Thrice-Experienced Clubbing: Three Ethnographic Readings of a Club Night in Ankali, Prague, 7 June 2024
University of Manchester (UK)
The New School (USA)
University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)
<https://dx.doi.org/10.12801/1947-5403.2025.17.01.12>
In this piece, we present three ethnographic vignettes from a 7 June 2024 club night in Ankali, Prague, written by students from the international summer school course Theory and Ethnography of Electronic Dance Music Scenes. The summer school, hosted with guest lecturer Dr. Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta, was held at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague, between 3–8 June 2024 (see FHS 2024).
The three ethnographic vignettes follow the summer school guidelines that Luis and I shared with the students, where we asked them to write down fieldnotes from the Ankali club night experience, and turn three significant ethnographic or autoethnographic moments from the night into ethnographic prose. They were also required to add elements of self-reflection, as well as quotes from interviews/conversations with the club organizers and attendees, conveying emic perspectives of the club experience. Moreover, we asked them to focus specifically on the following ethnographic aspects of the event: time (temporal progression), space, audience, sensory experiences, body, gender, sexuality and/or stranger intimacy. These analytic foci were drawn from in-class theoretical and methodological discussions during the summer school, which was one of our key pedagogical goals: to teach the students how to combine theory and ethnography while researching electronic dance music scenes.
Students were able to choose from the following three assignment options and to submit either (a) fieldnotes plus three ethnographic vignettes, (b) fieldnotes plus three autoethnographic vignettes and (c) fieldnotes plus three ethnographic vignettes including creative sections (poetry, drawings etc.). At the end, we received 15 student submissions in total, from which we selected the three most outstanding entries for this publication. Here they appear without fieldnotes, only as clubbing ethnographic / autoethnographic vignettes, with the last one also featuring a poem. All three were abridged to suit the requirements of the Dancecult journal and one of the authors wanted to remain anonymous. We had promised the students beforehand that we would find a public platform to publish the three best submissions.
This is Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta’s brief assessment of our work: “I cannot overstate how delighted I was with the results of this assignment. We adapted this from David Verbuč's teaching practice, since he has been teaching the ethnography of urban music scenes for years. My contribution was to adapt the assignment's task to electronic music scenes specifically, along with developing pre-fieldwork methodological training that took nightlife contexts into account”.
While we acknowledge the significance of our summer school in terms of its educational value for the students, we are also not willing to take all the credit for the students’ exemplary writing and ethnographic skills evidenced in these three texts, which transcend the educational benefits of our brief summer school course.
In terms of the structure of this submission, we believe that the juxtaposition of three parallel ethnographic texts presented by three students focusing on the same event offers a valuable comparative analytical perspective, providing for a multi-perspective and intersubjective experiential reading of the same club event (see Kurosawa 1950; Heider 1988; Wolf 1992). More specifically, the authors’ positions shape their ethnographic texts. In terms of nationality: Arsène is Swiss but residing in Great Britain; Cyber is Australian but living in New York and Anonymous is Canadian but now studying in the Czech Republic. With regard to their gender: Arsène identifies as a “queer man”; Cyber as “genderqueer” and Anonymous as female. Their age at the time of the summer school was: Arsène 25 years; Cyber 36 years and Anonymous 22 years old. Their student status at the time of the summer school was: Arsène doing PhD; Cyber a BA and Anonymous also a BA. None of them had previous experience in conducting fieldwork. In terms of years of participation in electronic dance music scenes, Arsène had 7 years of experience, Cyber 15 years and Anonymous no previous experience. The only participant with some knowledge of Prague's electronic dance music scene was Cyber, having experienced the local scene for four days. These positions, as it becomes apparent in the texts below, shape how the students approached the Ankali nightlife experience in different ways, as well as their subsequent translation of their sensations and observations in writing. Overall, each of the authors focuses on different aspects of the clubbing experience (one also on the night after), each of them employing different styles of writing and all of them meeting, talking and interacting with different people throughout the night. In this way, the three authors co-create an insightful and engaging complementary interweaving of three clubbing narratives that gradually grow into a larger whole.
As a final note on the performers: the main DJs of the 7 June “Pinkies Release Party” in Ankali, were Mark Broom, Farahdiba back-to-back with jardabpm, Jesse back-to-back with Pink Concrete, Schaumstoff and Timmi. See also the link for the event below with the running order and house rules included (see Ankali 2024).
I’m still trying to find my footing. Techno isn’t my usual scene, and I’ve never been clubbing in Prague. The crowd is also straighter than I’d imagined. With the added fact of being here on research, I’m having fun but am also aware that I only partly know the social codes of this event.
I walk to the chillout room with cushioned benches on either side and notice my classmate lounging on the right side. I wave at her and sit, trying to get comfortable but still buzzing with uncertainty.
We listen to the music in silence for a couple of minutes and a young man with blonde hair enters the room while taking a puff from his vape. I smile at him as a sort of welcome to the space. He flashes me a grin in return, looking into my eyes as he sits down on the opposite side of the room. For a minute or two we keep looking elsewhere and soaking in the relaxed atmosphere and whenever our eyes meet, he flashes me another tender smile. I’m not sure if he’s trying to flirt or if this is a way to acknowledge that we’re both visibly queer men sharing a special moment and space. Maybe it’s both, or it doesn’t really matter. Either way, his smiles have made me feel somewhat tethered, more comfortable in this half-unfamiliar space, ready to tackle the hours to come.
A young man with dark hair enters. He waves at the blonde one and sits on his side, after which they immediately snuggle up, the blonde one’s head resting on the other one’s shoulder, lifting his legs up on the wall. As I hear them quietly starting to speak Czech, I see that the dark-haired one is lightly playing with the other’s hair. Mine and the blonde’s eyes lock again—we exchange another soft, slightly shy smile. I don’t recognise them in the club after but leave the chillout room feeling less anxious than when I entered it.
It’s the middle of Mark Broom’s headline set and the energy is running high at my end of the dancefloor. I look around and notice someone: a tall man in a white tank top and dangly necklace, deep in the music, creating a complementary rhythm to the track by clapping his hands. He commands a lot of attention, but in a way that doesn’t feel like a performance of superiority over other dancers. At some point, he locks eyes with a slightly older man dancing a metre and a half away. He turns to his side and, looking at him with a grin, starts a “come hither” gesture to the beat of the track. I can feel a loose circle of eyes on them. The other man approaches in a slightly jerky walk, also on beat. They embrace in a laugh and rock each other from side to side before dancing on their own again. It feels like something has been unlocked for this corner of the dancefloor now, a sense of dancing together rather than next to each other.
I look at the tall man’s movements from the corner of my eye. He moves his shoulders and wrists with quite a feminine, carefree attitude and seeing someone else move in a queer way brings me joy. We dance some more, and I accidentally bump my beer bottle against his arm. I turn to apologise and see he is already gasping, hand over his open mouth, playfully dramatizing the situation. I play along, fake a gasp and say, “Oh my God I’m sooooo sorry, you will never forgive me!” He shakes his head and we both laugh; it seems clear to me that we are both acknowledging each other as gay through this interaction.
We keep dancing, each focused on our own space. I get really into the music, putting both more and less thought into the way I move, even letting myself do a couple of spins. After a while, the same man leans into my ear and says something I can’t make out. It sounds like either “You look like you make sense of yourself” or “You know how to make space for yourself”. I pick a compliment from his tone and thank him anyways, after which he adds “I’m the same, I appreciate that”. Then, he leans in further and wraps his arms around me in a sweaty, tight, tender embrace, nestling his face in the space between my neck and shoulder. I’m still confused about what he said to me but let myself melt into this hug, almost feeling like I’ve just been blessed, for a second or two. We separate flashing big joyful smiles at each other and go on dancing in our respective corners.
It was my first weekend in Prague for the summer. Having little understanding of the local scene and zero ability to speak Czech, I was reliant on the possibility of stranger intimacy to help guide my stay and be the catalyst for any connections I might make with others. As a 36-year-old genderqueer femme dyke who has been involved in DIY, punk and rave scenes at different times in my life since 2001, I am not satisfied just being a tourist. I’m always hoping to find underground subcultures everywhere I go. On Friday night the class went to Pinkies, an electronic, house / techno party at Ankali for participant observation. Ankali is part of a shift in techno nightlife in Prague, having opened in 2018 when members of off-location parties Polygon and Nite Vibes teamed up to create a permanent club space. Yalin, a promoter and DJ who books Pinkies, claims that “Ankali is the best club in Prague” and that prior to its opening there were “no proper techno clubs, they [Ankali] are the ones who started everything”. Having no other information to go off I have to take his word for it, even though I feel curious if someone slightly older from an adjacent scene would say the same thing.[1]
A quick look online and Anakli’s socio-political stance is clear. A pro-Palestine Instagram post written by members of the collective was shared on the day of the Pinkies event. On their website the house rules read like the type of club environment I’m most familiar with as a queer person living in Bushwick, Brooklyn: “Just treat others with respect regardless of origin, age, gender, sexual orientation and religion”. Ankali, at face value, is the type of club I would want to check out in a new city. Except, I was not feeling it, having stayed up late the night before jumping around with my dorm mate to the new Charli XCX album Brat, which had just dropped at midnight.
Monster energy drink in hand, wearing blue camo cargo pants, a black baby doll tee and dyed blue hair pulled into pigtails exposing an undercut, I boarded the bus from Chodov to meet up with my classmates. We trekked over cobblestone to a dark dirt path before arriving in a back-alleyway where the entrance to Ankali, located in a former soap factory, sat beyond a line of hopeful clubgoers.
Inside was a “choose your own adventure”. In the ambient room, on a padded platform in front of the DJ, two women took their shoes off and laid on their backs. The DJ sat on a bench, headphones around their neck, discreetly smoking while selecting vinyl records of slow, chilled grooves. In cubbies between the ambient room and dance floor I saw a group chatting and a couple making out. By the bathroom, a plaque by local NGO Konsent publicized Ankali’s participation in the Respect Is Sexy program.[2] The dance floor can be accessed by two points: the back and side front. The side front entrance/exit allows easy access between the dance floor and bathroom without having to weave one’s way through an entire room of dancers. Outside, stacked wood pallets are benches; Club-Mate crates are stools; cuts of fabric hang from the trees and a big yellow neon light is balanced across some branches. I floated between all the different areas, never quite feeling 100% present in any because the only place I would probably feel 100% was in bed. In the bathroom, a guy from Czechia who was hoping to purchase MDMA, shared that he now lives in Amsterdam and made a comment about how it’s more accepting of queers than here. In the yard/garden I met a techno loving guy from the Emirates who has been to Prague ten times, with this being his third time to Ankali, as well as a guy who works in finance who had met his Spanish boyfriend ten months before on Tinder.
Around 4:00AM the dance floor filled up while headliner Mark Broom was on. Someone near the front thrashed around, caught in the music, but not everyone was locked in, with some mid-conversation. Two men were dancing shirtless next to each other, while in the other direction two men openly made out. I left after the sun had risen around 6:00 AM.
I woke up in the late afternoon. It was Saturday. My dorm mate and I couldn’t agree on a plan. He wanted to go back to Ankali for a queer night called Dick. I wanted to go to a free party that I knew very little about. A few days prior while at a cafe I saw a poster, hand printed on cardboard with torn edges and a chaotic, spikey, design. The only information on it read “Casino Soundsystem”, along with a string of numbers (coordinates) and a date, that upcoming Saturday.
I convinced him to join me and we took a taxi to a bus stop on the side of a mountain. “Dobrý den, ahhm, anglicky? Ahhm, free party?”. I said in the most busted Czech with an Aussie accent to two men in the shadows. One opened the gate and told us to walk 1km down the path. It was pitch black except for the ghostly shell of old buildings illuminated by the moon. Eventually we heard 180+ BPM in the distance and approached an area in the forest that had been transformed into a temporary autonomous zone. In a large dish on the ground people were battling Beyblades, a perfect opportunity to interact with strangers: a French guy who was hitchhiking through Europe and a 52-year-old Italian lady with purple hair who works as a primary school teacher.
The police arrived and the music stopped. Someone played NWA’s “Fuck the Police” off their phone until they left and the party continued. As the sun rose more was revealed. Four teenage girls at the very front with their hands against the vibrating sound system, while the DJ played behind it, blocked from view. One of them put her sneakers on top of a speaker and danced barefoot in the dirt.
Later, in the tall grass while writing in my notebook, a lady, who looked in her 40s, asked me something in Czech. I told her I only speak English and she responded, “Google translate”. I handed her my phone and she typed, “This party is awesome!” I typed out a question for her in English asking how I could find more parties like this, pressed the translate key and handed her my phone. She directed me to a Facebook group to follow. Around 10:30 AM I went back to the dorm satisfied that due to some stranger intimacy my time in Prague was starting to unfold.
In the heart of Prague's vibrant nightlife scene lies a subculture that thrives on the interplay of music, identity and community. Navigating through the pulsating beats and dimly lit Ankali rooms, I encounter a myriad of individuals whose stories and interactions reveal the deeper layers of club culture. This narrative captures not only the sensory overload of a typical night out, but also the profound sense of connection and safety that permeates these spaces. It highlights the paradox of feeling supported and safe to express one's sexuality and identity more freely in an environment that, on the surface, may appear chaotic and uninhibited.
Through my conversations with Athena, Muki and Paolo, I uncover the underlying dynamics that make Ankali a haven for diversity and inclusivity. The conversations and observations documented here offer insights into how these spaces foster a sense of community and belonging through their unique blend of exclusivity and openness.
Sometime after 1AM, I head outside to get some air. Passing through the plastic flaps covering the entrance to the main room, the volume is instantly muted, the pulsing of the bassline the only clear intonation. My head swims with the atmosphere, buzzing with music, voices, dim red lights and the pervasive smell of cigarette smoke. Outside, I encounter a group of 20-something-year-olds. After brief introductions, I compliment the girl to my right on her style: chunky black boots, fishnet tights and a black dress. Her name is Athena, and she has long straight hair that sways behind her when she moves. We start talking about the fashion in places like Ankali, and I ask her whether she feels the need to dress up when she goes out clubbing, or if she dresses similarly to her everyday apparel. Athena shakes her head: “I feel a lot less sexualized in a space like this than in a normal club, and it allows me to wear much more revealing clothing than I would normally be comfortable wearing” she explains. It is interesting that being less sexualized leads people to dress in what is usually considered a ‘sexually provocative’ way. Athena, shrugging, says, “I never really thought about it that way, but I suppose I like to feel sexy, I like to look good without feeling the danger element that you get in certain places”. Looking around, I notice the diverse attire: some bold and performative, others ordinary, as if picked from streetwear. There is no dress code, no conformity; there is no judgment, only praise. I realized that in an environment as diverse as this one, not one person stuck out. Everyone was weird, so no one was weird. The lack of conformity somehow seemed to generate a sense of community, and although people clearly came to Ankali with groups of friends and acquaintances, there was a feeling of intimacy between these groups. Athena commented, “this is a way to feel connected to people through music, not just the people I came with but all these beautiful people who came to share an experience, you know?”.
I head to the bar to speak with some more people. Immediately, a couple standing there catches my eye. I walk up and introduce myself, and they enthusiastically ask me where I’m from. Barely two minutes into the small talk and introductions, they ask me if I want to do a shot with them. Minutes later, I am standing with the burning taste of Becherovka in my throat asking the pair—Muki and Paolo—about their night. Muki is a fascinating person to look at, with a severe buzzcut and silver gauges stretching her ears. Despite the roughness of these details, her face is youthful and sweet. She wears no makeup, and I cannot guess her age—23 at most—but it is hard to tell. I ask if they go out to events like these often. Paolo nods and says Ankali is one of their favourite spots to attend events and raves. I ask the pair if they feel that the space is inclusive, and they exchange a look that I can’t read. “It’s a difficult topic because it will always seem inclusive”, Muki starts, “but if you’re in the scene for a bit you start to find some social bubbles”. It certainly seems like the people at Ankali are comfortable and settled in their groups, that they are regular attendees of events like these. Muki pauses, then adds that “overall I think [Ankali is] more inclusive than other spaces”. Perhaps the feeling of conviviality is not due to openness as I first thought, but simply the fact that everyone here, whether they are aware of it or not, knows one another. They know what to expect from the crowd, and they know where they fit in. The thought occurs to me that maybe standing out is the best possible way to fit in with a community like this one, which values creativity, daring and wildness.
Before coming to Prague I had never encountered a nightlife scene that wasn’t fixated on hooking up and making friends and getting drunk. We share a laugh as Muki, a native of Prague, points out that that is what tourists come to Prague for. Certainly, no one here is a tourist, or at least they don’t act like one. Musingly, Paolo says: “In terms of inclusivity, I like that it is exclusive. I like that it filters out tourists, you can’t just walk in here, you have to know what is going on. The exclusivity is part of the experience”. This exclusivity was not what I expected. Can people only be truly inclusive if there is a certain degree of homogeneity, a shared mindset, a something-in-common?
This club, like many others in Prague, is more than just a place to dance. It is a microcosm of a larger cultural shift, a space where traditional notions of gender and sexuality are continuously renegotiated. It is a living, breathing entity that thrives on the energy and diversity of its patrons. It is a space where people can stand out and fit in simultaneously, where being weird is an asset and being a bit wild is a requirement. As I leave the club in the early hours of the morning, the city of Prague awakens around me. In the everyday world, the rules and roles reassert themselves, but the memory of the club remains as an expression of what is possible within the intimacy of shared human experience.
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Lit by moonlight beat pulsing through veins, a symphony of human bodies, swaying, undulating, becomes a sea of unity. The bass thumps: a shared heartbeat, synchronizing the pulse of life exhale, reverberating through the dark, inhale faces blur, enmeshed by a collective breath, sweat mingles with air, chemical-infused fog, a haze of freedom and abandon, as limbs stretch, unfurl, like wings in flight. A silent conductor orchestrates liberation, each drop, each rise, a symphonic apogee. |
We, the dancers, the passionate chorus, echo in unison, translating music into outstretched limbs. In this moment, life is infinite, the turgid turning of time, lost and found in rhythm, each beat a step towards dawn. Here, there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, only now, only the pulse, the breathless heartbeat, beat of music, beat of being alive, united but apart, strangers made not strange, united in humanity, united in dance. |
Arsène Werlen is an ESRC-funded PhD student in sociology at The University of Manchester and a member of the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives. His thesis focuses on trans experiences of belonging within contemporary Mancunian clubbing scenes: touching on collective aspects of trans life; the social role of dancing; ambivalent in/exclusions and experiences of solidarity across identity-based differences. His approach centres the lived experience of marginalised people and the intersubjectivity arising from marginalised social circles. Email: arsene.werlen-2@manchester.ac.uk
Cyber Shanahoy is a queer, working class, DIY filmmaker originally from western Sydney, Australia. Since 2001 they have been involved in various alternative and underground subcultures, from riot grrrl to rave. They currently live in Brooklyn, working at an all ages music venue and completing a BA in Urban Studies at The New School. Email: shanahoy@gmail.com
David Verbuč is Assistant Professor of ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is an author of the book DIY House Shows and Music Venues in the US: Ethnographic Explorations of Place and Community (2022). Verbuč’s academic writing and research includes the (auto)ethnographic and micro-historical study of village and urban music in socialist and post-socialist Slovenia; ethnographic and archival analysis of Romani / Sinti musicians in Slovenia; the ethnographic examination of DIY music venues and scenes in the US, as well as the theoretical analysis of ethnographic and archival methods of research. Email: david.verbuc@gmail.com
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[1] Editor’s note: for an overview of Czech’s techno/rave scene, past and present, see Kontra (2021).
[2] Konsent is a Czech educational organisation that works with local bars and clubs, as well as other institutions, on the prevention of sexual harassment and gender violence.