The Edinburgh Fringe is known for its huge array of venues and stages – toilets, arches, biscuit factories, any corner of any street. It’s a festival that celebrates how anywhere can be transformed into a little slice of magic. In much the same way, queer nightlife has long been about adaptation and survival – turning unlikely places into sanctuaries. As queer spaces close at an alarming rate, queer parties are finding new life in DIY and local venues. “Queer people – nothing stops them… they’ll make the party wherever,” says Nick Nikolaou, creator and performer of Anatomy of a Night, a dance show that explores the memories of any queer night out.
Aptly, the show will be performed in the old veterinary surgeon halls of Summerhall, a venue that could double as a site for an illegal queer rave back in the day. Down the road in the old community centre of ZOO Southside, Tommy Small’s dance show Small Town Boys also explores memories and intersections of queer nightlife and community at the height of the AIDS epidemic. “It’s about celebrating queer joy and recognising our history,” Small says. Taking its name from the 80s queer Scottish classic, Small Town Boys transports the audience back to the imagined 80s queer club of Paradise, a kaleidoscope of nightlife memories.
Memory is important to Nikolaou in Anatomy of a Night too. The show is an amalgamation of all the queer nights we’ve had, taking us through all the stages of what happens (like that video of Charli XCX walking listeners through ‘365’). While the show is a heady mix of runway, lip sync, and audience participation – all tenets of the perfect queer night out – for Nikolaou, dance is the core of the show, rooted in memory. “To unlock this club state, you need memory – and movement brings that memory to life,” they say.
For Small, having queer bodies convey their own histories – the euphoria of club culture and the tragedy of the AIDS crisis – was vital. Small Town Boys employs a community cast to invoke their own memories through movement. “Some people have very little dance background, but they want to feel part of something,” he says. In both Anatomy of a Night and Small Town Boys, the audience is invited (but not forced) to express themselves through their own bodies, in a process of collective, embodied queer remembering.
It would be easy to assume that shows dealing with AIDS, addiction, queerphobia, and the closure of beloved spaces might lean into sorrow. But both productions instead offer defiant euphoria – a queer joy forged in community, rhythm, and resistance. Nikolaou explains that this was intentional, especially in a time when there are so many terrifying realities facing queer people: “I want people to say, ‘this is so fun and so beautiful’ – and then connect the sadness to it later.”
Small agrees, adding that queer nightlife has always been a space to disconnect from the sadness of the outside world. “It feels like a safe space – that essence of community, of family, of belonging… Every story is not sad and depressing about our community – actually there’s joy too.”
Shows like Anatomy of a Night and Small Town Boys remind us that queer joy and memory don’t just survive – they move, they sweat, they shimmer. There will always be a party, just around the corner – or, as Nikolaou says, “Nothing will stop the queers from getting together and just dancing and having fun.”
Anatomy of a Night, Summerhall, 13-25 Aug (not 19), 10.30pm
Small Town Boys, ZOO Southside, 1-17 Aug (not 4, 11), 7.15pm