Meditation on the Dance Floor

“I’m not a wild woman,” says Swiss-born party thrower Susanne Bartsch, one of the few constants of NYC nightlife. “I have it in me, but at the end of the day, I like realness. I like to care and help and make people feel good. I like to clean my teeth before I go to sleep. I take my makeup off. I don’t do drugs. I drink very moderately. I’m a party girl... but the party surrounds me.”

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Bartsch is lithe and angular, a sci-fi answer to Tinker Bell. The sequined yet sensible Swiss Miss moved to London in the 1980s, then to New York where she opened her eponymous fashion boutique in SoHo, promoting the work of avant-garde British designers. By ’86, she found her niche throwing weekly club bashes that brought drag queens, yuppies, and CEOs together into a euphoric conga line. But partying for the sake of partying has never been enough for Bartsch. Her Love Ball AIDS benefits in 1989 and ’91 and her annual toy drives done with her gym-owner ex-husband David Barton, have been chronicled in the 2017 documentary Susanne Bartsch: On Top and now in a splashy coffee table book called Bartschland, Tales of New York City Nightlife. RuPaul, who Bartsch heavily featured as a performer in the old days, wrote the gushy foreword. (“Susanne’s an amazing connector,” writes the drag superstar.)

“I love the night, baby,” trills Bartsch, with her charming accent, from the Chelsea Hotel, where she’s lived for 43 years. “I like bringing different types of people together to forget their troubles via music and dancing. The dance floor is like a meditation for me. Everyone puts down their phone and is in the moment, sharing the beat.”

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Today, Bartsch works on regular events like her weekly On Top party, a two-level (including rooftop) mixed crowd affair at The Standard hotel on the High Line. Her challenges have included the pressure to constantly corral new generations of clubbies, while also devising an endless array of eye-grabbing posts for Instagram. (“RuPaul told me, ‘Post noon and night,’” she adds. “It changed the game, really.”) Periods of political conservatism or fear never seem to bother Bartsch, who just keeps on dancing.

But that’s just after midnight. A grounded businesswoman by day, Bartsch doesn’t advocate that everyone should live life to the extreme. “Ideally,” she explains, “people should live the life they want to live. If it’s extreme, great. If not, that’s okay too. It’s got to be stuff you feel confident and good about.” Her ultimate party? “I’ll never know. They’re all ultimate.”