When did people stop dancing at the club?

Clubs are, first and foremost, for dancing. One could theoretically do other things there — drink, meet strangers, conduct important and possibly illicit business deals, anything really — but likely everything but dancing could probably be done more efficiently somewhere else. At the same time, while no one’s stopping anyone from dancing in other places that are more accessible and less expensive to shake and shimmy, from the gym to the bar to your own home, there isn’t a better place to dance to loud music than a club.

But what happens if the dancing stops?

According to DJs, nightclub owners, frequent club-goers, and a number of front-facing camera complaints over social media, a growing frustration at the dancery is a growing number of people not dancing. These nondancers are threatening to turn the club — a place where jumpin’ jumpin’, dancin’ dancin’, and maybe even love have all been promised — into one of those other places where no one dances.

On the surface, the divide seems split between movers and non-shakers (with a little sprinkle of generational warfare), but it speaks to the very tenets of nightlife. The puzzling act of not dancing at a place designated for dancing is one of those mysteries that raises questions, if not calls for a full-blown investigation. Why did people stop dancing? What are they doing at the club if they’re not dancing? Who’s sitting out and who can we blame? Who’s complaining?

And perhaps most importantly: Is this really happening?

The complaint, found at nightclubs all over, is simple: Instead of dancing on dance floors at nightclubs, people are doing everything but. They’re standing around. They’re trying to talk to everyone else. Worst of all, they’re on their phones, scrolling or taking selfies.

“The killer is when I see someone scrolling through Facebook or Instagram,” says Ru Bhatt, who has been a professional club DJ for over a decade. “Really? This is the time that you want to engage with the most vapid version of social media?”

Bhatt understands when someone is quickly texting their friends, possibly to tell them that they’ve arrived or where they are on the dance floor. He acknowledges that people get nervous — understandable if you’re at a function by yourself — and that a phone can feel like a bit of a security blanket. But when someone’s actively disengaging with the people around them and the DJ that’s playing, he says it’s soul-crushing to see.

“To be honest, I’m a stickler for not using your phone in a lot of places,” Bhatt says, explaining that some of his distaste for phones comes from feeling protective of the space — as a millennial, he’s part of the last generation to experience what clubs were like before the rapid acceleration of the smartphone.

“Presumably, if you’re at the club, you want to connect with others, right?” Bhatt says. “I consider dancing with someone else a form of communication whether it’s flirtatious or fun. It’s a way we can connect physically.”

The concern that some people see nightclubs as places to be experienced phone-first, is strikingly similar to the post-pandemic grievances about people pulling their phones out at movie theaters or at concerts. Through a smartphone camera lens, everything becomes content to post rather than an experience to be had, and it’s more important to look cool and be seen than actively participate in what’s happening around you.

“It also seems like people tend to discover electronic music or events through Instagram and TikTok now, so we do have a generation of new attendees who saw a 15 second clip and it looks cool to them,” says Z, the moderator for the Reddit forum r/avesnyc, a subreddit dedicated to nightclubs, DJs, raves, and dance culture — which has over 70,000 members. “But that [clip] doesn’t really capture the experience of going out all night and dancing for eight hours straight.”

Z, who asked to go by their nickname to speak more frankly about nightlife and rave culture, said that crowd complaints often surface on the forum, but noted that people are more likely to post when they have a bad night rather than a good one, hence the seemingly oversized number of gripes.

That said, Z doesn’t solely blame phones or social media for the drop off in dancing. He suggests factors like the shift toward large-scale nightlife venues mimicking festival culture, where DJs are treated more like a concert; the lack of space at venues in denser cities, which may make club-goers more hesitant or sensitive; or the problem that those experienced in nightlife aren’t keen on sharing their favorite parties or clubs with newbies, essentially gatekeeping the good parties from dance-floor duds. Other experts I spoke to also noted that participation varies from club to club, and that dance parties catering to the LGBTQ community tend to see more movement.

The other thing to consider? This might not be new at all.

“There’s also just a reality that tons of people in the US who go to clubs, are not necessarily there to dance,” Z says. “Lots of people go to socialize with their friends, or to drink or do drugs, or to hook up with other people. Even on good dance floors, people who really have a passion for music and dancing tend to be a minority in my perception.”

Jean’s, a restaurant with an exclusive club space in downtown Manhattan, has never had a problem with people on their phones.

“We famously have poor cell service downstairs,” general manager Carlos Cansados says. “It’s kind of a joke, but we’ve never seen an issue with people on their phones because our reception is so bad.”

Clubs without bad cell situations like Jean’s have had to figure out their own solution. Some have soft suggestions about how the dance floor is strictly for dancing, and others have implemented a rigid no cell rule.

Though he respects the dance-first vibe that’s been created in those spaces, that isn’t necessarily the direction that Eli Escobar, a DJ and club co-owner, wants to take.

“I don’t want to have to micromanage the way people are having fun,” Escobar says. “Nightlife is supposed to be a little bit wild. Micro-managing is not wild.”

Back in December, Escobar and his partners opened Gabriela, a nightclub in another club-heavy neighborhood of New York City. Gabriela has a separate lounge and dance area. Escobar hopes that it’s a little more self-evident that you should step off the dance floor if you want to get on your phone, that yapping is for the lounge, and that if you show up, you aren’t there to stand around.

“We were really intentional about our club,” Escobar says. “You can go upstairs and talk or text, or you can sit out front, but when you’re on the dance floor, you don’t need to do all of those things, and you hopefully just won’t want to.”

That intentionality has also led to Escobar’s current challenge at Gabriela: figuring out the door policy, which could mean turning away people based on a completely subjective vibe. By trying to ensure that everyone who’s there wants to be there, it cuts down on the number of people ruining the vibe — aka people who don’t dance. It enhances the experience for everyone (who gets in).

At the same time, having a tougher door introduces rejection, which can feel at odds with being a place where everyone who wants to dance can find joy. Exclusivity can also make some places more desirable to people who are chasing the feeling of being let in while keeping someone else out. It’s all in the balance when trying to create the right mood.

“It’s basically like, if your intentions are just to go out drinking for a night, then you don’t need to come to Gabriela,” Escobar says. He added that there are so many bars in the city where people can just drink. What he wants to see at Gabriela are people who are there to hear good music, vibe, and dance, all while respecting the people around them.

Escobar also posited a theory about why there’s often people showing up to places that they may not enjoy, to listen to music that does not move them to dance. Because so many clubs around the world struggled financially post-pandemic and shut down, it created a lack of diversity of the kinds of clubs that exist. There aren’t many places that, for example, play top 40 pop music — so the people looking for that music don’t have a place to go. Yet, they still want to party, so they may end up going to a different kind of club that they see on social media — one that they may not enjoy.

“I don’t want to put, like, any bad energy out there,” Escobar says. “I don’t want anyone to feel unwelcome if they legitimately were coming for the right reasons. We’re still figuring it out, because we’re still new, and we’re still having talks like, ‘How can we do this differently? How could we have made that a bit of a friendlier interaction?’”

Casados, the general manager, says having a door at Jean’s is integral to the experience that they want to create there: People having the time of their lives underneath a disco ball. The door, the acts they’re booking, the design of the space, and the lighting — Casados says it’s all thoughtfully put together so no one (who gets in) has complaints about vibe-snuffers at the end of the night.

“The challenge is that people get mad,” Casados says. “Pro tip: Bring your mom. You’ll skip the line.” Just make sure she wants to dance.

As long as clubs exist, there will always be a generation of people saying other, often younger people are ruining it.

“I call it ‘back-in-the-day-ism,’” Escobar says. “I’ve gone through this cycle already a few times with older people complaining about the way younger people do things.”

Escobar, who is Gen X, said that “back in the day,” older people complained about then-younger people facing the DJ booth — i.e., the concertification of a DJ that Z called out. This backlash also stemmed from a belief that some club-goers weren’t properly engaging with one another, and were ruining the evening.

“Old heads will be like, ‘These kids will never know about Limelight.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, but Limelight wasn’t that great,’” Escobar says, adding that there were grievances about nightlife — doormen, pretentious venues, bottle service — before the great “facing the DJ” controversy. There will be new gripes, he says, long after your, mine, and everyone’s knees have all forced a retirement from clubbing.

Escobar said that the key to having a great night out is to be seasoned enough to develop your own metrics of which parties, nights, and venues match your energy. It also means having the experience to know (and accept!) that every night isn’t going to be a perfect night out. Inevitably there will be some times the vibes are just off — whether people are on their phones or not.