Do you have moves like Jagger?
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When you hear the Bowie song Let’s Dance, does your body sway, your hips wiggle and your toes tap?
When the music plays, does the groove vibrate through every fibre of your body?
What we’re trying to say is, do you feel the funk in your soul?
We reckon Monique Lee feels it.
This, no doubt, is why she led a dance-off at a launch party for a new dance venue on Wednesday night.
The venue is Bank Corner Espresso and Bar in Newcastle West, which Monique manages.
Anyhow, Newcastle Herald photographer extraordinaire Jonathan Carroll managed to capture Monique in her element.
The event was aptly titled, Bring The Beat Back.
“Me and my friend Pepe [also known as musician Pep-C Burrows], had been talking about how there’s no small-bar dance venues in Newcastle that play cool music,” Monique said.
She’s not talking about big nightclubs or pubs.
“We wanted to create something a bit different,” she said.
“Pepe’s the music guy, I’m the bar person. We thought ‘let’s give it a go’.”
The first event was a success.
“We had a massive response to it – it was awesome,” she said.
People are keen for the next one and DJs are lining up to perform at the venue.
“We feel like we’ve touched on something that people want in Newcastle,” Monique said.
They turned the venue’s courtyard out the back into a dance floor with a DJ.
“We had laser lights and old school DJs out the back scratching up the records,” she said.
It was a proper dance atmosphere.
“We had dance and rap battles out the back a bit later in the night,” she said.
The front bar had a different playlist.
“Out the front is still a bar atmosphere,” she said.
“We’ve got the backroom and front-room thing happening.”
The plan is to change things up, with different types of music nights.
The next event is planned for mid-October.
We’ve seen lots of complaints about the lockout laws causing Newcastle to be dead after hours. We reckon this type of thing could be just the ticket to get the town pumping again.
We'd rather a town of dancers than a town of drunks.
