Despite dance music’s roots in gay subculture, the island’s superclubs are overwhelmingly straight. Enter Glitterbox: a riot of bare buttocks, trans go-go dancers and, yes, glitter
When it comes to sparkle application, the women crewing up Glitterbox’s “glitter stations” are used to outlandish requests. “We’ve heard it all!” explains the scouse woman who is currently smearing specks of blue on my face. As a season-long employee of Ibiza’s most dazzling party of the decade, she has learned to set some ground rules. Long beards are a no-no, they use up too much product. And she recoils in mock horror at the thought of getting stuck into a hairy chest. “But girl’s chests are fine” she says.
Anything goes at Glitterbox, within reason. Birthed in Ibiza in 2014 and currently held at the superclub Hï, the weekly house and disco night aims to distil the ephemeral hedonism of classic disco nights, such as New York’s Paradise Garage, with a little of Mudd Club’s scuffed-up edge, diverse bookings and a rotating phalanx of resplendent LGBTQ+ dancers. That’s a bold approach in Ibiza, the global epicentre for commercial dance that’s still dominated by older male DJs such as Carl Cox, Martin Garrix and, sadly, David Guetta, with his excruciatingly titled party Fuck Me I’m Famous. But the ethos is working for Glitterbox: punters pack out Hï’s 5,500 capacity every Sunday in the summer, and the night also hosts one-off events at London’s Ministry of Sound and New York’s House of Yes.