VIDEO: Dance like there's no-one watching

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: The newest dance craze to hit Australia is called No Lights No Lycra. And, it's just what it sounds like.

Monique Schafter went along to check it out.

MONIQUE SCHAFTER, REPORTER: It's only 7 o'clock on a weeknight, but these guys are here for one of Melbourne's hottest dance events.

Have you even been here before?

GIRL: I haven't been. First time.

MONIQUE SCHAFTER: And did you drag your friend along?

GIRL II: Yes, I did, but she's - I've kind of been talking about it for a while, but tonight we decided, "Give it a go".

MONIQUE SCHAFTER: Inside, it's just like a nightclub, except there's no booze, no drugs, and importantly, no lights.

It's pitch black in there, so we're switching the camera to night vision.

It's called No Lights No Lycra - a weekly one-hour dancing free-for-all thought up by Melbourne dancers Alice Glenn and Heidi Barrett.

ALICE GLENN: It's a place where you can come and dance in the dark for the pure joy of dancing. No-one can see you, no-one's judging you. We play an hour of absolute hard-pumping hits and old classics and everyone goes completely crazy.

HEIDI BARRETT: Well, Alice and I both had studied dance together and were tired of having to look a certain way while you're dancing. And, yeah, we were living together at the time and dancing around in our living room in the dark and were just like, "We've got to do this with some friends."

ALICE GLENN: The first week there were five people that came along and then the next week, those five people told five of their friends and it just grew organically. Yeah, and we've now got 42 communities around the world.

MONIQUE SCHAFTER: Why do you think it's so popular?

HEIDI BARRETT: We live in a very image-based kind of society, a very stressful, busy world full of technology and overstimulation and I think turning out the lights and just kind of blissing out for an hour is really needed in our world.

MONIQUE SCHAFTER: What do you love about this?

YOUNG MAN: I love that it's sort of free of rules.

GIRL III: It's pure exhilaration and just like elation and happiness and freedom.

GIRL IV: Dancing is the only form of exercise that I enjoy and it's really nice to be able to do it mid-week and not just save it up for the weekend.

ALICE GLENN: At the heart of no lights is this belief that everybody can dance and I think a lot of people dance when they're younger and then as they get older, maybe someone laughs at them or they develop a figure that's not the kind of "traditional" dance figure and they just stop dancing. But through coming to No Lights and dancing in the dark, you can find a dance that is comfortable for you and that feels good and that's really what it should be about.

HEIDI BARRETT: People come from all backgrounds and walks of life and we have like five-year-olds coming and we have 70-year-olds coming.

MONIQUE SCHAFTER: No Lights No Lycra has become a global dance phenomenon, reaching places like New York and Shanghai, and now, Alice and Heidi are keen to take it into schools.

ALICE GLENN: You know, you're just about to hit puberty and you feel awkward and you're so self-conscious about your body and that's the perfect time to give kids an opportunity to, yeah, find the way they move and do it without being judged or, yeah, ridiculed by their friends.

MONIQUE SCHAFTER: To people ever get injured?

ALICE GLENN: We have enough in the room so that its not dangerous. So it's dark enough so that you can really lose yourself and go inside, but light enough so that your eyes adjust and, yeah, you're not going to whack someone in the face.

MONIQUE SCHAFTER: So that was your first time. What was it like?

GIRL: It felt like being a child again, just letting go and dancing and just doing what you feel.

MONIQUE SCHAFTER: You know the moves that you do in there, would you do those moves at, like, a normal nightclub?

GIRL II: Nah, probably not. (Laughs)

GIRL: We'd get close. (Laughs)

GIRL II: We'll get close, but I think you're far more dorky and experimental in there than you would be at a club.

LEIGH SALES: I do that every night in the studio after the show. We just dim the lights and off I go. Monique Schafter reporting.

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