No Lights, No Lycra is an afterwork activity unlike any other. Beloved by its loyal followers for decades, this pitch black anonymous dance class is all about two things: total and unfettered freedom and the chance to seriously, seriously dance.
With locations all over the world, No Lights No Lycra has been bringing sweet tunes, sweat and a total lack of inhibition to people who are keen to boogie like nobody’s watching them for years. And for interested Sydneysiders, opportunities to let loose in the pitch dark are plentiful.
How does it work? You arrive (solo, or with whoever you want to bring as your anonymous dancing companion), enter a community hall, and dance for a good hour and a half to absolute bangers. The catch? It’s so dark you can’t see your feet.
The joy of this dance class is that it cuts out all the surface bullshit of judgement and fear and leaves space just for you, your joy and time for you to move your body in a way that thrills you, and you alone. In Sydney, there are weekly classes going down in Bondi, Newtown, Parramatta and Sutherland – plus a whole lot more. You can find out all the details of your closest local event by just typing in your location into their online interactive map.
Tickets generally seem to cost around the $10 to $15 mark for an hour or so, which feels pretty worth it to us, and you can book online through your location (which can be found using the aforementioned map).
Forget Saturday nights and 79 tequila shots. No Lights No Lycra is where it’s bloody at.
Read on for our 2020 review of a Bondi class by Emma Joyce:
*****
There are no nightclubs at Bondi Beach, but on Thursday night at around 9pm you’d be forgiven for thinking there was a secret, sweaty rave taking place in the Bondi Scout Hall. It’s a weekly ritual for locals who want to work up a sweat after work and shake off that feeling of always being on show (an ailment particular to those who live in a suburb of such beautiful people).
This is No Lights No Lycra – the weekly, one-hour dance class that takes place in the dark. And we mean dark! It’s pitch black in the room. Our arms are stretched out in front of us so we don’t collide with another dancer, and splintered light shows chairs stacked around the speakers to make sure we don’t cause any serious damage to the sound system.
We checked out NLNL in Bondi last year, before the party moved out of the Seagull Room at the Bondi Pavilion while the venue undergoes renovations. You can also get your pitch-black boogie fix in a church hall on a Newtown backstreet on Thursday nights.
“It is dark enough that people lose their inhibitions,” says Ash Maher, 27, one of the founders of NLNL Sydney. “We tape the blinds to the wall, especially in summer. And we’re going to start bringing black tape because even people’s FitBits give off light.”
Maher and her friend Jodie Fisher, 26, started running NLNL classes in Newtown four years ago, and their Bondi nights around two-and-a-half years ago. “They’re both the same concept, but the nights have their own characters,” says Maher. “People love to pump out the big tunes here, and in Newtown they love the ’80s songs.”
Ash and Jodie put in hours each week working on the playlists for their nights. They make sure it’s a new playlist for both locations, so that you can experience something new if you want to dance twice a week, and they make sure they don’t play the same song twice in any three month period. “We like to think anyone can walk into that room and hear at least one song they connect with, we try to get ’80s, ’90s, a girly tune, big high energy tunes...”
On the night we visited they played a bit of Kylie, Destiny’s Child, the Presets, DJ Sammy and Kanye. We could make out a trio of girls dancing in a circle, a couple salsa dancing in the middle and a group testing out some contemporary dance styles. We guess there are 100 people in the room, all sopping wet with sweat (it’s 40 degrees and the fans are broken) but all you can hear is cheering and clapping.
“The darkness allows people to lose themselves, but having the music loud enough that people can truly get lost in it is what it’s all about. It also means people can’t chat. We’ve had moments when, out of nowhere, it erupts and people make primal noises. When it’s dark, you’re anyone in there!”
