Remember that Zac Efron EDM movie? It wasn’t great.

Jonathan Seidler is an Australian writer. This is his column for Esquire.

I WENT OUT DANCING last weekend. It was the sort of occasion that was planned ahead of time – six weeks to be exact – and it took place in Melbourne, where nightlife is very much in motion as opposed to being in memoriam like it is in Sydney. This meant the first DJ started at 10pm, which, coincidentally, is the same time my Dad-brain now tells my body to fall asleep even if I’m standing up. The main act started at 11:30. 

I wasn’t so much there for the dancefloor as I was for the music – I’m too old to pass as a club kid – but I also wanted to collect some fun stories with which to regale my wife and child when I got back home (crop tops are back! A redbull vodka is almost $30 now!) 

Yet half an hour into the main event (for those of you keeping score, it’s already midnight), I looked around and noted the number of attendees who were very much older than me. Dudes with wild grey manes who looked like my friends’ Dads; couples who were probably cresting 60; a bunch of eclectic senior cats wearing whatever the fuck they wanted. They were all dancing along and having the time of their lives. It was amazing to watch, even more so given the kids in their mid twenties, who made up the core of the audience, seemed to have no issue with it. Self-consciousness gone, my nervous, adult brain turned off and I danced too. 

Having spent far too much of my adult life attending and reviewing music in loud, dark rooms, I’ve become something of an amateur live music anthropologist. Maybe it’s the advertiser in me, but you’ll always find me looking around a venue to see who is in the audience at any given time, scanning what they’re wearing, drinking or ingesting. Often it’s exactly what you expect – like tattooed rock kids slamming tins at a punk show – and sometimes it messes with societal norms you had always believed to be true.

Here is something I have been led to believe: I am too old to be going to dance parties that start at 10pm. Wild hedonism is a young man’s game and I am nearly forty. In my desire to still move in these spaces, I am embarrassing myself. Our generation’s appropriate way of letting loose is paying a babysitter to eat our food and rinse our Netflix algorithm while we pay someone else to explain share plates to us while drinking natural wine that tastes (I imagine) like Angus Stone’s foot.

When I was growing up, I was always on the hunt for all-ages shows. These were a sign that the promoter had figured out a way to let young teenage fans into a gig they desperately wanted to be at – even though we weren’t allowed to buy drinks from the bar. My Melbourne experience got me thinking about the idea of all-ages, and how it only ever really flexes in one direction, which is younger. And look, any 64 year-old can technically go dancing in any club if they really want to, but it’s not something that happens regularly or is encouraged in the way we set up and promote nightlife in capital cities, or in Western society more broadly. We age into and stay in our lanes, until something dramatically oversized like a festival (sadly, the fastest way to go out of business in Australia in 2024) or a gargantuan Taylor Swift concert pulls us all together.

Cross-generational experiences are important for a number of reasons, but mostly because they remind us that while we’re bitching about our parents for locking us out of the housing market and those coming behind us for vaping too much, there are some basic human needs that transcend the battle lines we’ve drawn between the ’60s, ’90s and now. I’m convinced dancing is one of them. 

I’ve since been told that The Night Cat, the particular venue I was in, has fostered this all-ages, communal vibe for decades. Nobody was turned away for what they were wearing, or being old enough to remember when people burned disco LPs instead of venerating them. The only other context I’ve seen this in was No Lights, No Lycra, a global movement dedicated to dancing without judgement, but certainly not a club night. 

In an increasingly ageist and isolated world, simple things like dancing might be the best way for young and old to commune. It certainly felt like that for me. For the first time in a long time, I can’t wait to do it again. I might even take my grandmother.

Jonathan Seidler is an Australian writer, father and nu-metal apologist. He is the author of a memoir called It’s A Shame About Ray and a novel titled All the Beautiful Things You Love, which is out now. Jonno has some interesting things to say about music, fatherhood, Aussie culture, mental health, problematic faves and the social gymnastics of group chats. This is his column for Esquire. You can see all of his previous columns here.

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