Lifestyle
The joys of the middle-aged dance floor
Love dancing but late nights not so much? Here’s the answer.
By Rachael Mogan McIntosh
Long ago, back in the mists of time, I was a club kid who thought nothing good happened before 2 am. I loved a dark, smoky nightclub and a complicated, theatrical outfit, and life was a great big party. I am no longer this creature. These days, I have a visceral reaction if I see a bar scene in a movie. ‘Oh, god!’ I complain to the children. ‘My worst nightmare! How can you have a conversation? And there’s nowhere to sit!’ OK, boomer, say my teenagers. They don’t know that once I was the queen of the dance floor. It’s hard to imagine, to be fair. I spend a lot of time lying on a heating pad watching sourdough videos.
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All of the dancing, none of the nonsense
Here's the problem: I’m a lady who needs to sit down quite a bit, finds crowds overwhelming, and powers down, physically and emotionally, from about 8pm. But I still think dancing is about the most fun thing you can do with your friends. How can I access my inner disco freak other than in the middle aisle of Aldi every once in a while, when the Supermarket Soft Rock playlist drops an absolute banger?
No Lights No Lycra dance nights (NLNL)
Friends, I have the answer. I’ve recently been on two dance floors that met, in different ways, these middle-aged needs. The first was a night called No Lights No Lycra. Established in 2009 in Melbourne as a place where people could dance ‘without limits and without judgement’, the founders now host events all over the world. They like to quote Amy Poehler: ‘If you can dance and be free and not embarrassed you can rule the world.’
NLNL nights are run by community volunteers, and it was cold the night my friends and I went to check it out. All of us were dressed in track pants and boots. We were sceptical. It was strange to be gathered in a small railway hall with strangers, and when the lights went off I situated myself in a corner, seriously afraid of getting injured. But then the music started, loud and enveloping, and something magical happened there in the dark.
Like on a really good wedding dance floor, the music ranged through genres and eras, and this, combined with the anonymous darkness, had the effect of making me feel as though I was traveling through time. I was in that same body, after all, and it remembered dancing to all these tracks: from It’s Tricky to Come On Eileen to Pump Up the Jam. And when the night closed out with a room full of people screaming the lyrics to Alanis Morrisette’s ‘You Oughta Know’, it felt like I’d done a months’ worth of therapy.
Slaying moves at a Silent Disco
The second dance floor – again, with a group of girlfriends - was at a Silent Disco in an art gallery. These events run a full cash bar, are staged in dramatic, interesting places – Nottingham Castle, Chatham House, Sydney Opera House - and use large over-ear headphones to play music across three separate playlists. Lights show which channel you’re on, and it’s easy to see which track is going off when the dance floor turns blue or yellow. Taking off the headphones, you experience a strange, comical universe where people are singing out loud, with wild abandon, into a quiet room.
Other daytime dance parties to groove at
The event was sold out, because there’s a market for people like me. These kinds of day-time dance parties are popping up all over the place, offering safe, inclusive spaces and retro playlists. Canada-based ‘Bed By Ten’, who market themselves with the tagline ‘because adults have to be at work tomorrow’, have just extended into Australia while in Singapore, the alcohol-free ‘Beans and Beats’ call themselves ‘coffee-clubbing’. The Chicago-based Early Birds Club aim to ‘celebrate midlife’ and prioritise joy.
My silent disco dancefloor was full of diversity; the atmosphere one of gleeful joy and silliness.
In some ways it was the opposite of those exclusive clubs I loved to frequent as a teenager. At fifty-four, I have no patience or interest in dealing with the concept of ‘cool’. I want to be in a gathering of many genders, ages and types of bodies. And I want at least half to be doing the lawnmower, the fishing line and the Nutbush, whether the song calls for it or not.
When the music came to an end, my girlfriends and I unlooped our headphones and limped out the door. My knee, muttered one, leaning on me as we exited the art gallery. My hip, I replied. My back, said a third. We’d bounced for two hours around that dance floor like the youngsters we’d once been, re-connecting with the ‘selves’ that used to inhabit these now-creaky carapaces, back when our joints had cartilages and our skin had collagen. But now it was 9pm - Senior Midnight - and we were in our fifties again. Time for a lovely cup of tea on the heating pad.
Feature image: iStock/Pressmaster
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