Nightclub Goes Intellectual
Can culture make Lotus blossom once more?
Lotus has long since lost its exclusive grip on meatpacking-district A-listers. So to keep the club from sliding into nightlife irrelevance, the owners have decided to appeal to a more cultured crowd. On Thursday, July 7, at 1 A.M., a partially clothed man lifted a woman over his head in the middle of the dance floor, and the two performed ten minutes of strange acrobatic dance. “At first, no one noticed what was going on, and I don’t think people ever really knew what it was,” says Elizabeth Fort, spokeswoman for the Joyce Theater, which supplied the dancers (members of the Pilobolus troupe). “People were saying, ‘What is this?’ It was sort of just like, surprise!” Expect more of this, says Lotus part owner David Rabin, who seems to have in mind a more intellectual audience than normally stands behind the neighborhood’s velvet ropes. They’re even “talking to some people about doing some readings at Lotus of books-in-progress.”
—Emma Rosenblum

EDITED BY CARL SWANSON

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
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