We only have one pair of shoes—dancing shoes—which means they certainly aren’t reserved for weekends only. Said shoes sent us questing after places to boogie down every night of the work week (after all, one person’s Monday is another’s Saturday). What we found were five parties, recurring Sunday through Thursday. Allow us to give you a peek inside and introduce you to the crowds at each. Lace up, we’re going dancing.
Sunday: MadonnaRama
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9 p.m. for this week’s special event, 10 p.m. for regular MadonnaRama nights. Cover varies
Bless yourself and genuflect and enter the alternate universe that is MadonnaRama, a monthly party that sends lovers of the ’80s icon flocking to legendary Boystown bar Berlin every first Sunday. (This month, the club offers an extra dose with a Market Days festival edition this Sunday to celebrate Madonna’s birthday.) It’s nearly midnight. The bar is half-full and steadily filling up with 20- and 30-somethings. Mr. DJ Riley York has the whole room moving in the fog and rainbow strobes. The stages are full of dancers, bodies are touching and strangers aren’t strange anymore. Around 2 a.m., shirts come peeling off, revealing provocative tattoos and muscles glistening under the disco lights. Time falls away. It’s all lights and motion as Madonna’s voice surges through the club. Hours fly and it’s 4 a.m., closing time. You can leave the Madonna vortex, but she’s in your brain on repeat. Learn to say goodbye.
The lone dancer: Tondalayo “The Spider” Kolquitt, 47, danced by herself, clad in all black, save for her long red kimono. She’s been going to Berlin for nearly three decades. At 18, she’d arrive before the bouncer showed up so she could get in, but she didn’t drink. “I was going for the music, it was amazing,” she said. Kolquitt, a performance artist, loves MadonnaRama and goes every month when she’s not traveling for work. “It reminds me of a happier time in America,” she said. “It’s a place where you actually dance. They don’t just stand around and look good and fabulous, people dance and they sweat.” For her, Berlin is an accepting environment where she’s made a lot of friends and had a lot of crazy romances. And no matter what, she always feels welcome. “It really personifies what I would like the rest of life to be like.”
The romancers: Couples held each other close, their bodies moving together as they sang the lyrics out loud. Among them were Leandro Brahimaj, 31, and Anthony Edwards, 32. Berlin is an old haunt of theirs, Brahimaj said. He spent a lot of time there in his 20s. That night, he said he met new friends and celebrated the old ones. “It’s a crowd—it’s very relaxed and weird in its own cool way,” he said. “It’s nonjudgmental, very allowing, nonresisting. … A bunch of individuals find themselves and each other there.”
Little star: To Bryan Hurd, Madonnarama is “like Christmas, basically.” He dances with reckless abandon, spinning around, arms out, hands on his head, jeweled bracelet flashing in the disco lights. “Ever since I was super young, like 3 or 4, I was dancing around the house to ‘Lucky Star,’ ” said the 26-year-old Irving Park resident. “She’s actually the reason I became a dancer.” Hurd started dancing when he was 10 and now dances professionally. He goes to Berlin mostly for Madonnarama, and it’s actually where he met his partner of five years. Meeting people there is easy, and he likes the mix of clientele it brings. “It’s not just twinks or bears, Madonna brings everybody,” he said. “Everyone’s there to have a good time.”
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