Manumission- Our Most Successful Ibiza Season Ever
Author: Jonty Adderley
Saturday, August 31, 2002
Whilst Ibiza's 2002 season has been clouded by talk of dwindling tourists and struggling superclub brands, the island's best known club Manumission have thrived, enjoying their most successful season ever. Renowned for their live sex shows (long since discarded) and anything goes joie de vivre, the Monday night weekly run by Mancunian promoters Dawn, Andy, Mike and Claire has regularly drawn up to 7,000 clubbers to Privilege though in recent weeks has done even better.
"The last two weeks have been our busiest parties ever and we've been drawing a really strong mixed crowd," Dawn Manumission told Skrufff's Jonty Adderley this week.
"I think what's happened this year is that instead of the island being very English dominated it's been much more international which creates a fantastic party vibe," she continued. "I'd guess we've had crowds of around 40% English with the rest being made up of a mix of nationalities; Italians, French, Spanish, Germans and Americans. It's been a fantastic year for us."
Skrufff: The island continues to get more expensive, is the type of person visiting Ibiza changing much-
Dawn Manumission: "It's definitely changing but another thing that's happened is that Ibiza has become cooler again. It went through a stage following the whole Ibiza Uncovered exposure when absolutely everybody was coming out here and in a way that attention discouraged the cooler crowd. The people with the big yachts and the pop stars were also put off though now with that mad hysteria dying down, a lot of the people who love Ibiza for itself are coming back again. There's loads of stylists, designers and pop stars out here right now and anywhere you go you can bump into household famous people. It's nice, because there isn't that big hype that there was in previous years."
Skrufff: What was the set-up when Puff Daddy turned up at the club-
Dawn Manumission: "He came down the other week when we did a special Radio 1 party, spent £20,000 (US$30,000) on champagne in the VIP room and apparently handed it out to people there. We've also got a resident saxophone player caller Connor who said to him, 'Why don't you come down and play the saxophone' so he did. He went down to the DJ box, grabbed a saxophone then said 'There's only one problem, I don't know how to play'. So he stood there with the saxophone in his mouth and Connor stood behind him with his arms around him, playing the notes. The crowd couldn't believe we'd got Puff Daddy playing the sax. He stayed all night and had a great time. We've had loads of people down this year; Danny Tenaglia was out partying this week, too."
Skrufff: Have you got any other ventures going on alongside the club this season-
Dawn Manumission: "What we've done this year is concentrate on the club, it seems like every year recently we've been opening a new bar or something else. We've focused on our strongest areas. We've turned the back room that we used to do with Trade into the Music Box, where we're doing more alternative music, bands and even cabaret-style entertainment. We had MC Kinky doing her new song in there last week and that room is working really well. We've still got Bar M (a San Antonio beachfront club/bar) and that's been really busy this year too. We persuaded Orange to put a new sound system in Bar M and it's a better system than most of the San Antonio clubs have."
Skrufff: Aren't numbers of visitors to the island down..-
Dawn Manumission: "You do hear a lot of complaints and I know there's quite a few businesses that aren't doing so well. There's still a lot of visitors with a lot of money then a lot of others with not so much to spend and I think people are being more selective this year. So instead of going to maybe three or four clubs they might go to one Tags