Rave Babes Is Dubai’s Women-Only Booze-Free Dance Community

Two women-only, alcohol-free raves have sold out in Dubai since April 2026, with a New Year's event in Dubai and a February 2027 edition in Mexico City confirmed, while Muscat and Riyadh remain in development.

Rave Babes DXB, established by Lylah El-Sayed and Nour Montasser, had its premiere at KAVE at Alserkal Avenue on April 24. Originally intended as an intimate gathering of no more than 20 women, the event drew 47 attendees.

Their second event took place at The Edit Room in Dubai on August 29. It was planned for 50 women but ended up attracting 90.

The project is built on the straightforward premise that women should be able to arrive alone to parties, dance sober and lose themselves in the music without spending the night fending off unwanted parasitic attention.

“I remember going out with my friends and without my husband. To stop an unwanted approach the only thing I could do was to say that I'm married. Nightlife was never designed around women, and that was the gap.”

“Men rarely have to think about unsolicited physical contact, or about getting home safely, or about sharing their location with family,” El Sayed says. “For women, even a good night out takes mental preparation. We just want to listen to music uninterrupted and dance as if we were alone in our rooms with headphones on.”

Alcohol-free, women-only parties have become popular in other cities. London's Sober Girl Rave promises “No men. No phones. No alcohol.” and last February, Reuters talked about the rise of sober raves and women-only music parties in Karachi.

Ladies' night in Dubai usually involves some drink promotions, whereas in Rave Babes DXB music takes centerstage. The DJs play predominantly Afro and Latin house; the bar is sober, and the event is women-only.

El Sayed wanted a party organised around how women would want to spend their night.

For some attendees, that means dancing without drinking and for others, it means dancing at all.

Montasser, who works in social media and is also a sound healer, life coach and wellness facilitator, had been thinking about the same gap in Dubai's nightlife. “We don't drink or smoke, we're no longer interested in entertaining unwanted attention, and we're much more intentional about the spaces we choose to be in,” she says. “But that doesn't mean our inner party girl has disappeared or that we dont miss those nights out.”

El-Sayed is the primary DJ behind Rave Babes. She is Egyptian Puerto Rican, born in Alexandria and brought up in New York. Before starting Rave Babes DXB, El-Sayed spent many years practicing yoga, conducting retreats and working as a transformational coach. She started to study yoga because of the back pain she experienced.

At 24, she was diagnosed with a herniated disc and told by a leading New York surgeon that her two options were either surgery or a lifetime of managing the pain. El-Sayed then decided to give yoga a try beginning with Yoga with Adriene’s 30-day challenge on Youtube. “By the end of it,” she says, “I could no longer pinpoint where the pain had been.”

In 2019 she got her teacher training certificate at Rishikesh and began giving free classes in a park in Kuwait. During the pandemic, she moved to Egypt and was teaching yoga in beaches in Dahab and Blue Lagoon, and later in studios in Alexandria and Zamalek.

So what does a yoga teacher want with a rave? “To me they're nearly the same practice,” she says.“Yoga is movement that leads to stillness. Music at 100 to 130 BPM and above does something similar,” she explains. “It's the predictability and repetition that tell the nervous system it's safe, and a repeated sequence in a yoga class does the same. On a dance floor, everyone is also having an intensely private experience, and a community forms around it anyway. It's like a yoga class, where connection comes through glances and shared effort. In both, you don't have to speak, explain or be perfect. You only have to be present with the beat or the breath.”

For El-Sayed, teaching yoga helped to learn how to read the crowd, and dancing made her a better yoga class sequencer. “Both practices require proper pacing and creating a comfortable atmosphere for people to return”, she explains.

It wasn't until she turned 30 that El-Sayed discovered electronic music. She attended her first rave Chill Opposite in Dahab in 2021, where she saw how strangers dance to the same music and experienced the connection she has never seen before in nightclubs. Afro and Latin house music attracted her especially. She recognized her Egyptian and Puerto Rican roots in the percussion.

By the moment El-Sayed moved to Dubai in around 2024, DJing was already a part of her life. She has been mixing music at home and giving after-parties for friends for many years, although she considered it as her hobby. A few months after arriving in Dubai, El-Sayed attended a concert by Black Coffee. She then came home and DJed for 12 hours straight, completely sober, whereas her partner and friends stayed to listen to her.

“I became an official after-party DJ, unpaid or paid in shawarma sandwiches.”

On December 19, 2025, El Sayed sat down and made a plan to reach the level of her two favourite DJs, the Spanish duo Mestiza and Pablo Fierro, from the Canary Islands. She then began filming her practice sets. “I got dressed like a DJ, set my mixer on an ironing board (the perfect height) and started filming my practice for close friends.”

It was then that Montasser reached out with an idea. “She asked if I'd ever want to build something around music and dance for women, a safe space to let the wild woman out,” El Sayed says. She replied within minutes. That same night she watched a female DJ duo open for the French DJ David Guetta and hold the whole crowd. “I told myself I'd be standing there one day.” Four months later, she and Montasser hosted the first Rave Babes.

Behind the scenes, the two founders handle everything from setting up sound and lights to coordinating partners and answering messages. Montasser, whose professional background includes data and paid social media, takes the lead on social media and tracking the project's growth, while El-Sayed oversees the music. “Lylah is definitely the one who dares to dream big,” Montasser says. “I tend to bring a more grounded, analytical perspective.”

“We're blending the community of Berlin and New York raves with the warmth of a women's henna night. Nothing quite like it existed here before we made it,” El-Sayed says. “Women who avoid clubs can still love and enjoy music. Many women who tell us this is the first time they've felt at ease at a party.”

El-Sayed herself spent years wondering how to square her spirituality and love of God with her appetite for loud music and dancing. She doesn't think enjoyment requires choosing between them nor does sobriety have to make an evening solemn. “The women attending Rave Babes span all range of rave experience; some have never been to an electronic night. Others are seasoned ravers who know it's a sober event but still turn up with lollipops,” El-Sayed says.

At the raves, the girls are met with glitter, friendship bracelets and lollipops. Hostess introduces them to the space and women-owned businesses participating in the event. El-Sayed and Montasser dance with all of the guests on the dancefloor. “We don't do a door that judges people. We treat every woman who arrives like a guest at our house party, even if we've never met her,” El-Sayed tells SceneNowUae.

One guest told El-Sayed she came from a strict family that would never allow her to visit a nightclub, despite how much she loved to dance. “She said we'd finally given her a space to express herself through what she wears without worrying what her family would say.”

Having spent two years in Dubai and still trying to find her own community, El-Sayed understands the importance of finding somewhere to belong. “People lock eyes, move together and turn into one floor, so the women who came alone don't look alone,” she says. “People tell us they leave lighter, having released something, and they want it far more often than we can produce.”

For Montasser, the response to Rave Babes confirmed something she and El-Sayed had suspected from the beginning. “We knew there were other retired party girls out there, just like us, waiting for the right moment to bring their dancing shoes back out.”

One moment from their second event has stayed with her. After spending the evening running around making sure everything was working, she and El-Sayed unexpectedly met in the washroom. “We just looked at each other, absolutely beaming, and had this unspoken moment of, 'Wow, we actually did it. Everything we talked about creating is happening right now!'”

Rave Babes is still small, with two Dubai editions behind it and more on the way. A New Year's event in Dubai is confirmed at the same warehouse that hosted their second rave. An international edition is also confirmed for February 2027 at Revolu Gallery in Mexico City, which is opening its physical space in November. Muscat and Riyadh remain in the pipeline. The Muscat event has been delayed as the founders explore turning it into a wider Rave Babes travel experience, while the Riyadh edition is awaiting confirmation of a venue.

El-Sayed is constantly thinking about Rave Babes becoming a bigger business and actively chasing this.

As it expands into other cities and potentially opens a permanent venue, El Sayed wants to protect its original principles of sobriety, safety and community.

“I'd hate to see the initiative taken over by bro culture,” she says. “Rave Babes was made by women, for women, to support women.”