A NIGHT OF STUDIO 54

"With the exclusive rights to the original Studio 54 brand, MN2S are launching an all-new global event series that’s going to tarnish the reputation of select clubs, venues and event spaces around the world with an extravagantly filthy, disgracefully excessive, once-in-a-lifetime party that brings the Studio 54 ethos right into the 21st century. Bring your baddest behaviour, your naughtiest underwear and leave your hang-ups at the door. This isn’t a tribute act or a throwback Thursday, and it certainly ain’t 1977 anymore. It’s 2019, and this is the real f**king deal. Slip on your alter-ego, don your most shameless garms and, in the words of Chic, “just come on down to the 54”.

"Silk hand fans, adorned with floral prints, wafted around like butterflies dancing to edits of Donna Summer, Lipps Inc. and Michael Jackson. The performers undulated, twirled and darted through the room. A woman named Julie was getting a massage from her husband on the dance floor. Having been to Studio 54 in its heyday, she was there for a sharp hit of nostalgia. "I didn't know what to expect, but it's amazing, isn't it?" she said. "It brings back lots of memories. Just like the old days."

It's a dictatorship at the door and a democracy on the dance floor

The hot weather, the intimacy of the venue and perhaps, the grimness of the world outside conspire to create an atmosphere that’s extraordinary even by Chic’s standards: everybody dances all of the time. The ecstatic mood spills into the afterparty: a recreation of legendary disco epicentre Studio 54 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, complete with trapeze artists, drag queens, roller-skaters, original Studio 54 resident DJs Nicky Siano and John “Jellybean” Benitez, and even the notorious sculpture of the man in the moon sniffing cocaine from a spoon. Like Chic’s set, the pop-up club confirms disco’s status as the most formidable, and resilient, pleasure-delivery system ever conceived by pop music. Rodgers has every reason to celebrate himself. Forty years on, Disco Sucks is merely a grubby historical footnote but disco springs eternal.

The most memorable night I played was the infamous Bianca Jagger birthday party… she rode in on a white horse wearing a red Halston gown. That was the night the studio became the hottest club in town.