“With Nightclub Disaster, we rebel against monotonous nightlife and glorify the embracement of the individual”
Indiana Roma Voss (22)
This New York City native has spent well over a decade living and creating in Amsterdam. She hopes to graduate soon from Rotterdam’s art academy Willem de Kooning. Currently based in Amsterdam, she works as a stylist and art director traveling often to Berlin for work as a contributor to INDIE Magazine. Winning the Elle Style Awards past September has become the crown and glory of her budding career.
Dennis Schreuder (23)
Born and bred Amsterdam native Dennis completed a four-year education in tailoring and sewing techniques. He is currently extending his education at the Fashion Design department at the ArtEZ Institute in Arnhem. Being an up-and coming designer, he hopes the doors to the high fashion world will open after graduating.
Indiana and Dennis are co-creators of Nightclub Disaster (NCD); a group of nightlife performers and “all around freaks”, as they so eloquently put it themselves. Nightclub Disaster consists of twelve individuals, a number that is growing fast as they are currently looking for more performers to strengthen the formation and join the family.
As Indiana tells us, “We keep growing because we keep getting new and bigger gigs”. You can find NCD at the MOIST party (previously named Birds and Bees) at club Nyx in Amsterdam’s Reguliersdwarsstraat. They also have a steady gig at the Supperclub now; once a month the duo will curate their own special night there. On other nights NCD takes care of the closing act. “We come on during dessert and are supposed to get the diners from 0 to 100 in forty-five minutes in order for them to be ready for the club night. We get to take the audience out of their dinner vibes and on their feet dancing.”
INDIANA:
“We will see what happens to Nightclub Disaster and who will be willing to book us next. We try not to plan too much for NCD’s future. Until now wonderful opportunities have come our way and we find the beauty in that kind of openness, leaving space for chance and possibility.”
DENNIS:
“We have a large variety of characters within the group. The Disasters include theatre makers, artists, professionally trained dancers, designers, musicians and even hairdressers. Nightclub Disaster stands for individuality and originality. We don’t care what you do in life or even what you do during a performance as long as you do it with conviction and have a strong sense of self. You need to add something unique to the group and dare I say; the world.”
Indiana and Dennis fell into the world of performing by accident.
INDIANA:
“It first started when Elio Heres (who won the award for being the extravagant night butterfly of the year) reached out to me. He had two performances lined up with his group and invited me to join him and help him out with some styling. Dennis and I said yes and did the gigs.
Even though we love Elio, it wasn’t quite our thing and we decided to go out on our own and the Nightclub Disaster was founded. There’s something that I think bothers everyone who likes going out in Amsterdam; many parties and clubs are overhyped and boring. People don’t party like they used to or dress up and express themselves in the clubs. That annoyed us. We use nightlife as to express ourselves in a way we can’t during the day.’’
DENNIS:
“We are quite underground and choose the places where we perform selectively. The party or festival has to attract the “right” crowd. In our case the “right crowd” means open-minded people that understand what we’re doing.”
INDIANA:
“We’re not there to tell people what to do, if they don’t like us or want to participate in the act they don’t have to. In which case we just have fun on our own. The crowd gets really involved in our shows like Dennis said. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do as long you’re non-judgmental, ready to have a good time and step out of your comfort zone. The thing that makes us unique compared to other nightlife performers is the fact that we don’t perform on a stage for the crowd, we perform in the crowd and with the crowd. We’re club kids that can hype people in the audience and loosen them up, bringing the party to a new level. In the end it’s really just about having fun.”
Interview by Yalou Slöetjes
Images by Janneke Nooij
Edit by Jinan Vyent
