Instead of schnitzel and French fries one can get electronic rhythms, and instead of distributing rack there is a DJ mixer. Some “white collars” in the large cities of Germany can dance the whole lunch break.
Lunchtime in German firms lasts 60 minutes on average. One can eat, sleep, or ignore it. Fans of spending time efficiently go jogging, shopping, or visit a hairdresser. However, the generation of urban hedonists is marked by their own concept of rationality. The time of their lunch break is measured differently: 120 beats per minute in the style of house as the first course, 140 beats in the rhythm of hard dance as the second course, and a light chill-out for dessert.
To Eat or to Dance at Lunchtime?
Lunch-Beat Party was brought to Germany by the northern wind from Sweden. These are disco parties at lunchtime in the areas with large concentrations of office workers of more or less creative professions. Exactly at half past noon, the first sounds from the powerful speakers blow all the thoughts out of the heads of the designers, PR managers, advertising managers, who leave their desks for an hour in Hamburg. According to the organizers, stress is prohibited. And those who are too tired to have an active rest go to dine somewhere else.
The manifesto of the Lunch-Beat Party includes other rules. For example, there is not a single drop of alcohol allowed. Instead, one can have mineral water and soup included in the entrance fee. Dancing for 60 minutes without a break and then doing the important things again requires much energy. However, dry lunch can be taken out and eaten after the disco in order not to get distracted from the essential: the movement to the music rhythm.
Talking about the work is strictly prohibited, as the manifesto says. Indeed, how can one talk there if the volume level in the room hinders any communication, except the one using the language of dance?
The Lunch-Beat Party History
Two years ago it began with literally an underground experiment in a Stockholm underground garage and has already become an integral part of life not only in the Swedish cities of Gothenburg and Malmö, but also in Belgrade, Vienna, and Bogotá. Since April 2012 it is also allowed in Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich.
The ideologist and founder of the Lunch-Beat Party, Daniel Odelstad is a 30-year-old TV reporter from Stockholm. He says that no one is going to judge you because everyone, who comes to this party, is obliged to dance. Since everyone is sober, the feeling and mood is not like at three o’clock in the morning in a big nightclub. According to Daniel Odelstad, it is the best thing he has ever experienced on the dance floor. The fast pace of the first compositions becomes very fast in the middle of the disco party. But there are no signs of fatigue.
An Hour of Fun a Day
A vacation for an hour? This is consistent with the spirit of Generation Y, which includes relatively young people born after 1980. The researchers from the Kienbaum international consulting firm have found that the factors motivating the employees to work include a healthy balance of work and leisure.
An employee from Generation Y is not afraid of saying that he is playing chess tonight, so he cannot stay after work. That is how Diana Eid from the department of personnel in the strategic consulting company Bain&Company illustrates the tendency in the Welt Online publication.
The organizers of Berlin’s Lunch-Beat Party are sure that one hour in a gym will allow you to perform miracles during the working day and will become your most important business lunch.
And would you like to dance at lunchtime?
