Inside the wild world of teen disco dancing in Glasgow

“My first contact with disco freestyle came unexpectedly a couple of years back,” Italian-born photographer Giulia Frigieri tells Dazed. She was browsing on social media when she “stumbled across some shots taken by the Danish image-maker Marie Hald”. These were backstage photos of disco freestyle dancers practising moves and stretching ahead of a contest. “My reaction was instant,” she says. “I thought, ‘what the hell are these spectacular costumes? What is this discipline?’”

Obsessed with her discovery, Frigieri got stuck into research: disco freestyle appeared to be particularly popular in Scandinavia, and was also taken over Scotland and Ireland. “Through a BBC Scotland documentary, I was introduced to four disco freestyle schools scattered across the region,” Frigieri explains. Among them was Team Sharkie – an institution within the UK’s niche dance circuit, located a short drive away from Glasgow in Bellshill, North Lanarkshire – whose talented teenagers would eventually become the focus of her series Disco Lassies.

Frigieri then saw that in 2011, The Guardian had published a visual essay on the disco freestyle scene of Belfast. Through Carrie McKee, the image-maker behind those images, the photographer reached a local teacher directly linked to the razzle-dazzle reality of Team Sharkie. “She said to me, ‘if you can’t make it to Belfast, I know someone that could have you photograph the rising stars of Glasgow’s disco freestyle,’” Frigieri recalls. So in February 2023, after months of conversations with Team Sharkie’s teachers Danielle and Margo to “ensure that the girls’ parents were on board with the project”, she made the journey to the Scottish Lowlands and shot Disco Lassies: a vibrant portrait series of the local dancing divas. Called to impress the judges in 50 seconds or less, this group of girls and young women – all aged between three and 21 – make an impression with their sparkling looks and jaw-dropping acrobatic jumps, backflips and dance steps.

But this series is about more than techno-fuelled performances and beauty pageant-inspired outfits. Shot across two trips on grainy film, Disco Lassies offers as many insights into the sports routine of Team Sharkie’s young champions as it provides a window into the role that disco freestyle takes in their coming-of-age. Here, we see them regrouping and consoling each other steps away from the dancefloor, devotedly honing their moves, messing around as they wait for their turn to perform, or simply posing for Frigieri’s camera. “For many of these youngsters, this isn’t just a hobby; it is their whole life,” the photographer explains. Most of the dancers spend more time at the school, surrounded by their peers, than at home. “They welcomed me wholeheartedly as if they had known me for years, they are one big family,” she says of Team Sharkie.

In one of the images from Disco Lassies, Daisy, 12, stands tall on a chopped trunk holding her right leg up in the air in a perfect split. Dressed in an iridescent, feathery two-piece set, she keeps her eyes closed as if drifting into another dimension, her arms tensed as her foot points to the sky. Captured in Filey, North Yorkshire, on a turquoise-blue day in May 2023, the shot was taken shortly before the start of the Blue Dolphin Championships: an annual disco freestyle festival hosted within the eponymous holiday park. A moment of communion for the girls and their relatives, the event sees them rent family caravans for its entire duration. In Frigieri’s work with the Sharkstars, she delves deep into the positive influence that the discipline has on these young women.

Beyond its ruffles-and-sequins surface, “disco freestyle has granted these teens a safe space to come together, build friendships and experiment with their identity away from the sometimes difficult sociocultural context of the Scottish suburbs,” she says. Growing up in an area affected by a devastating health divide that leaves its poorest inhabitants behind – Glasgow has the lowest life expectancy in the UK – and where crime rates are steadily on the rise, Team Sharkie offers a sparkling and hopeful alternative. “Through dancing,” concludes Frigieri, “they keep off the streets and carve their path into the world, chasing their dreams and feeling fabulous.”

Visit the gallery above to take a closer look.

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