Inside Paris’ Women’s-Only Dance Club — That Sells Out

I wasn’t even the first in line when I arrived as the doors opened at Diva Paris, a pop-up dance club exclusively for women. Showing up on time is typically a very pas Parisien thing to do in the city of fashion(ably late) — as I’m often reminded by my Paris neighbors — and yet the entire line was filled with chic Parisiennes who had shown up exactly at 7 p.m. for the same reason I did: We needed this. 

We needed a night to ourselves, a break from the grind of work and parenting. We needed to dance without the pressures of coupling or impressing anyone, and we needed to get home by a reasonable hour (re: said grind). Diva promised all of that, and even served us dinner.

“For 45€ [about $53] you get food and an open bar with cocktails like Aperol Spritz or St-Germain, wine, nonalcoholic drinks, and softs,” explains Constance d’Amécourt, the 39-year-old mother of three and co-founder of Diva Paris along with friends Lucie de Gourcuff and Constance Fabry-Damour. “The purpose of this concept is to leave your mental load in the locker room and spend three hours on the dance floor.”

Most women had arrived straight from work, and one mom had even taken a train that day from London to make sure she could be part of what she had heard was the “best dance party in Paris.” There were women in designer labels and others in Mickey Mouse t-shirts, and in the end, we all hovered together over ornate displays of mini sandwiches, fruit platters, and trays of French desserts. The language barrier disappeared for me as we all swayed around the hazy dance floor and mouthed the words to Celine Dion’s “Pour Que Tu M’aimes Encore” — them in French, me in English — while devouring delicate bites of tiny foie gras sandwiches with walnuts and onion chutney or truffle-topped turkey rolls oozing with fresh mayonnaise.

The bar was open and the food was courtesy of one of the top caterers in the city. The only men in sight were refilling glasses with white wine and rosé or onstage spinning records (DJ Thierry Khayat). I dabbled in an alcohol-free sparkling wine from French Bloom before moving to a pale pink rosé, letting the bartender drop a few cubes of ice into my glass to turn it into a refreshing, and trés French, Piscine. The bartenders were still whipping out Aperol spritzes made-to-order when Shakira came on and half-full glasses were left on tables unattended as the real dancing started.

Diva Paris isn’t the first women’s-only dance club (the first of its type likely started in London in 2019), and it won’t be the last. This highly successful model is working its way through Europe with events throughout Germany, Switzerland, and Austria through Mama Geht Tanzen, and is already spreading to the U.K. and America with clubs like Mums That Rave (from international DJ, producer, and creative Nikki Beatnik) in London and Earlybirds Club in the U.S. There’s even a non-publicized members-only women’s speakeasy inside Houston’s C. Baldwin Hotel and an annual Mom Prom in Portland, Oregon.

There’s no age range or offspring requirement to attend these pop-up dance parties — despite having been inaccurately referred to as “mum’s clubs” in the past — where the open invitation to dance in a non-threatening environment is enough to attract a very loyal, and very niche, clientele. “Women are showing up ready to dance but end up leaving with new friends and stronger work connections,” adds d’Amécourt, who also owns the popular children’s swimwear brand, Happy Duck. “The first edition of Diva sold out in five days, with 280 women attending that February, and the edition in March was the same plus 140 women on the waiting list. We had to go to another venue with a bigger space because we had so much interest.”

It's through these events that women who haven’t seen each other since college can finally reconnect. It’s on a man-free dance floor that women who work in different industries can dance side-by-side and network openly between songs. And, maybe, just maybe, it’s at 10 p.m. in a nightclub filled with likeminded women where a very non-Parisienne writer can leave feeling fully satisfied and fully refreshed to start a new day in the city she now calls home.