How I learned to stop worrying and love the silent disco

It’s a Friday night at Klyde Warren Park, and little kids are splashing around in the fountain, their squeals rising above the swoosh of passing cars. A family plays an oversized game of Connect Four, a couple lies on a blanket, the peaceful night undisturbed by the dance party cranking up outside Mi Cocina, because the music doesn’t make a sound.
“People keep asking, what is going on in there?” says Jaycee Conroy at the check-in for the silent disco. Conroy helped put the Sept. 6 event together for Dallasites101, which sold about 450 tickets for a gathering that lasted from 8 to 11 p.m.
Silent discos grew out of music festivals, where wireless headphones got passed around at a certain hour to comply with noise ordinances. In recent years, silent discos have become their own main event, and social media has filled with the sight of partygoers grooving to an unheard beat, a visual gag that can’t help but be funny, like passing someone singing at the top of their lungs in their car.
The scene at Klyde Warren Park is still mellow at 9 p.m., the sway-and-nod hour, but what’s striking is the neon glow of hundreds of headphones, red and blue and green bobbing in the darkness.
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The colors correspond to music channels you can flip between: Top hits (blue), EDM/dance (green), and throwbacks (red). So people aren’t just dancing in silence; they’re dancing to different beats. You’d think this would be chaos, but somehow it works. I passed a couple dancing closely, nearing the get-a-room phase, his hands nudging up her skirt as her hands roamed his hair, but she was on red and he was on blue, and surely there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
This was my first time to attend a silent disco, and I will admit I was skeptical. The idea of clapping on headphones at a communal gathering sounded a bit depressing, like going to a movie theater only to learn we’d be watching the film on laptops. Technology has made our entertainment portable and pocket-sized but shrunken so much splendor. In an era of pull-down menus and individualized choices, have we lost the ability to simply share the same experience? But I had to admit this was pragmatic. At a time when nobody can seem to agree on anything, a silent disco means you don’t have to.
“We’re always looking for things to do as a family,” says Chandrell Stephens, who drove in from the Waxahachie area, as she lightly rocks her baby in a sling. Stephens is the only mom I saw with an infant, though a handful of kids are cutting loose in the crowd. Her 8-year-old daughter struts back and forth with emphatic arm motions, as though her moves have been choreographed. The silent disco has the same logic as separate entertainment systems in a mini-van: Kids on one channel, adults on another.
What I didn’t anticipate is how protected I’d feel once I put those headphones on, almost like a shield that could ward away my self-consciousness. I’m often trapped in my own body at dance clubs. What if I do it wrong? What if I look foolish? But as I moved and danced among the crowd, I had the freedom of knowing I couldn’t be out of rhythm, because there was no rhythm. I didn’t have to worry about looking foolish, because (and I mean this with love) everyone looks foolish.
A dance pit on the lawn sees the most action, while a raised pavilion serves as a mid-level form of engagement. DJ Richy Smart (blue) and DJ Bishiclet (green) work their turntables near the front, not far from a lounge area with couches, while tables fill a common space where friends can stand around sipping margaritas, still connected to the party but not swallowed by it. One guy dances by himself, happily lost in his own world. One couple sits on a couch with their headphones on, just giggling.
“Nobody’s stuck in one genre,” says Gay Belt, who came with her boyfriend and his 22-year-old son. She’s referring to the music, but her observation applies to the crowd, which is quite diverse. It’s a very Dallas mix of Black, white, Hispanic and Asian, gay and straight, young and old (though mostly young). If you’re wondering what to wear to a silent disco, the answer is apparently anything. Gold platform heels or Birkenstocks, a sexy party dress or shorts and a T-shirt. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure evening.
Every once in a while, a song does manage to take hold of the crowd, and it’s fun to watch the headphones suddenly switch colors, like birds changing direction in mid-flight. Rihanna’s “We Found Love” causes a swift contagion from blue to green, and people in the center of the dance pit start jumping, causing people on the outer edges to start jumping, and one girl still listening to the red channel asks her friend, “Why are we jumping?”
As the night wears on, the silent disco becomes less silent. I can take off my headphones and still know what’s moving the crowd. Sing-along choruses burst up from different directions, and for that matter, from different decades: “Ain’t no mountain high enough” is followed by ”whoa-oh, livin’ on a prayer” is followed by Usher’s “yeah, yeah, yeah.” The evening is so dominated by karaoke-style singalongs that the only complaint I hear comes from a young woman who says, “They need more EDM.”
You can’t please everyone. But as the party winds down at 11 p.m., most of the crowd is still deep in it. The chorus of “Mr. Brightside” is trading off with the chorus of “Dancing Queen,” but it’s not a standoff so much as an odd and unconventional duet. DJ Richy signals our exit with one last jam, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” by Panic! At the Disco, and I turn in my headphones and re-enter the normal logic of the rest of the park, where the wind is rustling the leaves, and the boom of a motorcycle reverberates in the distance, and people are chatting about where to go next, the soundtrack of a city not yet ready to go to sleep.
Dallasites101 will host silent discos at Klyde Warren Park on Oct. 4 and Nov. 8. Tickets $10-35. See dallasites101.com for more information.