Dance your cares away

I’m not always in the mood for dancing (sorry Nolan Sisters) but when I am, I do enjoy throwing some shapes, even if they are slightly awkward and inflexible looking ones. The rush of endorphins when a favourite song comes on and you lose yourself to the beats and rhythms never fails to make me happy. It’s the type of thing I don’t do enough of, but whenever I do I promise myself I won’t leave it so long again.

And so last Saturday found me excited to spend the night bopping and shimmying my heart out, along with a couple of hundred other be-headphone people, at the wonder that is the Silent Disco. What a great night it was too, bringing back fond memories of my first encounter with this wonderful type of event, a few years ago at Glastonbury.

~wibbly wobbly timey wimey ~

Glastonbury is a big place, and we had been on our feet most of the day. Exploring on the Thursday is a good way to get the lay of the land, figure out what is where (they move some things around almost every year) and just get into the festival spirit. The mass crowds don’t arrive until early the next morning, so it’s a calmer, less busy time and we’d been enjoying wandering around in the sunshine. By Thursday evening we’d had enough of exploring and decided to meander back to the tent (all the better to prepare ourselves for the long weekend of music and frivolity ahead).

We headed back through the Silver Hayes area and ahead of us, in one of the open sided dance tents, we could see some people dancing away inside. We were a distance away so couldn’t hear any music so it wasn’t until we got closer that we realised there was no music coming from that tent at all. How weird! Peering through the dusk we could see that everyone inside had lights glowing from their heads like some weird alien takeover. Some were green, some were blue, others were red.

Then it struck us, Silent Disco!!

We hustled over, paid our deposits, donned the headphones and wandered into the tent, a little bewildered but already itching to dance.

And ohhhh It was utterly joyous. The false privacy afforded by headphones means you truly are able to dance like no-one is watching (just close your eyes) and any interactions with other people were mostly through gestures. It’s such a simple idea, push a button on the headphones to pick between three channels of DJ and dance your heart out! And so we did, for over 4 hours before we gave up around 2am, exhausted but so happy.

So I was genuinely excited to be going to a silent disco again, and see how well it translated from the sunshine evenings of Glastonbury, to a cold dark winter night in Glasgow. Answer; very well indeed!!

Of course a silent disco is anything but – slipping your headphones off you can hear the cacophony of people singing along – yet it brings a wonderful camaraderie; a shared moment of delight when you and the people dancing next to you have just switched channels and your favourite song has just come on, the bewildering joy of trying to figure out what song THAT person is dancing to, and which song THAT person is singing along to with their head thrown back and arms reaching up to the sky.

Dance like no one is watching, love like you’ve never been hurt; sing like no one is listening, and live like it’s heaven on earth.

And, dear reader, I did and as we roll towards 2019 I’m more determined than ever to continue to do so.