playbody: the club night bringing connection back to the dancefloor

This gallery is taken from the autumn 2025 issue of Dazed. Buy a copy of the magazine here.

Push through the doors at algha’s plantroom, an industrial space in east London, and you’ll find playbody: part club night, part design lab, and a full-bodied experiment in radical connectivity. Founded by Thea Arde and Joel Saldeck, the event was born out of a longing to recentre human connection in contemporary nightlife, and has become one of London’s most exciting gatherings. While much of the city’s existing club circuit leans towards detachment, the event offers something more intimate. From a DJ booth formed from bodies to a spinning roundabout on the dancefloor, playbody’s multimedia installations play with light, sound, architecture and the body. It’s this embrace of interaction that allows them to reimagine the club space as a co-curated environment.

At playbody, blue light pools through the venue’s tall windows, slowly shifting to amber as the air thickens with sweat and smoke. As people move through space, they merge into the night; they scale scaffolding installations, coalesce on the dancefloor and surrender their sweat-covered bodies to the DJs’ BPMs. Others fringe the room’s perimeter, drinking mate and holding each other in varying states of undress. The event is centred on the lived experience of non-normative identities. This intention has seen the space become a sanctuary for a community of clubbers amid increased policing of trans and queer bodies. In a room flooded with orange light and with sound spilling on to the streets, playbody offers an oasis in a disconnected world.