“The first time I experienced No Lights, No Lycra, I drove home laughing manically. I hadn’t realised how badly I’d been craving a space where I could just move my body without judgement, just to feel good!” says Bryony Calendar, community organiser of No Lights, No Lycra, Boorloo (NLNL).
NLNL is a weekly dance event with all the usual things you’d expect at any great dance, like a smashing soundtrack that weaves through the Billboard Top 100s, anthems of decades past, and vinyl classics with ease (all mixed better than the AI slop that Spotify is churning out these days).
Here’s the twist: you’re all dancing in the dark.
Since 2014, more than 100 people have gathered at Leederville Town Hall every Monday evening to experience the joys of dancing in the dark (slow dancing optional). Bryony describes NLNL as a ‘one-hour movement session’ and certainly not a dance class or nightclub. “There’s no instructor, no mirrors, no lights, and no pressure to perform,” she explains. “It’s just one hour of free movement in complete darkness, in a room full of people doing the same thing – dancing for themselves. You don’t need to know the moves, you don’t need to wear anything specific or look a certain way.”
The thought of being liberated from the pressure to have to look, act, or perform a certain way sounded like paradise to me, a lawyer whose day-job revolves around communicating the right message in the right way to the right person.
And yet, despite the promised joy and the recorded benefits of dancing (like improvements to mental health and mood), I was still nervous about going to NLNL. I’m someone who has the coordination of a caffeinated baboon. Dark rooms and dancing are synonymous with memories of sticky floors at Metros, vodka sodas and the crushing weight of student debt – punctuated by the occasional elbow to the head at the bar. (When you’re the average height of an emperor penguin, no pair of high heels can save you from the flailing limb of a business law student, the velocity fueled by the eighth Jager bomb said business law student has chugged that night.) The thought of dancing in a room with strangers terrified me.
After paying a very reasonable $12.69 and shoving my nerves to the back of my mind, I found myself standing on a glow-in-the-dark dot in a town hall on a cold Monday evening. At 6:30pm, the lights went out and the music started pumping. What hit me was how dark the room was – the windows were blacked out and I couldn’t see anything, bar the exit sign and its green Gatsby-esque glow. After exhausting my two dance moves (the ‘sway from one side to the other’ and ‘put your arms in the air’), my mind was at a loss. As someone who thrives under structure and clear, concise instructions (delivered preferably by email and/or a neat A4 letter with paragraph numbers and justified text), I froze with indecision until it hit me: doing nothing was okay. I could stand still. I could revive the Macarena or bust out a trusted Australian classic – the Nutbush (though it may be sacrilegious to do it to the tones of Taylor Swift).
Before I knew it, the hour passed and I floated my way into my car feeling a sense of ease. I’m not alone in that experience, according to Bryony. “People tell me frequently how NLNL has saved them. How having a space to come every week and turn up just as they are, and experience any or all of the feels whilst moving in darkness, has become a vital part of their wellbeing … it’s the moments when I realise that just by showing up, people are providing a really safe, warm place for other people to bring their problems and dance it out. And it’s through that connection that people find comfort and they process the really hard things in their life.”
In a profession that’s obsessed with titles and PQE; a profession where what to wear is listed in practice directions or a silent nod; a profession where one feels under constant surveillance, whether it be from the tracking of billables to the constant “humbled and grateful” announcements on LinkedIn, NLNL was a reminder there are safe spaces where appearances do not matter. As a female Asian-Australian working in a sector that sees me often being sized-up for factors outside of my control, the community that NLNL has built is a comforting validation that there are community spaces where appearances, titles and all the extraneous fluff that comes with working an office job simply have no currency.
For any newcomers, Bryony offers a piece of encouragement: “You don’t have to know any moves. You can stand in the corner and sway. You can cry. You can be silly. There’s no wrong way to do it. You might feel anxious when you get there, that’s understandable! But just rock up – we’ll show you in and tell you how it works. And then, once the lights go out, it’s just you and the music. You can leave at any time, no-one’s going to notice!”
No Lights, No Lycra happens every Monday evening at Leederville Town Hall from 6:30pm. Learn more here, get your tickets here and stay up to date with their mailing list here.
