Walk on the mild side

Looking for the heart of Saturday night, lapsed raver RICHARD BETTS goes in search of a good time.

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The Auckland Arts Festival is in full swing and we're in the Town Hall waiting for dance company Black Grace to come on stage for its 30th anniversary show. A DJ is warming the crowd with old-school club favourites, mostly stuff from the 80s and 90s. The guy behind the decks cuts a familiar figure, a silhouette in a bucket hat. His name is Manuel Matisi but everyone knows him as Manuel Bundy.

If you're in your 40s or 50s and you used to go dancing in central Auckland, he soundtracked your youth. The Shortland Bar, Cause Celebre and Box, Khuja Lounge, he was a regular at them all, playing music you didn't know but which, at three in the morning, sounded like the best thing you'd ever heard.

Back at the Town Hall, this is not his crowd. Next to me, a couple, perhaps in their 80s, look discomfited by the music volume. Further along the row, however, a woman, slightly younger - 70s? - is out of her seat, lost in the joy of her own dance. Behind me, a cabinet minister shakes an out-of-time leg, while below in the stalls, people from young teens to 60-something disco dancers are throwing their own shapes.

Bundy just nods along to the beat; he’s got them and he knows it. Now 54, Bundy can still be found about town if you know where to look. “These days, I mostly play restaurants and bars. Places like Hallertau, Queens Rooftop & Wineshop; there's a lot of vinyl bars now. It’s good for us, there's some good DJs on the roster.

“I like it,” he says with the laugh of a man who hasn't slept properly in three decades, “because I'm pretty much done by 10pm.”

Black Grace are done before 10, and we spill into Aotea Square, the music still thundering in our ears. The audience for the musical Six has just left the Civic and the combined crowds mean there are suddenly 3000 people in central Auckland with nothing to do. They all seem to be headed for the car park.