Everyone has heard of raves, but a silent rave?

On urbandictionary.com, a silent rave is defined as: “Rave” or form of wild dancing party where all of the members listen to music through headphones on separate portable music players. The players are all synchronized so everyone is hearing the same thing, but no outsiders hear anything, hence the “silent” portion of the name. The police didn’t bust the silent rave down the street because nobody complained about the noise.

Sans title, the event is a cacophony of dancers mysteriously grooving to an emitted sound of their ipod, all bound together in the same crowd not by a singular audible song (like a regular dance party) but by a concept– the concept of dancing with yourself. However, the idea is to dance with yourself while dancing with everyone else who is dancing with themselves. Confusing? Not really. Entertaining? Mightily.

On a cold New York City night recently, several migrations of silent ravers made their way over to Union Square. Once they arrived, they whipped out their ipods, plugged in their headphones, and danced to their own music. The result? A large-scale dance party where, because the music is inaudible, is done in silence. If you take out your headphones and just stop to look (as I felt compelled to a couple times during the event), the scene before you is priceless. An organized shock-mob flurry where the absurd has its place, where the absurd has its magnificence.