A mid-life nightclubbing renaissance

On the dancefloor, I feel free

At the DJ Honey Dijon’s gig at London’s Southbank Centre last year

Hello! And welcome to the Honesty Box. I haven’t written in a couple of weeks because sometimes the balance of life goes a little off and I have to choose to do one thing over another. I’ve rarely missed a week of writing to you, so I hope you’ll forgive me.

Last night, I went to the DJ

Annie Macmanus

’s Before Midnight club, which started at 8pm and finished at 12am, in time for the last Tube home. The beauty of this event - and I have now been 10 times (!) - is that less than an hour in, the dancefloor is packed, the people are friendly, and it has become a full-on hands in the air rave - and you can still get home for a decent sleep.

I love going dancing in middle-age even more than I did during my peak clubbing years in the late 1990s, maybe because it’s not something I ever anticipated doing at 47. It brings me so much unexpected joy, and to paraphrase Beyoncé, “When I’m on the dancefloor, I feel free.”

My early years on the dancefloor meant wearing a freezing halter neck crop-top with hipster trousers and doing a shy shimmy at a nightclub in a Watford car park (hoping I’d ‘pull’), or going to a sneaky school-night disco at Camden Palace (now known as Koko).

Eventually I graduated to house music and a rave at the Sanctuary nightclub in Birmingham where I went to university, and where I remember getting on stage while Boy George DJed and yelled ‘fuck off’ to his assistant.

I also loved a £3 entry night called Jelly Baby at a place called Bakers where ‘the very best in house music from the country’s finest DJs’ played each Tuesday (I found an old flyer online), and the occasional all-nighter at a club nicknamed Wobble because the dance floor was sprung and you could hear it clattering up and down as you queued outside to get in.

I don’t know what happened in the years in between, but somehow I seemed to forget how to go clubbing. I’ve never lost the urge to dance, though, and I had a 1977-themed 30th birthday party in 2007 where I danced with my friends and family to Donna Summer for hours.

Dancing to Donna Summer at my 30th birthday

Then I think drunken kitchen parties scratched the dancing itch after that, along with wedding discos or going to bars where you danced in between tables but there wasn’t really a dancefloor.

In the pandemic, I found myself post-run in a park near my mum’s house dancing solo like no-one was watching (they were) to Sylvester’s ‘Dance (Disco Heat)’ which played loudly in my earphones and felt like a massive lockdown release, and when venues opened back up I went to a night called La Discotheque at London super club Printworks (now closed for redevelopment) with a friend and then with my much younger neighbours. But I couldn’t find a place that I felt right in or pinpoint the music or DJs that got me going.

At the first Before Midnight I went to, in 2022, I put on massive platform sandals and a floral-printed jumpsuit that I sometimes wore to the office, not realising that I was going to a rave (and therefore jeans, trainers and a fancy-ish top were more the order of the day).

But my body remembered what to do and I stood on a little stage in the middle of the dancefloor most of the night, stepping from side to side in my clunky shoes. I danced to a remix of ‘You Brought the Sunshine,’ by the gospel group The Clark Sisters and thought: this is what I want to do now.

I soon moved on to a clubbing uniform of backless top and no bra - absolutely unheard of during the 1990s, when I hoiked my boobs up with multiple pads and didn’t have the confidence to go braless. Last night I wore a ‘Where Love Lives’ t-shirt and a mini skirt, an item I used to wear a lot in my twenties but haven’t dared wear beyond 40 - and it felt great.

Along with finding my outfit groove, for me age means giving way less of a shit about what I look like when I dance.

Dancing to house music involves a side to side butt and shoulder shuffle, sometimes with a flick of the wrist and one arm in the air, sometimes both arms and a jump when the beat drops, maybe a few front crawl movements when Cajmere’s ‘Brighter Days’ comes on and probably some yelling, but I’m not even sure what is happening in the moment.

Other times, all I want to do is stand under the mirror ball in the middle of the dancefloor with my eyes closed, and I did this briefly at The Loft London in September, a party run by DJ Colleen Murphy where all the records are vinyl and they’re played in full – no mixing.

At the Loft, I experience a different kind of dancefloor, where it’s a little more pure - no phones are allowed - and dancing feels like more of an individual pursuit but with a kind of collective consciousness around me (I hope that doesn’t sound pretentious - it really isn’t!).

Other places I’ve loved going dancing this year (and which feel right to me in mid-life) are Concorde 2 in Brighton, a club where I saw DJ Greg Wilson play a set as part of an English Disco Lovers night; Glitterbox, again in Brighton at an all-day outdoor party (Glitterbox is usually a late-night disco fabulous event held in big clubs), and the Jazz Café in London, which has a fun Friday housey disco night.

I never want to stop dancing. I inherited my love it from my grandmother, who met my grandfather at a farmers’ dance, and from my mother, who, at about 60 years old, was first on the dancefloor at a ski resort - still in her boots - when The Weather Girls’ ‘It’s Raining Men’ came on. Dancing kind of feels like part of my identity now, a way I express myself, a movement that nourishes my soul and brings me closer to the friends I go dancing with.

It’s an escape, but it’s sometimes more than that - a feeling I can’t quite describe. As a mid-lifer, I have a sense that in future, I’ll look back at 47-year-old me and think: wow, she was having a time. And dancing is a big part of that, and a feeling I want to grasp hold of - but I can’t because it’s fleeting. And so I write it down.

And I would love to think that maybe, just maybe, we are in a kind of Roaring 2020s, where new worlds open for us and the dancefloor rises up as a place for everyone. The world around us may feel unstable, but we still have dance. We can always dance.