Above Toronto's most storied rock club, a former speakeasy has been the city's student dance floor for four decades. The Dance Cave occupies the upper level of Lee's Palace at 529 Bloor Street West in the Annex, a building that opened in 1919 as a movie theatre and cycled through lives as the Blue Orchid cabaret and Oriental Palace before Chong Su Lee opened his namesake club in September 1985. The upstairs room owes its existence to the Blue Orchid years: 1960s owner Ed Silverberg tore out the old theatre balcony and replaced it with a second-floor speakeasy, the bones that became the Dance Cave when Mr. Lee split the operation - live music below, dancing above. The formula has barely moved since: alt-rock, Britpop, mod, sixties and indie sounds through the week, straight alternative dance nights on Fridays and Saturdays opening at 11 pm, and a crowd drawn heavily from the University of Toronto, Toronto Metropolitan, OCAD and George Brown a streetcar ride away. The room shares the building's famous face - the riotous cartoon mural by artist Runt that makes 529 Bloor one of the most photographed storefronts in Toronto - and shares its owners too, with Collective Concerts running both floors since 2006 alongside the Horseshoe Tavern. Downstairs carries the legend - Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Oasis all played early Toronto shows at Lee's - but the Cave has its own ledger of themed parties, DJ sets, occasional live shows and the annual Death to T.O. Halloween tradition. For generations of Toronto students the geography is fixed: first legal pints, first indie discoveries and first sweaty 2 am singalongs all happened under the same low ceiling above Bloor Street, and the room keeps minting the next cohort every September. Cover stays cheap, the drinks stay student-priced, and the playlist policy has quietly become an archive: a Cave Saturday still moves from The Smiths through Blur to whatever this year's indie anthem is, played loud to a floor that treats every one of them as current.

Type: NightClub

Address: 529 Bloor St W, Toronto, Canada, M5S 1Y5

Website: https://leespalace.com/dance-cave

Minimum Age: 19+

Cover Charge: 1

DJ: 1

Opening Date: 05/09/1985