.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
It was always either an undercurrent or something that was
much more overt to an undercurrent running through the dance
floors of New York City.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Life was getting harder for the people who found solace
on the dance floor. The dream of what they'd imagine
New York could be was shifting and contorting into the
reality of what it was becoming. But during those nights
in Dance Ayia, they did their best to forget and escape.
They partied like the dance floor was all they had.
(08:45):
From London Audio, iHeartRadio and executive producer Paris Hilton. This
is the History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs, a twelve
part podcast about the iconic venues and people that revolutionized
how we party. Some of the world's most legendary nightclubs
were known for the unique community they welcomed, others for
(09:06):
the cultural movements they started, and some for the musicians
and DJs they introduced to the world. The best nightclubs
champion new music, transform lives, and provide an escape from
life's pressures. One more thing. This is the history of
some of the world's greatest nightclubs. Not a ranking of
every club in the world. It's an exploration of the spaces,
(09:30):
people and club nights that made a lasting impact on
our nightlife and music today. I'm your host Alternate. I'm
a singer, songwriter, musician, and I found my purpose in
club culture. This is Episode two. Dance Ateryria in New York, USA.
(09:52):
Dance Ateryia wasn't just a club. It was an artistic
incubator at the heart of New York's early eighties cultural Renaissance.
At Danceitityria, young creative New Yorkers found a place to
escape and celebrate life in the midst of one of
the city's most turbulent decades. And at dance Ayia, everybody
was a nobody on their way to becoming somebody.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
The seventies.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
In the eighties saw an influx of people moving to
New York from around the world. They were enticed by
the stories they'd heard about the city and the dream
of making it in New York. And one of the
people who moved to the city swept up by all
the rumors was one of the future founders of dance Ateria.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
So my name is Rudolph Piper I am German. I
was born in Berlin during the War.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Rudolph grew up on the west side of the Berlin
Wall and he loved the night life there. He would
go out partying most nights and dance his way through
the Cold War before opening his first night club in
Berlin in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
I always was a club guy from Berlin.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
He traveled around the world, working at clubs and owning
his own in cities like Tokyo in Japan and Rio
in Brazil.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
I was having a good life, you know, and one afternoon,
laying on the beach smoking a joint with girls in
bikini around, I said, you know what, maybe the rest
of my life is going to be like this, laying
(11:36):
on the beach smoking. Though that's not too bad for
a lifestyle, but you know what, I have to do something,
you know, more than that.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Rudolph had heard rumors about Studio fifty.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
Four, and I said, I have to be part of this.
I mean, I cannot just fade away without being part
of Sudito fifty four, which was the greatest, greatest thing
of the day. The first night I arrived in New York,
I went to the Chelsea Hotel, booked in, put my
(12:09):
best outfit on, and went to studio and then the
story starts.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
He was impressed by the glitz and the glam, and
even spent time working at Studio fifty four as the
director of promotions. It was beautiful and luxurious, but it
wasn't quite his scene. Studio fifty four was still playing
the nostalgic disco music of the seventies and felt trapped
in a bygone golden age, whereas Rudolph was looking to
(12:36):
the future. He wanted to be part of the next
movement in music and culture, so he and his friend
Jim Forett, a talent booker in the city, decided to
start their own club, and they called it Dance Ateria.
There were three versions of the club, but we're going
to go to the second and most important. Dance Materia,
(12:57):
that opened in nineteen.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
Eighty two, was on twenty first Street in Chelsea, between
fifteen and sixth Avenue.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
But Chelsea in nineteen eighty two was miles away from
what Chelsea is like now. Back then, it wasn't affluent, glamorous,
or you know, gentrified.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
Chelsea in those days was basically abandoned. In those days,
you could walk from the East Village to the twenty
first Street dan se Churia without one store opened, without
one bar being opened, without nothing, nothing in this entire
stretch from the East Village to the twenty first Street.
(13:39):
At night, it was dark as hell, not even street
lights were on. It was abandoned.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Rudolph loved it.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Actly.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
I mean, I'm from Lives. I was born in a
city that was destroyed, so I sort of liked destroyed cities.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
He and Jim signed the lease on a building on
twenty first Street and opened dance Ateria.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
My name is Jim Furah, and I'm a cultural instigator
and I've been around for a very, very long time.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Jim and Rudolph had spent nights partying all around New York,
so when they started dance Atyria, they knew exactly what
types of people they wanted to see on the dance floor.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
I wanted people age to know each other, different kinds
of people. The door policy was not a Studio fifty
four policy who's famous and who's rich. It was based
on bringing a mix of who New York City was about.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Celebrities weren't a priority.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
As a matter of fact, there was a slogan of
Dance Atyia being the place where everything was nothing and
everybody was nobody.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
They wanted to bring together people from different races and
parts of the city to create a vibrant, artistic melting
pot on the dance floor because they believe that dancing
had the power to truly bridge divides.
Speaker 6 (15:04):
So when you have a great DJ and you have
a great door policy which mixes people on the dance
floor with the beat, they're all fucking dancing together, you
find people letting go of the things that keep us apart,
letting go of the fear that is built into a
culture that is based on racism and classism in all
(15:26):
those political words. So that was the goal.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Dance Materia was inclusive. It brought people together from different
backgrounds and became a space for women and queer people
to party without fear. But don't get it twisted. You
had to be cool to get past the front door.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Well, as far as Rudolph was concerned, you just had
to look fabulous. That was kind of his tagline.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
It was so important to him that sometimes he would
spot someone on the street who looked fabulous and invite
them to the club, which is how Jules got her
first introduction to dance Aeteria. She was out partying at
another club in the city when Rudolph approached her.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
I was out one night at the Roxy and I
ran into one of dance Teria's well actually Danceteria's founder, Rudolph,
who started a conversation with me and asked me if
I could bartend. I said no, I've never bartended before,
but I can certainly drink, and he just kind of replied,
I like the way you look, come by the club
(16:25):
and we'll put you behind the bar and see what happened.
And that was sort of his jam. That was what
he was really all about, was gathering this massive group
of people who fit the bill looks wise. He was
a very visual person, so he liked things to look
exciting and look a certain way.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
When Jules walked into dance Ateria, one of the first
things she noticed was how people were dressed.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
There were different groups of people who were into different looks.
You know, there was the Bee girls and the Bee boys,
and people who were break dancing.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
They were wearing Nike and the Beidas branded track suits
and bucket hats, fully embracing the bee boy culture and
the hip hop aesthetic of the eighties, inspired by hip
hop groups like Run DMC.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
And then there were you know, there was the whole
Vivian Westwood culture club thing happening. That was another look
that was going around.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Those were people dressed in the pop rock style of
eighties and influenced by musicians like Cyndi Lauper.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
They were wearing multicolored pearl.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Necklaces, leather lace gloves, and big hair, and I was
one of them. Nothing was safe from my scissors, my
safety pins, or my magic marker.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
And then there were the goths, which is what I was.
I was a hardcore got back in the day. So
it was kind of like a mixed bag, you know,
depending really almost on what kind of music you were into.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
The Ateria played all sorts of music. The club hop
between genres and styles, united only by the fact that
you could dance to it all. And because music and
fashion were so intrinsically linked, fashion was a really important
element of what made dance Ateria the club it was.
Speaker 5 (18:08):
East Village was teeming with fashion designers that had little
boutiques there, and so Dancitaria was always doing fashion shows
with new talent.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
The fourth floor of dance Aeteria became the go to
spot in Chelsea to see the looks that would soon
dominate the city streets, with brightly colored avant garde looks
on the runway and experimental hair and makeup under the
club's spotlights. The community that formed around dance Materia was
teaming with creativity, so Rudolph and Jim gave up and
(18:42):
coming designers, artists, and musicians the opportunity to showcase their work.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
We all sort of converged to create this massive undertaking
of fashion and art in music.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
The walls of dance Ateria were plastered with posters from
past performances and graffiti art that had become synonymous with
the cities hip hop and punk rock inspired art scene.
The first floor of the club had a stage for
live performances that gave new and exciting musicians the opportunity
to perform some of their earliest shows.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
There was a whole little subsect of kids that had
grown up in New York City who were hanging out
at the clubs already at the age of you know, fifteen, fourteen,
fifteen or sixteen.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
And one of those groups of kids was three teenage
boys who would go on to become the Beastie Boys.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Glad Any Glass warning.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Of the visits and Beasties, along with some other people
had been hanging out since they were really super young.
I mean, the Beasties were super energetic, right, so as
soon as they hit the stage, everybody tended to just
get com completely sucked into their energy and their mojo.
(20:02):
You knew it was going to be a good night
if the Beasties were hitting the stage.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
But back then they weren't the Beastie Boys. They were
just the beasties. They've worked as bus boys at Danceytyria
as teenagers, and so when they performed for the first time,
they were just performing at the club as guys that
the regulars already knew. It was just like watching someone
you grew up with playing at your favorite local spot.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
You know that It kind of wasn't really a big
deal at the time. It wasn't. It was just the
scene we were in.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Danceteria was a club where many artists launched their careers,
but at the time they didn't even realize that the
club would become the backdrop to their origin stories.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
It was a revolving door of you know, of bands,
a lot of bands that went on to become really famous.
Dance a Tyria had just gotten a reputation for being,
you know, a place to play and a really great
place to play. You know, it had a great atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Many of the most important bands and musicians of the
eighties passed through the club and played some of their
earliest shows there.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Everybody from Duran Duran to New Order to The Smith's
Sonic Youth, all of these people have played at dance.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Ayia Danceeteria was a magnet for some of the most
creative people in the city because Jim and Rudolph had
designed it to be that way. Here's Jim on how
they curated the culture of dance Aeteria.
Speaker 6 (21:28):
What was important to me was building a template that
was so strong it could survive and create a new
template for my life. And the high art, mid slow art,
popular culture was a critical part of it. New media
was a critical part of it.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
So to keep up with the direction the world was
going in and to be at the forefront of shaping
pop culture, they created a video lounge on the third
floor of the club.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
Video was just emerging as an art form.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
The founders of Dancyteria recognized that video was going to
be the next big thing for music, and so they
hired the filmmakers Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn to create
and curate a lounge that screen music videos and visual art.
It was a multisensory experience.
Speaker 6 (22:20):
We gave them four hundred dollars to go out to
these Salvation armies and get coutures and things, and we
got monitors that were hooked up to the band.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
So while people were in the lounge, they could watch
videos while listening to audio from the performance going on downstairs.
They sat on old couches surrounded by old TV monitors
and watched videos on screens like they were sitting in
someone's living room.
Speaker 6 (22:46):
And the reason I wanted those there is because some
people come into clubs are very shy, you know, and
they don't know how to start a conversation. So I
wanted to create a place, a place where shy people
what could mean, and the conversation maker was what was
on the video.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
When you stepped into the video lounge, you could see
archival clips of people dancing that have been filmed in
nightclubs across New York. You'd see premieres of music videos
for musicians like David Bowie up on the screens, and
experimental moving art playing out as people watched in awe.
And this was before the days of big music video premieres,
(23:27):
before people sat trends fixed in front of their TVs.
The founders of dance Ateria were visionaries who wanted to
be at the cutting edge of music, fashion, art, and culture,
and so they created space in the club for all
of it. Live performances on the first floor, DJ sets
on the second a video lounge on the third and
(23:49):
a space for fashion and art shows on the fourth.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
It was almost like a supermarket style discotheque or club
where you could move between the floors as you most desired,
and if you weren't interested or engaged with what was
going on on one floor, then you could switch floors.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
It was kind of like a choose your own adventure,
but in nightclub form.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
So this was what Dancertyria was all about. It was
about bringing together different strands of culture and seeing what
happened if you put them into this kind of petrodish
environment and let them run wild.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
It was an incubator, a space to inspire and be inspired.
It was only a matter of time before the club
produced an icon. The glitzy, luxurious Studio fifty four era
was quickly fading by the time Dance Materia came onto
the scene. If Studio fifty four was a who's who
(24:51):
of who the most famous people in New York were,
Dance Materia was like stepping into a time machine and
catching glimpses of who was about to become famous, Like
walking into the first half of a biopic about some
of the eighties' most influential stars.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
We were younger. We were the ones who were making
the scene. You know, we were the creative ones. We
were the ones who were creating fashion, art and music.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Imagine walking into dance Ataria on a Saturday night in
the eighties and seeing ll cool J working as an
elevator attendant. You get a glimpse into the back door
and see the beastie boys who worked there as bus boys.
Then you go to the bar and get a drink
poured by Shade, who was a bartender. But back in
the eighties, you didn't know who any of those people were.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yet.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Young people who were still crafting their art found their
way to the club before any of them knew what
their futures held or who they would become.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
It was a lot freer, and there were a lot
of people in the scene in the early eighties who
went on to become really famous.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Including artists like Keith Herring, one of the most influential
modern American artists, spent the nights of his formative years
working at dan Citteria.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
He was a busboy at Dancecuria before his fame, and
then he was always bothering me. I wanna paint the
walls and so on. That's okay, paint the walls. Fine.
So I gave him, like I don't know, five hundred dollars,
go and paint the walls. And he went and painted
the entire main floor of that saturia with his It
(26:31):
was his paintings, and okay, it was great. Everybody loved it.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
But it wasn't a case of Rudolph commissioning the Keith
Herring to create a piece of art for the club
at the time. It was just letting one of the
bus boys who worked for him, who had big dreams
and burgeoning talent, do some decorating.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
Keith Herring was part of the scene, was part of
the crowd. It was one of them, and this is
what I always tried to do. The whole club was
built based on, let's say, labor from the crowd. Like
the bartenders were from the crowd. It was all a family.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Danceteria was filled with people who were on their way
to becoming somebody. Artists, musicians and designers who were still
in the early stages of what would one day become
legendary careers, and someone else who would go from working
at danceteria to becoming a Somebody was a twenty three
year old woman who'd only arrived in New York a
few years before.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
She reminded me of Barbara Strawson in her tribe.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
She'd move from Detroit to New York to follow her
dreams of making music, and she was determined to become
a star.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
So few people have that focus and that nothing no
one will stand in my way.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
She was a waitress at Dancitityia, and when she wasn't
working at the club, she would head to the dance
floor to party with her friends. She knew exactly who
she wanted to become, and she spent her nights hustling
to try and get people to listen to her music.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
But at the time.
Speaker 5 (28:07):
She was nobody. I mean, you know, she has a
demo tape, so.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
She would hang out at the DJ booth trying to
get the DJ to play her song.
Speaker 7 (28:15):
Yeah. I would bring my cassette tapes to the DJs
and drive them all crazy. It was relentless. They would
see me and run because I just wanted them to
play my cassette.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
And eventually, after asking dozens of times, a DJ at
dance Ateria finally played her song.
Speaker 7 (28:33):
Everybody got up and started dancing to it, and it
blew my mind. I mean seriously, like that was everything
to me.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
The whole dance floor came alive. They instantly loved her song.
That song was called Everybody, and that twenty three year
old waitress from Detroit was Madonna. So Madonna kept going
back to the club and chasing the bookers and DJs
down until she finally convinced them to let her take
the stage. And on December sixteenth, nineteen eighty two, Madonna
(29:04):
gave the first live performance of her career at dance Ateryria.
Speaker 8 (29:08):
Say Everybody, Everybody.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
And now no Antiandas is proud to present the world
premiere of sire recording artist Madonna.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Look, get up and.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Tell you then, And that performance kickstarted the rest of
her life.
Speaker 5 (29:40):
Once she finished her show, was that one song and
everybody went wild and uproad at the Soul. So then
I said, okay, so she has a following, she has charisma,
and she.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Had the talent to become a star. The DJs and
producers she met at the club helped her launch a
career as a musician, and within a couple months she
was well on her way to beginning her legendary career.
Madonna took inspiration from the art, fashion, and creativity she'd
seen at dance Ateria and carried it with.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Her all through her career.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
She was no doubt inspired by the visuals she saw
in the video lounge, too, as she went on to
create iconic music videos and became one of MTV's most
important music video stars. And her sound captured the sense
of sensuality that you could feel on the dance floor.
Madonna came to represent a moment when the dance floors
(30:34):
of New York's clubs like dance Ateria just felt like freedom.
Speaker 6 (30:39):
You knew that part of that energy was very sexual
and sensual in the music that was being played, and
I wanted some of that on the dance floor, you know.
And that's why the DJs were great about bringing out
the ironic energy in the mixes, you know. And it's
not about sex, you know, It's not about it's like
(31:01):
allowing people to really free their bodies and free themselves.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
This was all unfolding pretty much during the hearts of
the AIDS crisis.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Her music captured the moment and the sense of celebration
in New York clubs, but it also hinted at something darker.
By the time Madonna's career started to take off, the
dance floors like the one at Dance Atyria weren't just
about finding somewhere to celebrate anymore. People were trying to
lose themselves in the music, find refuge from everything that
(31:34):
was going on around them and the fear that was
getting louder with each week. You can hear references to
this moment in one of Madonna's biggest hits from nineteen
ninety vogue, look around. Everywhere you turn is heartache. You
try everything you can to escape the pain of life
when all else fails, and you long to be something
(31:56):
better than you are today. I know a place where
you can get away. It's called a dance floor. In
this clip from a speech Madonna did for World Aid's
Day in nineteen ninety three, she introduces a song with
a dedication to friends she lost to AIDS.
Speaker 8 (32:13):
This next song, I wrote about two very dear friends
of mine who died of AIDS. And though you don't
know my friends, I'm sure that each and every one
of you tonight know someone or will know someone who's
suffering from AIDS. For all of you out there who
understand what I'm talking about, don't give up.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
There was a sense of anxiety in the air. Each
week a new regular would be missing from the dance floor.
The carefree nature of the club was beginning to fade,
and each dance felt more vital than the last.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
People like to remember the eighties as being all fun
and games, and it really wasn't. There was a lot
of struggle happening as well for so many people.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
At the end of each night, everybody had to leave
dense Ayria, and when they left the club and walked
back out onto twenty first Street, they were hit by
the reality of the New York they were now living in.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
So many of our friends were dying of AIDS.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
There had been rumors of a mysterious illness for a while,
and by nineteen eighty one, fifteen people had died of
a disease their doctors couldn't quite understand. Some thought it
was a rare cancer, others described it as a specific
kind of pneumonia, But in September of nineteen eighty two,
the CDC used the name AIDS to describe the disease
(33:43):
for the first time.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
It became an epidemic it was determined epidemic proportions in
nineteen eighty three. It needs to be stated I think
that Ron Reagan didn't even kind of address the question
of AIDS in public. I think for something like the
first six, maybe even seven years of his presidency.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
AIDS was rapidly affecting people across the country, especially in
New York. But it wasn't until nineteen eighty five that
the President of the United States addressed it publicly for
the first time.
Speaker 6 (34:18):
Would you support a massive government research program against AIDS
like the one the President Nixon ranch against cancer.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I have been supporting it from more than four years now.
Speaker 8 (34:30):
It's been one of the top priorities with US.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
But by nineteen eighty five, when Reagan spoke out about
AIDS for the first time, over twelve thousand people had
already died from it.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
When he did speak out, it just wasn't enough.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Reagan showed, you know, very little understanding of sympathy for
the clients.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
The lack of leadership, direction, and education led to even
more fear and stigma within the communities that were affected
by AIDS the most.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
So here have a situation where the case of you know,
thousands upon thousands of United States citizens dying of a disease.
Homophobia is you know, is erupting around this disease because
there's a lot of fear around the disease and there's
also a lot of homophobia.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
And that had had a really significant impact on the
queer community in New York and the nightclub scene and.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
AIDS was so new that there was so much gosh,
it was so frightening back in the day because you know,
at the time, people didn't know how it was transmitted,
and it was just such a horrific, horrific way to
go and it was such a sad time for so
many people that we knew.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
So Dezeteria and its founders decided to take on a
more activist role when it came to their programming. The
club had always had a political slant and.
Speaker 5 (35:53):
Cracuria was very active politically, let's call it, and socially
it was ally who is available to do benefit parties
for worthwhile causes like anti apartheid.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
But when AIDS emerged, the need for Dance Aeteria to
build activism into their program and became even more vital.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Jim Furah in particular, was a highly politicized individual and
he was quite didactic.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Jim believed each person who came into the club could
leave with a better understanding of the world, and so
he programmed their events to reflect the politically charged nature
of the era. Conversations about gender, sexuality, and politics were
more urgent than ever. The AIDS crisis was an issue
especially close to Jim and Rudolph's heart because it was
(36:44):
directly affecting their friends, the people who they knew around
New York, and the community that had formed around dance Aeteria.
They couldn't just sit by and dance through the night
hoping someone else would do something. They had to do something,
so dance Ateryia started organizing events to help educate the community,
fight disinformation, and reduce the stigma that surrounded the disease.
Speaker 6 (37:09):
I founded one of the first AIDS political groups ten
days after the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
The Gay Men's Health Crisis was the first community based
aid service provider in America. It was an information and
counseling hotline established in New York City. Inspired by the GMHC,
Jim started his own group, Wipe Out AIDS.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
Who we targeted was gay men who thought they were
sick and that was everybody because they didn't know how
where it came from or how it affected people who
were terrified.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
So Jim and Rudolph started organizing events at Danceteria to
educate the community and fundraise for people who were being
affected the most.
Speaker 6 (37:50):
The first AIDS benefit was at Dansaityia. It was for
performing named Hibiscus named George Harris.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Jim had originally booked George two perform at the club,
but his sisters arrived instead.
Speaker 6 (38:04):
Well this is just Jimmy says, George is sick and
they don't know what's the matter with him. He was
the first person I ever saw who had AIDS. I'll
never forget going to see him. So I went over
to Saint Vinci's hospital and it was it was one
of the most grotesque. This was a beautiful, beautiful guy
who heightened in a sort of androgyny hip, the kind
(38:27):
of glam Way.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
So it was devastating to see him lying in a
hospital bed, so sick and terrified, and.
Speaker 6 (38:35):
It was grotesque. It was grotesque. I didn't recognize him
because people don't understand what it was like to have
AIDS at that point. And I remember walking out of
there and thinking he's going to die. He's younger than me.
It's not an od and he's not jumping out of
a window. Those are the way people died, you know.
At that age.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Jim knew that there wasn't much that they could do
to help George. The doctors and hospitals still knew so
little about AIDS. But Jim had to do something.
Speaker 6 (39:08):
And went back to the club and called his sister
and I said, let's do a concert to raise money
because he doesn't have any assurance.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
They held a benefit concert at dance Ateria to raise
money for his medical fees.
Speaker 6 (39:23):
And then he dried and we did a memorial for
Hard Discuss at the club.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
It was the first of many benefit concerts and memorial nights.
They spent the next few years organizing fundraising concerts at
dance Ateria to help members of the community who was
struggling with medical costs. And then they brought people together
heavy with grief to remember and celebrate their friends' lives
(39:50):
at memorial events in the club. The dance Ateria dance
floor had started off as a place for people to
express themselves. It had become a place to escape reality,
but by nineteen eighty five, it had become an activist
space too.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
There was obviously a kind of a lot of pain,
but also where people were finding some level of public
solace in terms of being able to gather and celebrate
these people's lives.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
They didn't know who would be there the next time
they went, who else they would lose before they listened
to music together like that again, So each dance felt vital.
Each night on the dance floor felt more urgent than
the one before.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
When we go out tonight, we want a party, you know,
like you know, as if there is no tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Dance Materia became the place to temporarily escape the diagnosies
and phone calls, hospital visits and the constant undercurrent of fear.
It became a reminder of the lives they've lived, of
the people they'd loved, and of the community they'd found
on the dance floor. Dance Ateria closed in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 5 (41:04):
It basically closed by several reasons, one of them being
my exhaustion was the sexuria because I was doing this
for years at this point. It was a difficult job
because it required filling four floors, seven nights a week
at Talent DJ's social life, art exhibitions.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
It was a lot to take on, especially since it
was so hard for clubs to keep up with the
way that music and culture were constantly shifting and evolving.
The area around them was changing too. Chelsea was beginning
to gentrify, and the rent for that building on twenty
first Street was getting more expensive, so they decided to
close the club and move on. But Danceteria had such
(41:51):
a central role in New York's cultural renaissance that its
legacy didn't fade when the doors closed.
Speaker 5 (41:57):
I was aware that I was doing something important and special.
Whether it was going to be known as so many
years later, that was only a hope I had in
those days, and I am quite happily amazed that it
is happening now.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Danceteria was a creative incubator. It attracted some of the
most exciting people in the city and brought them together
into a melting pot of creativity. It gave artists like
Keith Haring the opportunity to experiment and showcase his art.
It gave musicians like the Beastie Boys the opportunity to
spend their formative years surrounded by people who inspired and
(42:40):
celebrated them, and dance Materia was a launch pad for
legends like Madonna, giving her the opportunity to perform for
the very first time and experience the unique euphoria of
watching a crowd dance to her first song.
Speaker 5 (42:56):
It was a hedonistic lifestyle and still today I hear
therek messages on Facebook and whatever of people saying, well,
you changed my life. I mean I would not be
the same, wouldn't it not be for dance Cheeriot.
Speaker 4 (43:15):
My friends who are still around, when we talk about it,
we all remember it fondly. We all have pieces of
Vivian Westwood from the eighties packed away, and we all
have T shirts that were signed by Keith Herring that
are packed away, But we all have collections of little
mementos because they mean so much to us.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
There wasn't a single other club in New York City
quite like Dancititia in the eighties, and there hasn't been
one since. It was a hub of creativity, activism, and change.
Each person who stepped onto its dance floors became part
of a bigger story of music, community and celebration in
(43:53):
the midst of fear. Its legacy lives on because of
all the hope it gave to the people who loved
it the most, and the influence it had on the
dance floors across the city. But there will never be
another club like Dance Aeteria. In the next episode, I'm
(44:14):
going to take you to an underground gay club in
London that was open all night and transform the way
we party. We're fast forwarding to the nineties and spending
a night at the legendary trade at turn Mills. The
History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs is produced by Neon
Hum Media for London Audio and iHeartRadio for London Audio.
(44:38):
Our executive producers are Paris Hilton, Bruce Robertson and Bruce gersh.
The executive producer for Neon Humm is Jonathan Hirsch. Our
producer is Rufio Faith Masarura. Navani Otero and Liz Sanchez
are our associate producers. Our series producer is Crystal Genesis.
(44:59):
Our editor is Stephanie Serrano. Samantha Allison is our production
manager and Alexis Martinez is our production coordinator. This episode
was written by Rufio Faith Masarua and fact checked by
Catherine Newhan. Theme and original music by Asha Ivanovic. Our
sound design engineers are Sam Bear and Josh Han. I'm
(45:22):
your host, Ultra Ntey, and we'll see you next time.
On the history of the world's greatest nightclubs,
In the nineteen seventies, New York City was in the
middle of a crisis. There was an average of two
hundred and sixty five crimes a week committed in the
subway in the first eight months of nineteen seventy three,
and Central Park became a place where many people got
mugged and assaulted. It was one of the most dangerous
places in the city, and even though New York held
(00:24):
its first gay Pride parade at the start of the decade,
there was still widespread discrimination and violence against the city's
queer community.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
And then came the eighties.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Things did change in November nineteen eighty with the election
of Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
That's Tim Lawrence, who's written books about the history of
New York's nightlife. The eighties were a time of relative
optimism in the city. Ronald Reagan had introduced a plethora
of anti tax policies during his presidency that had caused
a Wall Street boom, But while the boom ushered in
a decade of financial prosperity for some New Yorkers, it
(01:15):
left a lot of people behind.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
At the same time, Ronald Reagan was cutting taxes for
the rich and also spending on welfare.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
The city was experiencing a financial uptick, but a lot
of working class people were really struggling. Cuts were being
made to welfare, their living conditions weren't improving, and the
divide between working class New Yorkers and wealthy New Yorkers
was just getting wider and wider.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
So the politics of the early nineteen eighties shifted very quickly,
you know, inequality rows. The communities that suffered most from
the slashing of spending on welfare tended to be working
class communities.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
While the wealthy had more money to spend and certain
parts of the city were flourishing, working class people were
still struggling the way they had in the seventies, and
for many people it was getting worse. The crack epidemic
was sweeping lower income communities, and the AIDS epidemic was
slowly beginning to emerge. The stakes were high for young
people living in the city, but New York had always
(02:22):
had a way of inspiring art and bringing together creative communities.
During the most socially turbulent times in the city's history, it.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Was probably the peak of New York City parsi culture
in the twentieth century. In terms of the sheer number
of venues and the number of people who were going
out every night, the creativity of the DJs and of
the music that was being produced.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
The city was about to step into a creative renaissance.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
The culture and the music that came through was vibrant.
The scene was just absolutely percolating.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Dozens of new clubs opened in New York during the eighties,
like Limelight and the Palladium Tunnel and Paradise Garage. We'll
hear more about those last two in future episodes, because
in the eighties, the city's party scene was thriving.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
You know, I had just moved to New York from Detroit.
I came here to go to school in eighty one,
to go to Fit Fashion Institute of Technology.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
That's Jules Perez, who spent her early twenties in New
York during the eighties.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
You know, it was all fashion, drugs, and music at
the time and art, and that was what really drew
me to New York. There was so much creativity being
thrown at you from all of those different angles all
the time.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Moving to the city allowed her to find her truest self,
something her hometown couldn't help her with. There was so
much creativity and freedom in the clubs she went to
and the people she met there gave her the confidence
to really express herself. So she experimented with music, art,
and fashion, getting involved with the goth scene and learning
(04:04):
more about the city's different subcultures.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
But it wasn't all fun and games. I mean, I
can remember standing on a street corner, you know, just
dressed the way I dressed. I think I was waiting
for a cab and I was wearing this amazing I'll
never forget it. It was a red sleeveless sort of fleece
dress from Trash and Vaudeville that had graffiti, black graffitio
on it. And I had a wide belt on in
probably some Trash and Vaudeville kitten heeled boot.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Trash and Vaudeville was an iconic store that sold punk
rock clothing. I know because I used to shop there
quite often. So Jules confidently stepped outside and she felt
incredible as she walked around the city wearing the clothes
she loved. After all, she was in New York, right,
she could where was she wanted, listen to what she wanted,
and freely roam the streets. But her New York fantasy
(04:53):
didn't last. As she walked down the street in her outfit, a.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Car drove by me really slowly and stared, screaming at me,
it's not Halloween, this isn't Halloween. What are you dressed
like that for? And somebody threw a lit cigarette butt
at me. So, you know, there wasn't the acceptance then
that there is now.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
New York City wasn't a magical utopia where you could
be whoever you wanted to be whenever you walk down
a street. But there were some spaces in the city
where people could come as They were nightclubs with dance floors,
where Jewels could really experience freedom, where she could wear
what she wanted and listen to the music she loved
(05:34):
while surrounded by some of the city's most vibrant people.
And once Jewels started going out to those clubs, she
couldn't stop.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
We went out pretty much. That's the reason why I
dropped out of it. We went out pretty much, you know,
five six nights a week. We were out all the time.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
And she wasn't the only one.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
There were a lot of people who were just starting out,
who had come to New York from all different places
specifically for that purpose.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Some of the most creative young people from across the
country were moving to New York and jumping straight into
the nightlife scene.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
They kind of congregated in New York, and that really,
you know, that really had a hand in building the
scene there. So you know, it's almost like taking the
most creative people from all of these towns all over
the place and then depositing them all in one place
and watching everybody just sort of roll with it, you know,
and you end up with just this massive scene of creativity.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And one of Jules's favorite clubs became a magnet for
some of the most creative people in the city. Jules
would take the subway into Manhattan, walk to Chelsea, and
then take a turn down into twenty first Street. She
would hear the muffled sounds of music leaking out on
the windowsills as she walked closer, and feel the energy
of the club exuding out onto the street as she
(06:58):
took her final step towards door. This was Dance Materia,
the club in Chelsea that would go on to become
a launchpad for iconic musicians, an incubator for some of
(07:18):
the greatest artists of the era and the heart of
a creative renaissance.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
It was this hype of activity.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
It was this massive melting pot in everybody's you know,
musical careers and artistic careers and fashion careers.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
It was a dance floor fill with ideas and inspiration,
frequented by artists who would become legends and musicians who
would become icons, all mixing and mingling together under the
club lights as they danced to the songs they loved
in the city that didn't always love them back.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
It was a place where queers and people of color
and women who felt as there was kind of, you know,
outside discrimination would congregate in order to experience it as
a space of freedom.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
But there was also an uneasy weight on that dance floor.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
It was always either an undercurrent or something that was
much more overt to an undercurrent running through the dance
floors of New York City.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Life was getting harder for the people who found solace
on the dance floor. The dream of what they'd imagine
New York could be was shifting and contorting into the
reality of what it was becoming. But during those nights
in Dance Ayia, they did their best to forget and escape.
They partied like the dance floor was all they had.
(08:45):
From London Audio, iHeartRadio and executive producer Paris Hilton. This
is the History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs, a twelve
part podcast about the iconic venues and people that revolutionized
how we party. Some of the world's most legendary nightclubs
were known for the unique community they welcomed, others for
(09:06):
the cultural movements they started, and some for the musicians
and DJs they introduced to the world. The best nightclubs
champion new music, transform lives, and provide an escape from
life's pressures. One more thing. This is the history of
some of the world's greatest nightclubs. Not a ranking of
every club in the world. It's an exploration of the spaces,
(09:30):
people and club nights that made a lasting impact on
our nightlife and music today. I'm your host Alternate. I'm
a singer, songwriter, musician, and I found my purpose in
club culture. This is Episode two. Dance Ateryria in New York, USA.
(09:52):
Dance Ateryia wasn't just a club. It was an artistic
incubator at the heart of New York's early eighties cultural Renaissance.
At Danceitityria, young creative New Yorkers found a place to
escape and celebrate life in the midst of one of
the city's most turbulent decades. And at dance Ayia, everybody
was a nobody on their way to becoming somebody.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
The seventies.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
In the eighties saw an influx of people moving to
New York from around the world. They were enticed by
the stories they'd heard about the city and the dream
of making it in New York. And one of the
people who moved to the city swept up by all
the rumors was one of the future founders of dance Ateria.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
So my name is Rudolph Piper I am German. I
was born in Berlin during the War.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Rudolph grew up on the west side of the Berlin
Wall and he loved the night life there. He would
go out partying most nights and dance his way through
the Cold War before opening his first night club in
Berlin in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
I always was a club guy from Berlin.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
He traveled around the world, working at clubs and owning
his own in cities like Tokyo in Japan and Rio
in Brazil.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
I was having a good life, you know, and one afternoon,
laying on the beach smoking a joint with girls in
bikini around, I said, you know what, maybe the rest
of my life is going to be like this, laying
(11:36):
on the beach smoking. Though that's not too bad for
a lifestyle, but you know what, I have to do something,
you know, more than that.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Rudolph had heard rumors about Studio fifty.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
Four, and I said, I have to be part of this.
I mean, I cannot just fade away without being part
of Sudito fifty four, which was the greatest, greatest thing
of the day. The first night I arrived in New York,
I went to the Chelsea Hotel, booked in, put my
(12:09):
best outfit on, and went to studio and then the
story starts.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
He was impressed by the glitz and the glam, and
even spent time working at Studio fifty four as the
director of promotions. It was beautiful and luxurious, but it
wasn't quite his scene. Studio fifty four was still playing
the nostalgic disco music of the seventies and felt trapped
in a bygone golden age, whereas Rudolph was looking to
(12:36):
the future. He wanted to be part of the next
movement in music and culture, so he and his friend
Jim Forett, a talent booker in the city, decided to
start their own club, and they called it Dance Ateria.
There were three versions of the club, but we're going
to go to the second and most important. Dance Materia,
(12:57):
that opened in nineteen.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
Eighty two, was on twenty first Street in Chelsea, between
fifteen and sixth Avenue.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
But Chelsea in nineteen eighty two was miles away from
what Chelsea is like now. Back then, it wasn't affluent, glamorous,
or you know, gentrified.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
Chelsea in those days was basically abandoned. In those days,
you could walk from the East Village to the twenty
first Street dan se Churia without one store opened, without
one bar being opened, without nothing, nothing in this entire
stretch from the East Village to the twenty first Street.
(13:39):
At night, it was dark as hell, not even street
lights were on. It was abandoned.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Rudolph loved it.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Actly.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
I mean, I'm from Lives. I was born in a
city that was destroyed, so I sort of liked destroyed cities.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
He and Jim signed the lease on a building on
twenty first Street and opened dance Ateria.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
My name is Jim Furah, and I'm a cultural instigator
and I've been around for a very, very long time.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Jim and Rudolph had spent nights partying all around New York,
so when they started dance Atyria, they knew exactly what
types of people they wanted to see on the dance floor.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
I wanted people age to know each other, different kinds
of people. The door policy was not a Studio fifty
four policy who's famous and who's rich. It was based
on bringing a mix of who New York City was about.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Celebrities weren't a priority.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
As a matter of fact, there was a slogan of
Dance Atyia being the place where everything was nothing and
everybody was nobody.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
They wanted to bring together people from different races and
parts of the city to create a vibrant, artistic melting
pot on the dance floor because they believe that dancing
had the power to truly bridge divides.
Speaker 6 (15:04):
So when you have a great DJ and you have
a great door policy which mixes people on the dance
floor with the beat, they're all fucking dancing together, you
find people letting go of the things that keep us apart,
letting go of the fear that is built into a
culture that is based on racism and classism in all
(15:26):
those political words. So that was the goal.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Dance Materia was inclusive. It brought people together from different
backgrounds and became a space for women and queer people
to party without fear. But don't get it twisted. You
had to be cool to get past the front door.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Well, as far as Rudolph was concerned, you just had
to look fabulous. That was kind of his tagline.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
It was so important to him that sometimes he would
spot someone on the street who looked fabulous and invite
them to the club, which is how Jules got her
first introduction to dance Aeteria. She was out partying at
another club in the city when Rudolph approached her.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
I was out one night at the Roxy and I
ran into one of dance Teria's well actually Danceteria's founder, Rudolph,
who started a conversation with me and asked me if
I could bartend. I said no, I've never bartended before,
but I can certainly drink, and he just kind of replied,
I like the way you look, come by the club
(16:25):
and we'll put you behind the bar and see what happened.
And that was sort of his jam. That was what
he was really all about, was gathering this massive group
of people who fit the bill looks wise. He was
a very visual person, so he liked things to look
exciting and look a certain way.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
When Jules walked into dance Ateria, one of the first
things she noticed was how people were dressed.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
There were different groups of people who were into different looks.
You know, there was the Bee girls and the Bee boys,
and people who were break dancing.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
They were wearing Nike and the Beidas branded track suits
and bucket hats, fully embracing the bee boy culture and
the hip hop aesthetic of the eighties, inspired by hip
hop groups like Run DMC.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
And then there were you know, there was the whole
Vivian Westwood culture club thing happening. That was another look
that was going around.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Those were people dressed in the pop rock style of
eighties and influenced by musicians like Cyndi Lauper.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
They were wearing multicolored pearl.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Necklaces, leather lace gloves, and big hair, and I was
one of them. Nothing was safe from my scissors, my
safety pins, or my magic marker.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
And then there were the goths, which is what I was.
I was a hardcore got back in the day. So
it was kind of like a mixed bag, you know,
depending really almost on what kind of music you were into.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
The Ateria played all sorts of music. The club hop
between genres and styles, united only by the fact that
you could dance to it all. And because music and
fashion were so intrinsically linked, fashion was a really important
element of what made dance Ateria the club it was.
Speaker 5 (18:08):
East Village was teeming with fashion designers that had little
boutiques there, and so Dancitaria was always doing fashion shows
with new talent.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
The fourth floor of dance Aeteria became the go to
spot in Chelsea to see the looks that would soon
dominate the city streets, with brightly colored avant garde looks
on the runway and experimental hair and makeup under the
club's spotlights. The community that formed around dance Materia was
teaming with creativity, so Rudolph and Jim gave up and
(18:42):
coming designers, artists, and musicians the opportunity to showcase their work.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
We all sort of converged to create this massive undertaking
of fashion and art in music.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
The walls of dance Ateria were plastered with posters from
past performances and graffiti art that had become synonymous with
the cities hip hop and punk rock inspired art scene.
The first floor of the club had a stage for
live performances that gave new and exciting musicians the opportunity
to perform some of their earliest shows.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
There was a whole little subsect of kids that had
grown up in New York City who were hanging out
at the clubs already at the age of you know, fifteen, fourteen,
fifteen or sixteen.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
And one of those groups of kids was three teenage
boys who would go on to become the Beastie Boys.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Glad Any Glass warning.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Of the visits and Beasties, along with some other people
had been hanging out since they were really super young.
I mean, the Beasties were super energetic, right, so as
soon as they hit the stage, everybody tended to just
get com completely sucked into their energy and their mojo.
(20:02):
You knew it was going to be a good night
if the Beasties were hitting the stage.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
But back then they weren't the Beastie Boys. They were
just the beasties. They've worked as bus boys at Danceytyria
as teenagers, and so when they performed for the first time,
they were just performing at the club as guys that
the regulars already knew. It was just like watching someone
you grew up with playing at your favorite local spot.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
You know that It kind of wasn't really a big
deal at the time. It wasn't. It was just the
scene we were in.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Danceteria was a club where many artists launched their careers,
but at the time they didn't even realize that the
club would become the backdrop to their origin stories.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
It was a revolving door of you know, of bands,
a lot of bands that went on to become really famous.
Dance a Tyria had just gotten a reputation for being,
you know, a place to play and a really great
place to play. You know, it had a great atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Many of the most important bands and musicians of the
eighties passed through the club and played some of their
earliest shows there.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Everybody from Duran Duran to New Order to The Smith's
Sonic Youth, all of these people have played at dance.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Ayia Danceeteria was a magnet for some of the most
creative people in the city because Jim and Rudolph had
designed it to be that way. Here's Jim on how
they curated the culture of dance Aeteria.
Speaker 6 (21:28):
What was important to me was building a template that
was so strong it could survive and create a new
template for my life. And the high art, mid slow art,
popular culture was a critical part of it. New media
was a critical part of it.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
So to keep up with the direction the world was
going in and to be at the forefront of shaping
pop culture, they created a video lounge on the third
floor of the club.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
Video was just emerging as an art form.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
The founders of Dancyteria recognized that video was going to
be the next big thing for music, and so they
hired the filmmakers Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn to create
and curate a lounge that screen music videos and visual art.
It was a multisensory experience.
Speaker 6 (22:20):
We gave them four hundred dollars to go out to
these Salvation armies and get coutures and things, and we
got monitors that were hooked up to the band.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
So while people were in the lounge, they could watch
videos while listening to audio from the performance going on downstairs.
They sat on old couches surrounded by old TV monitors
and watched videos on screens like they were sitting in
someone's living room.
Speaker 6 (22:46):
And the reason I wanted those there is because some
people come into clubs are very shy, you know, and
they don't know how to start a conversation. So I
wanted to create a place, a place where shy people
what could mean, and the conversation maker was what was
on the video.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
When you stepped into the video lounge, you could see
archival clips of people dancing that have been filmed in
nightclubs across New York. You'd see premieres of music videos
for musicians like David Bowie up on the screens, and
experimental moving art playing out as people watched in awe.
And this was before the days of big music video premieres,
(23:27):
before people sat trends fixed in front of their TVs.
The founders of dance Ateria were visionaries who wanted to
be at the cutting edge of music, fashion, art, and culture,
and so they created space in the club for all
of it. Live performances on the first floor, DJ sets
on the second a video lounge on the third and
(23:49):
a space for fashion and art shows on the fourth.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
It was almost like a supermarket style discotheque or club
where you could move between the floors as you most desired,
and if you weren't interested or engaged with what was
going on on one floor, then you could switch floors.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
It was kind of like a choose your own adventure,
but in nightclub form.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
So this was what Dancertyria was all about. It was
about bringing together different strands of culture and seeing what
happened if you put them into this kind of petrodish
environment and let them run wild.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
It was an incubator, a space to inspire and be inspired.
It was only a matter of time before the club
produced an icon. The glitzy, luxurious Studio fifty four era
was quickly fading by the time Dance Materia came onto
the scene. If Studio fifty four was a who's who
(24:51):
of who the most famous people in New York were,
Dance Materia was like stepping into a time machine and
catching glimpses of who was about to become famous, Like
walking into the first half of a biopic about some
of the eighties' most influential stars.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
We were younger. We were the ones who were making
the scene. You know, we were the creative ones. We
were the ones who were creating fashion, art and music.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Imagine walking into dance Ataria on a Saturday night in
the eighties and seeing ll cool J working as an
elevator attendant. You get a glimpse into the back door
and see the beastie boys who worked there as bus boys.
Then you go to the bar and get a drink
poured by Shade, who was a bartender. But back in
the eighties, you didn't know who any of those people were.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yet.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Young people who were still crafting their art found their
way to the club before any of them knew what
their futures held or who they would become.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
It was a lot freer, and there were a lot
of people in the scene in the early eighties who
went on to become really famous.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Including artists like Keith Herring, one of the most influential
modern American artists, spent the nights of his formative years
working at dan Citteria.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
He was a busboy at Dancecuria before his fame, and
then he was always bothering me. I wanna paint the
walls and so on. That's okay, paint the walls. Fine.
So I gave him, like I don't know, five hundred dollars,
go and paint the walls. And he went and painted
the entire main floor of that saturia with his It
(26:31):
was his paintings, and okay, it was great. Everybody loved it.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
But it wasn't a case of Rudolph commissioning the Keith
Herring to create a piece of art for the club
at the time. It was just letting one of the
bus boys who worked for him, who had big dreams
and burgeoning talent, do some decorating.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
Keith Herring was part of the scene, was part of
the crowd. It was one of them, and this is
what I always tried to do. The whole club was
built based on, let's say, labor from the crowd. Like
the bartenders were from the crowd. It was all a family.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Danceteria was filled with people who were on their way
to becoming somebody. Artists, musicians and designers who were still
in the early stages of what would one day become
legendary careers, and someone else who would go from working
at danceteria to becoming a Somebody was a twenty three
year old woman who'd only arrived in New York a
few years before.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
She reminded me of Barbara Strawson in her tribe.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
She'd move from Detroit to New York to follow her
dreams of making music, and she was determined to become
a star.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
So few people have that focus and that nothing no
one will stand in my way.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
She was a waitress at Dancitityia, and when she wasn't
working at the club, she would head to the dance
floor to party with her friends. She knew exactly who
she wanted to become, and she spent her nights hustling
to try and get people to listen to her music.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
But at the time.
Speaker 5 (28:07):
She was nobody. I mean, you know, she has a
demo tape, so.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
She would hang out at the DJ booth trying to
get the DJ to play her song.
Speaker 7 (28:15):
Yeah. I would bring my cassette tapes to the DJs
and drive them all crazy. It was relentless. They would
see me and run because I just wanted them to
play my cassette.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
And eventually, after asking dozens of times, a DJ at
dance Ateria finally played her song.
Speaker 7 (28:33):
Everybody got up and started dancing to it, and it
blew my mind. I mean seriously, like that was everything
to me.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
The whole dance floor came alive. They instantly loved her song.
That song was called Everybody, and that twenty three year
old waitress from Detroit was Madonna. So Madonna kept going
back to the club and chasing the bookers and DJs
down until she finally convinced them to let her take
the stage. And on December sixteenth, nineteen eighty two, Madonna
(29:04):
gave the first live performance of her career at dance Ateryria.
Speaker 8 (29:08):
Say Everybody, Everybody.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
And now no Antiandas is proud to present the world
premiere of sire recording artist Madonna.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Look, get up and.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Tell you then, And that performance kickstarted the rest of
her life.
Speaker 5 (29:40):
Once she finished her show, was that one song and
everybody went wild and uproad at the Soul. So then
I said, okay, so she has a following, she has charisma,
and she.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Had the talent to become a star. The DJs and
producers she met at the club helped her launch a
career as a musician, and within a couple months she
was well on her way to beginning her legendary career.
Madonna took inspiration from the art, fashion, and creativity she'd
seen at dance Ateria and carried it with.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Her all through her career.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
She was no doubt inspired by the visuals she saw
in the video lounge, too, as she went on to
create iconic music videos and became one of MTV's most
important music video stars. And her sound captured the sense
of sensuality that you could feel on the dance floor.
Madonna came to represent a moment when the dance floors
(30:34):
of New York's clubs like dance Ateria just felt like freedom.
Speaker 6 (30:39):
You knew that part of that energy was very sexual
and sensual in the music that was being played, and
I wanted some of that on the dance floor, you know.
And that's why the DJs were great about bringing out
the ironic energy in the mixes, you know. And it's
not about sex, you know, It's not about it's like
(31:01):
allowing people to really free their bodies and free themselves.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
This was all unfolding pretty much during the hearts of
the AIDS crisis.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Her music captured the moment and the sense of celebration
in New York clubs, but it also hinted at something darker.
By the time Madonna's career started to take off, the
dance floors like the one at Dance Atyria weren't just
about finding somewhere to celebrate anymore. People were trying to
lose themselves in the music, find refuge from everything that
(31:34):
was going on around them and the fear that was
getting louder with each week. You can hear references to
this moment in one of Madonna's biggest hits from nineteen
ninety vogue, look around. Everywhere you turn is heartache. You
try everything you can to escape the pain of life
when all else fails, and you long to be something
(31:56):
better than you are today. I know a place where
you can get away. It's called a dance floor. In
this clip from a speech Madonna did for World Aid's
Day in nineteen ninety three, she introduces a song with
a dedication to friends she lost to AIDS.
Speaker 8 (32:13):
This next song, I wrote about two very dear friends
of mine who died of AIDS. And though you don't
know my friends, I'm sure that each and every one
of you tonight know someone or will know someone who's
suffering from AIDS. For all of you out there who
understand what I'm talking about, don't give up.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
There was a sense of anxiety in the air. Each
week a new regular would be missing from the dance floor.
The carefree nature of the club was beginning to fade,
and each dance felt more vital than the last.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
People like to remember the eighties as being all fun
and games, and it really wasn't. There was a lot
of struggle happening as well for so many people.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
At the end of each night, everybody had to leave
dense Ayria, and when they left the club and walked
back out onto twenty first Street, they were hit by
the reality of the New York they were now living in.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
So many of our friends were dying of AIDS.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
There had been rumors of a mysterious illness for a while,
and by nineteen eighty one, fifteen people had died of
a disease their doctors couldn't quite understand. Some thought it
was a rare cancer, others described it as a specific
kind of pneumonia, But in September of nineteen eighty two,
the CDC used the name AIDS to describe the disease
(33:43):
for the first time.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
It became an epidemic it was determined epidemic proportions in
nineteen eighty three. It needs to be stated I think
that Ron Reagan didn't even kind of address the question
of AIDS in public. I think for something like the
first six, maybe even seven years of his presidency.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
AIDS was rapidly affecting people across the country, especially in
New York. But it wasn't until nineteen eighty five that
the President of the United States addressed it publicly for
the first time.
Speaker 6 (34:18):
Would you support a massive government research program against AIDS
like the one the President Nixon ranch against cancer.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I have been supporting it from more than four years now.
Speaker 8 (34:30):
It's been one of the top priorities with US.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
But by nineteen eighty five, when Reagan spoke out about
AIDS for the first time, over twelve thousand people had
already died from it.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
When he did speak out, it just wasn't enough.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Reagan showed, you know, very little understanding of sympathy for
the clients.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
The lack of leadership, direction, and education led to even
more fear and stigma within the communities that were affected
by AIDS the most.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
So here have a situation where the case of you know,
thousands upon thousands of United States citizens dying of a disease.
Homophobia is you know, is erupting around this disease because
there's a lot of fear around the disease and there's
also a lot of homophobia.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
And that had had a really significant impact on the
queer community in New York and the nightclub scene and.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
AIDS was so new that there was so much gosh,
it was so frightening back in the day because you know,
at the time, people didn't know how it was transmitted,
and it was just such a horrific, horrific way to
go and it was such a sad time for so
many people that we knew.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
So Dezeteria and its founders decided to take on a
more activist role when it came to their programming. The
club had always had a political slant and.
Speaker 5 (35:53):
Cracuria was very active politically, let's call it, and socially
it was ally who is available to do benefit parties
for worthwhile causes like anti apartheid.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
But when AIDS emerged, the need for Dance Aeteria to
build activism into their program and became even more vital.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Jim Furah in particular, was a highly politicized individual and
he was quite didactic.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Jim believed each person who came into the club could
leave with a better understanding of the world, and so
he programmed their events to reflect the politically charged nature
of the era. Conversations about gender, sexuality, and politics were
more urgent than ever. The AIDS crisis was an issue
especially close to Jim and Rudolph's heart because it was
(36:44):
directly affecting their friends, the people who they knew around
New York, and the community that had formed around dance Aeteria.
They couldn't just sit by and dance through the night
hoping someone else would do something. They had to do something,
so dance Ateryia started organizing events to help educate the community,
fight disinformation, and reduce the stigma that surrounded the disease.
Speaker 6 (37:09):
I founded one of the first AIDS political groups ten
days after the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
The Gay Men's Health Crisis was the first community based
aid service provider in America. It was an information and
counseling hotline established in New York City. Inspired by the GMHC,
Jim started his own group, Wipe Out AIDS.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
Who we targeted was gay men who thought they were
sick and that was everybody because they didn't know how
where it came from or how it affected people who
were terrified.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
So Jim and Rudolph started organizing events at Danceteria to
educate the community and fundraise for people who were being
affected the most.
Speaker 6 (37:50):
The first AIDS benefit was at Dansaityia. It was for
performing named Hibiscus named George Harris.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Jim had originally booked George two perform at the club,
but his sisters arrived instead.
Speaker 6 (38:04):
Well this is just Jimmy says, George is sick and
they don't know what's the matter with him. He was
the first person I ever saw who had AIDS. I'll
never forget going to see him. So I went over
to Saint Vinci's hospital and it was it was one
of the most grotesque. This was a beautiful, beautiful guy
who heightened in a sort of androgyny hip, the kind
(38:27):
of glam Way.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
So it was devastating to see him lying in a
hospital bed, so sick and terrified, and.
Speaker 6 (38:35):
It was grotesque. It was grotesque. I didn't recognize him
because people don't understand what it was like to have
AIDS at that point. And I remember walking out of
there and thinking he's going to die. He's younger than me.
It's not an od and he's not jumping out of
a window. Those are the way people died, you know.
At that age.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Jim knew that there wasn't much that they could do
to help George. The doctors and hospitals still knew so
little about AIDS. But Jim had to do something.
Speaker 6 (39:08):
And went back to the club and called his sister
and I said, let's do a concert to raise money
because he doesn't have any assurance.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
They held a benefit concert at dance Ateria to raise
money for his medical fees.
Speaker 6 (39:23):
And then he dried and we did a memorial for
Hard Discuss at the club.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
It was the first of many benefit concerts and memorial nights.
They spent the next few years organizing fundraising concerts at
dance Ateria to help members of the community who was
struggling with medical costs. And then they brought people together
heavy with grief to remember and celebrate their friends' lives
(39:50):
at memorial events in the club. The dance Ateria dance
floor had started off as a place for people to
express themselves. It had become a place to escape reality,
but by nineteen eighty five, it had become an activist
space too.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
There was obviously a kind of a lot of pain,
but also where people were finding some level of public
solace in terms of being able to gather and celebrate
these people's lives.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
They didn't know who would be there the next time
they went, who else they would lose before they listened
to music together like that again, So each dance felt vital.
Each night on the dance floor felt more urgent than
the one before.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
When we go out tonight, we want a party, you know,
like you know, as if there is no tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Dance Materia became the place to temporarily escape the diagnosies
and phone calls, hospital visits and the constant undercurrent of fear.
It became a reminder of the lives they've lived, of
the people they'd loved, and of the community they'd found
on the dance floor. Dance Ateria closed in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 5 (41:04):
It basically closed by several reasons, one of them being
my exhaustion was the sexuria because I was doing this
for years at this point. It was a difficult job
because it required filling four floors, seven nights a week
at Talent DJ's social life, art exhibitions.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
It was a lot to take on, especially since it
was so hard for clubs to keep up with the
way that music and culture were constantly shifting and evolving.
The area around them was changing too. Chelsea was beginning
to gentrify, and the rent for that building on twenty
first Street was getting more expensive, so they decided to
close the club and move on. But Danceteria had such
(41:51):
a central role in New York's cultural renaissance that its
legacy didn't fade when the doors closed.
Speaker 5 (41:57):
I was aware that I was doing something important and special.
Whether it was going to be known as so many
years later, that was only a hope I had in
those days, and I am quite happily amazed that it
is happening now.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Danceteria was a creative incubator. It attracted some of the
most exciting people in the city and brought them together
into a melting pot of creativity. It gave artists like
Keith Haring the opportunity to experiment and showcase his art.
It gave musicians like the Beastie Boys the opportunity to
spend their formative years surrounded by people who inspired and
(42:40):
celebrated them, and dance Materia was a launch pad for
legends like Madonna, giving her the opportunity to perform for
the very first time and experience the unique euphoria of
watching a crowd dance to her first song.
Speaker 5 (42:56):
It was a hedonistic lifestyle and still today I hear
therek messages on Facebook and whatever of people saying, well,
you changed my life. I mean I would not be
the same, wouldn't it not be for dance Cheeriot.
Speaker 4 (43:15):
My friends who are still around, when we talk about it,
we all remember it fondly. We all have pieces of
Vivian Westwood from the eighties packed away, and we all
have T shirts that were signed by Keith Herring that
are packed away, But we all have collections of little
mementos because they mean so much to us.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
There wasn't a single other club in New York City
quite like Dancititia in the eighties, and there hasn't been
one since. It was a hub of creativity, activism, and change.
Each person who stepped onto its dance floors became part
of a bigger story of music, community and celebration in
(43:53):
the midst of fear. Its legacy lives on because of
all the hope it gave to the people who loved
it the most, and the influence it had on the
dance floors across the city. But there will never be
another club like Dance Aeteria. In the next episode, I'm
(44:14):
going to take you to an underground gay club in
London that was open all night and transform the way
we party. We're fast forwarding to the nineties and spending
a night at the legendary trade at turn Mills. The
History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs is produced by Neon
Hum Media for London Audio and iHeartRadio for London Audio.
(44:38):
Our executive producers are Paris Hilton, Bruce Robertson and Bruce gersh.
The executive producer for Neon Humm is Jonathan Hirsch. Our
producer is Rufio Faith Masarura. Navani Otero and Liz Sanchez
are our associate producers. Our series producer is Crystal Genesis.
(44:59):
Our editor is Stephanie Serrano. Samantha Allison is our production
manager and Alexis Martinez is our production coordinator. This episode
was written by Rufio Faith Masarua and fact checked by
Catherine Newhan. Theme and original music by Asha Ivanovic. Our
sound design engineers are Sam Bear and Josh Han. I'm
(45:22):
your host, Ultra Ntey, and we'll see you next time.
On the history of the world's greatest nightclubs,
Host
Ultra Naté
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