In just two years SOAP has become a beloved spot for a boogie in central Auckland. But all good things must come to an end, and this weekend the dance floor will fill up for the last time.
Almost miraculously, a heaving crowd took to the dance floor that first night. Summoned by the prospect of a good time, a line eagerly coiled down the street too. And despite being stiflingly hot and sticky, the air was fizzing with an unmistakable sense of excitement as the room glowed with LED lights and reverberated with Azealia Banks, Candi Staton, Robin S and of course, Cher. Clammy and crammed in, we danced on till the early hours, all the while hoping and wishing for a better air-conditioning system.
SOAP dancehall opened in February 2021 on Beresford Square in central Auckland, just metres from the construction site of what, at some unspecified point, will become an entrance to the Karangahape Road station. Over its two years in business the sparsely decorated dancehall has become a nightlife fixture.
But tonight, the vinyl dance floor at SOAP will be packed with whirling bodies and gliding feet for the last time. Its owners – Ayesha Green, Joel Flyger and Sam Walsh, all long-time Karangahape Road locals – want this party to end on a high.
The reason for closing is a rather unspectacular one: their lease is up and committing to a second term in the shadow of the delayed construction of the City Rail Link, a looming recession and the ever-changing neighbourhood simply felt too risky. “We want to end on our own terms while we still love it (and each other) and are in a financial position to do so,” they told me in an email this week.
From the very beginning, the concept for the space was to fill a gap between the seated bars and full-on clubs that are plentiful in the city.
Nightclubs are often thought of as dingy basements, offering a haven for reckless hedonism. In some ways that’s true – and there is of course a necessary place for that – but at SOAP, the vibe was refreshingly approachable, wholesome even. On its busy nights the place was incandescent with swirling bodies. On its quiet nights, the dance floor remained reliably open for a solitary and fleeting 10pm boogie.
Unhindered by any kind of snobbery, SOAP was first and foremost somewhere to dance. An astonishing lack of flourish beyond its pink walls and four bobbing silver helium balloons, paired with an actual dance floor, crowd-pleasing bops, egalitarian drink pricing and nice staff – it all turned out to be a near-foolproof recipe for a good night out.
When I caught up with its three founders ahead of opening night in 2021, Walsh remarked that “in many ways, it’s fucking stupid opening a nightclub in the middle of a global pandemic”. It certainly felt like a questionable move at the time (within weeks of opening, Auckland was put into another short lockdown), but it also made a lot of sense.
We were in the midst of a global pandemic, sure, but when SOAP opened, Tāmaki Makaurau was also at the peak of our zero-Covid-19 daydream. Inspired by our collective efforts to ward off the virus, and with any vague plans to move overseas foiled anyway, there was a palpable sense among young, creative Aucklanders that as the rest of the world crumbled, we could stay put and transform our city collectively – one theatre show, community garden, march down Queen Street or night out at a time.
When Auckland was plunged into a much longer and more uncertain lockdown at the end of 2021, “going to SOAP at the end of all this”, became the getting-through-lockdown carrot for myself and many of my friends. But if I’m honest, it feels like we all came out of that period a little worse for wear. Politics feel frayed, young people have left the country en-masse, going out is tinged with the risk of catching Covid-19, public transport cancellations are ceaseless, everything is expensive and the city has a newly-elected mayor proposing funding cuts to the arts, childcare and public services. That earlier optimism that we could remake the city has given way to what sometimes feels like a collective sense of gloom.
Beloved places will always open and close. It’s an inevitable part of the rhythms of living in a city. And while there will no doubt be cry-dancing as the final tracks resound through the speakers tonight, more than ever, it feels essential to remind ourselves to keep dancing. Spinning around a room alongside strangers you share a city with brings us all together in a way that’s never been more crucial. SOAP got the party started. Now, it’s up to us to keep it going.