The silent dance floor

Text: an original contemporary festival-account-style practice extract.

From outside the dance tent, I heard shoes on boards and occasional bursts of singing, but no music. Inside, people wore headphones and moved at different speeds. A man beside the entrance swayed slowly while a pair farther in jumped together. I could see the effects of several songs without hearing a reason for any of them.

An attendant gave me headphones. The room acquired a rhythm at once, as though someone had switched on the explanation of its movement. I began dancing, then lifted one side from my ear. The beat disappeared; the shoes and breath returned. A woman near me laughed at something in her own song. For a moment, I felt both part of a crowd and outside several private conversations.

I stayed longer than I expected. When I took the headphones off at the end, the room became peculiar again. Enjoyment had not made it familiar from every angle. The dance belonged partly to the floor we shared and partly to sounds we could not assume everybody was receiving at the same moment.

In this extract, the writer tries to convey the strangeness of an experience that is enjoyable despite feeling unfamiliar.

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.