You can learn a lot more than you might think about someone, when you’re out on the dancefloor. Greg Thorpe explains further…
Cornerhouse is surrounded by dancefloors and the ghosts of dancefloors. If you were to plot a map (which I have done) of nightclubs, dancehalls and music bars, past and present, around the city, there seems to be something of a psycho geographic pull of music and dancing in the broad area surrounding the junction of Whitworth Street and Oxford Street – the very corner on which Cornerhouse sits. Of course the site was once the halfway point between two clubbing altars – The Twisted Wheel and The Hacienda – but there are other important places of note in the surrounding area.
The Ritz on Whitworth Street: A dancehall built in 1927 where young Mancunians would bus in from all over the region to drink, court, pet, dance, laugh, and beget the next generation of the city. The Ritz is full of music to this day – gigs and clubnights happen every week – and it famously gave The Smiths their first ever gig in 1982.
Discotheque Royales on Peter Street: A mid-nineteenth century theatre that sold its soul to disco in 1978 (a little late) and became Royales. Beloved of many an older Manc dancer, the club hosted a famous episode of ‘The Hitman and Her’ in 1990 with a cherubic young local act named Take That. Various grubby reincarnations of the venue did not survive and so the fate of Royales as a hotel – albeit a very pretty one – seems inevitable.
The Blue Note on Gore Street: Long gone now, but in 1968 this was a connoisseur’s bar for the coolest of city kids – late mods who cherished soul imports and took their coffee black. ‘Classic soul for people who know what they want’ was the smooth tagline. Self-possessed sophistication and style are as much part of Manchester’s musical past as full-on hedonism – and skirts and trousers didn’t always mean the perils of Deansgate Locks.
The New Continental/Harter Street Lounge/Charlies on Harter Street: The New Continental was popular successor to the original ‘Conti Club’, wildly popular during the war years. The New Conti opened in 1965 and the dancefloor was populated by everyone from off-duty nurses and firemen to famous Manchester footballers. The venue later re-opened as Harter Street Lounge, a brilliant spin-off from the mighty Electric Chair, and thereafter has intermittently survived as Charlies, variously hosting drag/karaoke/Chinese music parties, as well as giving a home to the legendary Club Suicide.
There are so many more dancefloors worth remembering: Rafters, Paradise, The New Union, The Archway, Number 1 Club, The Boardwalk … I’ve been delving into the fascinating and often moving history of nightlife to provide historical context to Humberto Velez’s ‘The Storming’, the closing installation at Cornerhouse next year. It’s an intriguing and exciting premise to be involved with: an artistic installation that references both nostalgia and the future, the Russian Revolution and the dancefloors of Manchester, contemplation and hedonism. During the event, Cornerhouse itself will be ‘stormed’, not just by choreographed and unchoreographed groups of people, but by a cacophony of music, new and old, by dancers, city folk, film-heads, clubbers, and maybe their ghosts too.
Fear not though, this will be no ‘tribute’ to clubs past. Manchester thinks on its feet and looks ahead. Heritage has been an albatross here for too long, but it’s also true that, with the possible exception of football fans, nobody is ever quite so loyal as clubbers are to their memories of the dancefloor. Not just one particular venue, but one particular night of the week with just the right DJ line-up, and only ever for a fleeting period of time, when they got everything just right, before things changed, for just those few perfect weekends…
It’s funny to occasionally remind yourself that the whole of the history of clubbing is just one long chain of weekends. You have a few great ones, a few dull ones, some you can’t remember, some you’d rather forget – but it’s just a whole lot of weekends strung together by music and friends, sex and drugs, taxis and buses home. Every night should believe it’s the greatest night in the city, otherwise what’s the point? The last night of Cornerhouse deserves no less.
Greg Thorpe is a Manchester arts writer, blogger and DJ. He is working as a researcher and producer on The Storming Part 1 & Part 2 by Humberto Velez which will take place on the very last day of Cornerhouse as part of Playtime.