Dance, Dance, Evolution: How a New Generation of Party Producers Are Challenging the Nightlife Status Quo 

Since the clubs reopened following COVID-19 lockdown, there’s been a quiet disgruntledness among partygoers displeased with the new norms in nightlife culture: social media-focused DJ sets, flashing phone cameras, a lack of dancing and space to dance. But a new generation of Texan party organizers are positioning themselves as disruptors by offering more experiences where intentional connection is the draw.

Building a Texan Dance Ecosystem

On Lavaca last Friday, more than 300 partygoers allowed the doorman at Twins Nightclub to put a “No photography” sticker on their phone cameras as a symbol of their promise to put away their devices during the Untitled Fest going down inside. 

“A lot of these parties, the ones that are doing it right – they’re pushing this no-section idea, these no-phone parties, and they’re not taking [DJ] requests,” said Joseph Castillo, the 21-year-old who founded the party series in Houston two years ago. “It brings back that idea of what they used to do in the Eighties and Nineties, where these parties would just go on. They’d be the best parties you’ve ever been to.”

Castillo said he wanted to help build a dance culture in Texas akin to what has long boomed in Miami, New York, and Chicago. 

“It’s important to build that type of ecosystem. There’s a [stronger] community for it in Austin than, let’s say, Houston or even Dallas, but we still think there’s still a lot of work to be done,” he explained. “I want to build an ecosystem because I want people to come here to hear Texas-based music – club, techno – producers. It doesn’t have to be house music. It could be club, techno – anything that falls in that realm, I want Texas to be a part of.” 

The night featured sets from DJs Jada XO, IDKRYAN, Seven-3, and Venom Rei. This was the second time the party had come to Austin from Houston, and the first time in Austin that the party prohibited phones. Castillo and his team chose to not confiscate the devices completely for safety reasons, but also to give people a choice to participate. 

Christin Miller, a 24-year-old who attended with her group of “more down to earth” friends, enjoyed putting her phone away for the evening. “I felt like it helped us connect and really engage,” she said. 

27-year-old Asha Barnes, who goes out more frequently, pointed out that cellphones “might inhibit people from having a good time.”

“I liked that there was this idea that you could just let loose without feeling like someone was going to judge you or someone was going to film you,” Barnes said. 

This applies not only for the audience but also for the talent performing at the shows. Jaden Veazia, also known as DJ Venom Rei, who performed at Untitled Fest, spoke of past experiences where digital culture has inspired more attention-seeking. 

“There’s been a point at a party I was at where I was DJing. Someone tried to jump onstage, and I looked at the security guard, and I was like, ‘Yo, get this fool off the stage, bro.’ I don’t play like that,” said Veazia.

Veazia explained that while such antics “[are] good for engagement or virality-wise,” he doesn’t believe that those behaviors are “aligned with the overall culture of dance music.”

In Veazia’s perspective, events like Untitled Fest help bring back the idea of partying being a shared experience instead of a spectacle. 

He explained, “Historically, the dancers were the dancers. The dancers were going to be on the floor … We all have a role to play.”  

The “No photography” sticker organizers at Untitled Fest put on phones at their May 15, 2026 party at Twins Nightclub Credit: Oisakhose Aghomo “No Sections, No Hookah, No Bottle Wars”

It’s not just the phones that plague nightlife today. 

The Jaiye Room, a party collective founded by Chinedu Ohalete, Patrick Ogidi, and Brady Emokpae, started as a response to classist norms in nightlife as VIP culture became popular in Houston. They suspect the push for sections comes from a financial incentive, citing costs of running clubs especially after the losses incurred from the pause of nightlight life during the COVID-19 quarantine. 

“I’ve had friends that have owned clubs in various places. The margins are always very slim, just to keep the lights on. [Club owners] think that if you have 10 people in the section that come in and spend like $2,000 in just that one section, if they have 10 groups that spend that, that they’ll make $20,000 roughly – which isn’t true,” said Emokpae. 

Ohalete attributed it to greed and capitalism. 

“People started realizing, ‘Oh, I could sell couches, let me just fill up this whole spot with couches.’ Around 2015, 2016, you would go to places and everything would be sectioned out,” he said.

When they threw their first party three years ago, the collective spent $350 to remove the sections in the venue. For the group, it was more than just allowing for clearing more space to dance. 

“If you look at the club and the disco and how things started, music and enjoyment should be accessible to everyone. When you take a club and you fill out the entire club with 40, 50 sections and the minimum spend at a section is a thousand dollars or something like that – only certain people in America can afford that,” Ohalete said. “You’re wiping off a whole group of people who want to escape their problems and go enjoy music in their own way.” 

However, not selling sections puts a ceiling on the amount of money the Jaiye Room can make, and it makes them vulnerable in negotiations.

“When we try to tell that to these club owners now, they don’t believe us at all. So they don’t want to work with us or they’ll give us a ridiculous high bar guarantee,” Emokpae explained. Still, “We don’t want to [sell sections] because then it makes the event less about what it should be and more about making numbers.”

Around 200 people attended the Jaiye Room’s debut Austin party, held last Saturday at Speakeasy. 

“It was weird at first that [Ohalete] was like, ‘I don’t want to do bottle service. I don’t want any sections.’ Because a lot of people like to sell the VIP experience. This was more like, ‘I just want people to hang out and dance,’” recalls Kevin Shipp, the Congress nightclub’s owner-operator.

The event was mostly focused on Afrodiasporic music with a lineup from both Houston and Austin: DJs Ashmar, Saint Nazty, Jamie Dred, Gideon Jr., and English Dom. 

Quentin Williams, 39, has lived in Austin on and off since 2013. She credited the prevalence of sections and hookah in clubs to trends migrating from other cultural hubs like Atlanta, and described the surge of VIP culture in Austin as “some Houston shit.”  

“That is recent, like in the last maybe two to five years, if you ask me,” Williams said, pointing to the city’s recent population boom. “The people who live in Austin now are a lot more superficially driven. It’s a much more flex culture.”

“It’s socioeconomics, right? [An] aesthetic signal in terms of who’s poor and who’s not.”

“We’ve really created that space where people know if you come here, we don’t care what’s in your wallet. The focus here is to dance.”

The Jaiye Room co-founder Chinedu Ohalete A New Party Ethos 

Of course, at both the Jaiye Room and Untitled Fest events there were still some stragglers who sat down for prolonged periods or used their phones. However, their general “no sections, no phones” rules can help orient the audience to know what to expect. 

“I think that’s so crazy that now we’re in an era where people will go out and look at somebody weird for dancing. You can come here and dance the night away,” Ohalete said. “So we’ve really created that space where people know if you come here, we don’t care what’s in your wallet. The focus here is to dance.” 

Rodrigo Cid, one of the owners of Twins Nightclub, believes Gen Z is shaking things up in nightlife. 

“They are consuming less and less alcohol. A lot of them prefer day parties,” Cid explained. 

He’s also noticed a shift in people looking for organic communal experiences and a “sense of belonging” in Austin. 

“We launched Twins because we love dancing, we love hanging out, we love connecting to people. So when Untitled reached out to us and wanted to do their event there, it resonated with us,” he said. 

“We want that building to be a place to go for people to have fun … and meet their future wives or husbands. It’s much less about creating content or coming with a professional camera crew to film.”

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