Irish Times | Features | 07.03.08
From the cradle to the rave
A phenomenon that's already gripped the US and Britain, baby disco, the family dance experience where 'the only drug is Calpol', is about to arrive in Dublin, writes Finola Meredith
It sounds like the ideal solution for bored parents and their jaded infant offspring. Why not hit the dancefloor en famille? That's the idea behind the "baby disco" phenomenon which has gripped the United States and is now breathing life into humdrum family weekends in Ireland and the UK. No more Sunday afternoons spent praying for deliverance at an indoor adventure playground, forced to inhale the pervasive stench of hundreds of sweaty little feet as you try to read the papers.
Baby discos tend to be far more sophisticated affairs. For a start, mums and dads can ditch all their drippy, anorakish parent-wear and climb back into the skimpy clubbing gear they thought was lost to them forever, while cool babies can swap the frankly tedious world of nursery rhymes and puréed carrot for an afternoon spent shaking their nappy-clad booties to classic tunes.
The dominant brand in the family clubbing experience is the US-based Baby Loves Disco, an afternoon dance party which eschews the usual cuddly, pastel-coloured ethos that dominates pre-school events.
"Make no mistake, this is not the Mickey Mouse Club, and Barney is banned," announces the publicity. Clearly, it's edgy stuff. Baby Loves Disco, or BLD, was started in a Philadelphia nightclub in 2004 by dancer and choreographer Heather Murphy, who found that taking her toddler around the usual run of children's activities provided a fairly dismal experience, leaving either her or her son bored witless. After teaming up with DJ Andy Hurwitz, Murphy brought the party to New York City in 2005, and it has since spread coast to coast in the States. An Ireland launch is expected later this year.
The secret of BLD's success is that it seems to appeal to parents as much as their youngsters. Hurwitz says: "It's more than just something to do for the kids. Baby Loves Disco is fun for parents: we get the chance to mingle with other parents, dance with our kids and have a Saturday afternoon cocktail to boot."
According to Naomi Timperley, the UK host and European co-ordinator of Baby Loves Disco, "our biggest hurdle is finding the right venues". No manky old leisure centre or church hall will do; only the "hippest nightclubs" are selected, before being fully kitted out with bubble machines, baskets of scarves and egg-shakers, a chill-out room and nappy-changing stations. Oh, and each venue is double-cleaned before the diminutive clubbers get anywhere near it, presumably to remove the sticky vodka spills, broken glass or drug residues that are so often a feature of clubland. (You can't be too careful - it was a close call when the toddler daughter of actors Jude Law and Sadie Frost sampled a tempting little ecstasy tablet she found on the floor of a posh London club while attending a birthday party a few years ago.)
And don't worry about your offspring's delicate little lugs, or indeed her delicate sensibilities. The noise level is a tolerable 80 decibels, and she won't be exposed to music with parental advisory warnings. Let's just say the playlist - "classic disco and contemporary, yet clean, favourites" - is more likely to feature the Bee Gees or Abba than the Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up . As Heather Murphy herself acknowledges, "the combination of 'clean' and 'cool' is a difficult balance to strike, but very desirable to younger parents who don't quite buy the old-fashioned notion of trading in your old life once parenthood hits".
So you're standing with a mojito in hand ("yes, the cash bar will be open for mummy and daddy"), watching as your baby dons a pair of pink heart-shaped shades and toddles on to the dancefloor to rock out to I Will Survive . So sweet. But can Baby Loves Disco really recreate the clubbing experience of your own younger days? Connor Russell, a postgraduate student dad who was - until the recent birth of his son - no stranger to the murky charms of his local indie club, believes that there's no point settling for second best.
"Yeah, sure, you've got the lights, the glitterballs, the club setting, even the drinks, but you won't have that unique adult atmosphere, that late-night sexual undercurrent," he says. "And the music will be bouncy and it won't be very loud. You just wouldn't have the same dark, drunken abandon. I'd rather take my kid to the park, to be honest".
Sharon Curran, from Enfield in Co Meath, is an enthusiastic Baby Loves Disco supporter. After attending a BLD session at the Clapham Grand in London with her four-year-old daughter, she's determined to bring the event to Ireland, and has already started sourcing possible venues in Dublin and Cork. But does she feel the experience is as much a pleasure for the adults as the children?
"Definitely!" she says. "Your whole perspective changes when you're a parent. I really enjoyed going out dancing with my friends, but we've all had babies now and it's so much harder to go on those kind of nights out. The Clapham Grand event was great - I loved dancing away to all the old Motown songs. I've had my clubbing years, but this is a chance to come back and do it again with my child."
THE BABY DISCO phenomenon is already alive and grooving in Ireland, with more and more parents and children eager to experience it for themselves. Eva Staunton (aka Discomom) and her DJ husband, Cormac, have recently started up a Sunday afternoon event in Galway city, "playing Kylie, Sugababes, James Brown, anything that's danceable", and they've been overwhelmed by the response to the first disco, which sold out in minutes.
Meanwhile, the Rattle and Roll Club, billed as "Ireland's first dedicated disco for toddlers, pre-schoolers and kids" is getting ready to kick off this Sunday in the Bodega Club in Dún Laoghaire. Organiser Martin Thomas, who has run club nights of the usual adult variety in Dublin for 14 years, was inspired by the musical tastes of his toddler son, who despises Barney but favours U2 and Bon Jovi.
"We want to do things with our children that make them smile but won't drive us crazy," says Thomas - and he thinks he has the answer with the Rattle and Roll Club. The added incentive, for parents, of an on-site tapas and wine bar, rather than the "real mirror-ball-lit dancefloor" and "dance cheerleader", may prove the clincher here. But despite his own background, Thomas was determined not to use a nightclub for the event, opting instead for the gastro-pub-style environs of the Bodega Club. "As a parent, I just wouldn't bring a child into a nightclub, no matter how clean," he says.
There's no doubt that some baby discos aspire to a grander vision than others. Playing a starring role in this year's St Patrick's Festival in Dublin is the Baby Rave, recently returned from a trip to the Adelaide Fringe Festival in Australia. Developed as part of the Belfast Children's Festival in 2005, the rave - which boasts its own MySpace page, cool logo and irresistible motto ("the only drug is Calpol") - appears more design-conscious and educationally focused than other similar events.
That's not to say it doesn't sound like great fun, with its promises of parachutes, inflatable balls and sensory floor-coverings.
"Baby Rave is quite different from the other baby discos doing the rounds," says Ali FitzGibbon, director of the Belfast Children's Festival. "It's home-grown by us and works on a large scale with a lot of interaction by dance facilitators, so there is much more of a development element to it. We go for big venues that can hold 300 to 400 people at a time. It's not a weekly thing, it's a big event, the kind of thing people watch out for. Really, it's like the difference between a Friday night club and Manumission!"
BUT THE VERY IDEA of creating disco environments - however sanitised - for babies and their parents has got some conservative commentators in the US reaching for their green ink. Christian Science Monitor has been to the fore in questioning the combination of babies and clubbing, noting severely that the usual 1pm to 4pm time-slot for such bashes coincides with most children's nap-time. But the real concern seems to be that children are being co-opted into a situation that is designed more to cater for adults' desires than their offsprings'.
"One of the major premises revealed in [Baby Loves Disco] is that we've shifted from a child-friendly to an adult-driven lifestyle," argues Lynne Griffin, an author and lecturer in family studies. "What we're seeing increasingly is adults sharing a lifestyle with their children that is geared towards adult needs for everything from sleep to daily activities such as entertainment and communication."
Other critics worry that introducing children to the euphoric delights of clubbing at such a tender age may make them rather too comfortable with the sexy, grown-up version once they become teenagers.
If nothing else, the baby disco or baby rave experience offers parents relief from what Ali FitzGibbon calls "the awful plinky-plonky nursery music" that saturates so much of pre-school culture. And while some mums and dads may cast a wistful glance back to the days when going to a club meant the possibility of being picked up by a gorgeous stranger, along with consuming oceanic quantities of silly cocktails and indulging in wild, uninhibited dancing - well, at least they can still have the dancing. As Sharon Curran insists, with resolutely cheery conviction, "Sunday afternoons are the new Saturday night".
Now rock me, baby.
• The Rattle & Roll Club is at the Bodega Club in Dún Laoghaire from 1pm to 6pm on Sundays (children €7, adults free); www.rattleandrollclub.com
