Silent Disco Downtown: Quiet(ish) Dancing

The Music Center winds down its summer dance series with an unusual headphones-only beat.

Trends come, go, return, slip away again, pop back up, and typically charm we trend-laggers with the new and the novel and the now.

The trend-tastic notion of the "silent disco" has been thrumming, noiselessly, for a few months, but seeing it, and being a part of it, and actually shaking your stuff, still sparkles with cool cachet.

If you're brave enough to try it, that is. You essentially dance to the beat inside your own headphones, which will look, to headphone-less onlookers, as though you're swaying in silence.

Call it "polite partying" if you will -- there's almost no noise to speak of at the silent disco, save people talking -- and call it happening at The Music Center Plaza on Friday, Aug. 21.

The evening is free, but headphone rental is five bucks, and it is a first-come deal, so be among the first-comers, if you want to snag a pair. (You'll need to rent the headphones there, so the on-site DJ tunes can be pumped into your kit.)

It's the last evening in The Music Center's Bring Your Own Dance Moves summer series, by the by, at least the last for 2015. And definitely the most unusual. All the other Bring Your Own Dance Moves nights actually had the sort of music played aloud for a crowd, as has been tradition for, well, since people have danced to music in public.

A very long time, in short.

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This won't be that scene in the slightest. Things'll get quite quiet on the Plaza, music-wise, while the crowd sways and dips to the sounds of onsite DJs. DJs Anthony Valadez, Platurn, Lefto, and Donaldson will be in the (roofless) house.

And, yes, you might have heard about this trend at various hotels, where some guests like to tuck into bed early on and not hear the club sounds thumping from the pool area or ballroom. The Hyatt Palm Springs ran a few "silent DJ" nights over the summer, and they're popping up elsewhere with more frequency/fun.

Is this the wave of the future? Dancers dancing without sound -- save the sound between their ears -- as headphone-free people in the vicinity hear not a note? It definitely can look like something from a sci-fi, from-the-future film, which only lends it cooler cred.

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