Clubland is in the grip of a plague. The latest victims are its magazines. In the space of a year Ministry, Seven and Muzik all folded and market leader Mixmag announced a 30% drop in sales. For many people this is proof that the clubbing game is over but as Stef Macbeth finds out, the evidence from the dancefloor points to another conclusion.

It might have started as a rumour, or maybe it was just some bad E. Anyway, it didn't matter why, or how, or who you were, or what you were taking; Dance was Dead. Brands that at one time seemed indestructible were screwed. Ministry if Sound, Gatecrasher, Cream and most of Ibiza. Cue the obituaries. Earnest articles appeared everwhere about What Went Wrong.

Then silence.

The dance press had made a monumental cock up. Cream might have closed and Gategrasher might have gone monthly and Ibiza might have had a quiet season but clubs up and down the length and breadth of Britain were doing fine. Certain clubs – certain high profile clubs – were almost completely immune to whatever disease it was that had infected Clubland. Manumission, the world's largest and most ostentatious club (the DJ booth is suspended over a swimming pool and they give you a map at the door in case you get lost), is one example. I was there a year ago. It had an energy and buzz to it that just didn't fit with the reports of the death of dance. In London, Nag Nag Nag was re-inventing dance music and Glasgow clubbers had Optimo, a club that in the last few years has become ingrained in Glasgow's cultural identity.

By announcing that dance was dead, the dance press dug their own grave. All that the dance press had achieved was to show that they'd lost touch. The fatal assumption was that anyone would care about some oversized trance club going bust; least of all anyone with any genuine passion for dance music.

After a while it became clear that the real crisis was in Clubland's boardrooms and not on the dance floors. So they got together and fabricated a rebirth. In June this year Radio 1 aired a documentary entitled Dance: Return to the Undrground.

Apparently, it was only the so-called super clubs that were dead. These evil corporate monsters had been sucking the life out of the repetative beats industry but now there was going to be an explosion of new and exciting nights. The buzzword was Underground, whatever that meant. It was a true David and Goliath story. Or maybe just the Emperor's New Clothes.

The fact that the radio one documentary failed to say anything coherant was masked by the afficianados who they'd got to contribute. They'd even got the Audio Bulley's to present it. Steve Beer, promoter of uber cool Leeds club Back to Basics, and some bloke from DJ magazine rambled on about, well, something or other. But cool people nonetheless. They were trying to make sense of a paradox that had everyone scratching their heads. If it was, indeed, curtains for dance music why were certain clubs thriving? So in their documentary, Radio 1 tried to put their finger on what it was that all these thriving clubs had in common. The best they could come up with was a meaningless platitude: these clubs are "Underground".

The Radio 1 documentary was indicative of the way the dance music gurus responded to their own misguided prophecy. Their response was to create a scapegoat (the Superclubs) and then herald the coming of a saviour (this new breed of Underground club nights).

They visited a handful of clubs across the UK in an effort to give this theory some substance. They were trying to show that all these clubs had something fundamental in common. There was even the suggestion that there was some kind of causal link between the demise of the Superclubs and the rise of these clubs that were thriving. It was a classic example of trying to rig the investigation to prove an abstract theory true.

So off they went to find some evidence to fit the David and Goliath theory. By some huge fluke, the documentary stumbled on gold. A monthly party held in a warehouse in an industrial estate, across a motorway, which the taxi drivers have a hellish time trying to find. The venue is called the Soundhaus and it specialises in nights that play acid techno really loud and really badly. But somehow they'd heard about a night that was the antithesis of all such nastiness. The night is called Chakra, meaning "energy" in hippie speak. It exists in its own dimension. A very camp, very emotional, very uncool, dimension where everyone spends most of their time grinning, hugging and dancing with absolute wild abandon. And it's a very beautiful thing.

Unfortunately the documentary spent most of the time talking about Chakra's Underground credentials (they were particularly excited that it was in a warehouse and you had to knock on a door to get in). It was as if they'd never been to a free party before. They probably hadn't. Such was their shock about how 'underground' it was, they completely missed the point. Chakra is genuinely subversive. Not because they don't play dance anthems, but because they do.

At Chakra people do all sorts of things. Dress up as an Eastern Goddess, eat fire, become a human mirror ball, play a saxaphone; but one thing Chakra will never do or be is Cool. People enjoy it all far too much, people are made to feel too welcome and at ease, people don't mind if the DJ makes a mess of a mix or doesn't bother mixing at all. And that just ain't cool.

The relationship between club-culture and notions of cool is problematic. Most people look like twats when they dance. They look even more like twats when they're on E and when they are hot and excited. But dance music just doesn't work if no one's dancing and no one's excited. It kind of destroys the point. So either you only invite the beautiful people or you allow uncool elements into the club and admit that being cool isn't everything. Or you call the whole thing off. Chakra bypasses cool and heads straight for the dressing up box. Which scares the shit out of a club industry that still thinks it's cool.

Free from the repressive hand of Cool, Chakra can focus on all the important things that make a club good. "I try to create a warm, homely space where people can feel a part of it" says Carol, the club's promoter. "Like a house party but a bit bigger", she adds. The emphasis is always on the experiential. Success at Chakra is not measured by how many people come through the door but by whether those people have had a wonderful time by the time they leave.

"Chakra is an adventure, we like to take people on a journey. That's why we have three DJs in the main room. Having three types of music makes it feel more like an adventure. You don't know what's round the corner." The adventure takes in NYC gay house, dated (but brilliant) deep Chicago house and even more dated but equally brilliant tribal techno. Basically they take you to a festival.

"Chakra's very separate from the rest of the Glasgow club scene. I've always wanted it to be more like a festival than a club. I think festivals are more fun than clubs."

But it's the little back room that makes Chakra the most exciting and important club in Glasgow. It's here that people dance with this unique passion and wild abandon. Everyone knows all the tunes and every few minutes there's cheering, whooping, hugging. It's increadibly emotional. And the music that makes everyone behave like this: classic dance music. Not just one or two timeless ones either; you get a whole night of it. Sometimes it gets cheesey but crucially there is never, ever, ever, any irony. It might be nonsense but it is honest and emotional and ultimately very serious.

It's pretty futile trying to explain what's going on at this mass outpouring of emotion. The whole point of it is that it's experiential. But it seems to suggest something about where so many clubs got it wrong. It was seen as a mortal sin for a serious DJ to play crowd pleasers. So all these records got lost. You could only hear them if you went to mainstream clubs and then you'd have to put up with all the rubbish that went with it. So for most of the Chakra crowd, they'd never heard Born Slippy in a club before. When they hear it at Chakra they go mental. Making the crowd happy isn't seen as a bad thing at Chakra.

So what does the experience of Chakra tell us? The Radio 1 documentary attempted to place Chakra as part of a scene; some kind of underground movement. But Chakra exists in its own dimension where words like “underground” and “superclub” and all the concepts that the club industry hold so dear, are meaningless. People like scenes. They like to put things in boxes. Especially things that seem a bit alien. But Chakra is a misfit. It's too subversive for the mainstream but it's not cool enough for the underground. And why should it fit into a box? We're always so keen to compartmentalise everything, to make sense of it, to come up with a grand plan. But when you're dealing with people - and clubs do need to remember that they are dealing with people and not just repetitive beats - the best laid plans always seem to go tits up.

At Chakra things are allowed to go wrong, people are allowed to be a bit rubbish and it's allowed to develop in its own way. Chakra may belong to another dimension but it is rooted in this one. A response to the banality and hypocrisy that dictates most people's lives Chakra is a space that breathes energy and creativity. But it is also a response to a culture where talent and passion are caged by our obsession with theories and masterplans, and boxes, and fitting in.

Carol smiles. "It's all a bit higgledy-piggledy and that's how I like it".

Chakra is held every month on last Saturday of the month at the Soundhaus. Members, matriculated students and guests only. www.chakra-club.co.uk

Comments? stefmacbeth@hotmail.com