By Rebekah Markillie |
There are no worries about noise complaints being filed for this year’s fall dance. It will be a silent disco, where the music comes through wireless headphones each student will be given for the duration of the dance. The dance will be a held on a covered event deck at Jeld-Wen Field, the home field of the Timbers and the Thorns, Portland’s major league soccer teams.
The dance will be Oct. 5 from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., and tickets will be on sale Sept. 30 through Oct. 4 for $15. Students are allowed to bring a guest with a valid ID.
The idea for a silent dance stemmed from last semester when Castro and the previous CPB director wanted to have a dance at Jeld-Wen Field.
“We really wanted to have our fall dance there because Jeld-Wen Field is just such a huge thing for Portland. It’s the soccer stadium, the Timbers play there and our school is so big on soccer,” Castro said.
Because Jeld-Wen Field has a noise ordinance after 10 p.m., the dance committee had to come up with a creative way to keep the noise down.
“One of the ideas was to have a headphone disco,” Castro said.
The only issue with a headphone dance was trying to find enough headphones within the dance budget. Through one of UP’s dance contacts, the committee was able to secure 750 headphones for the dance from a company called Headphone Disco.
At the dance there will be two different setlists played over the wireless headphones, which will be controlled by a disk jockey.
“Students will be able to... listen to either station,” Weekend and Late Night Programing Coordinator Eric Luke said. “There will be one dance floor, two stations.”
Buses will be available to pick up students outside of Buckley Center and transport them to and from the event. The first bus is scheduled to arrive at 8:30 p.m. and will continue to pick students up from UP until 11:30 p.m. After that, the buses will only return students to campus.
The lower level of the event deck where the dance will be held will have an area for students who are 21 and over only, as well as an area with no alcoholic refreshments and a socializing area.
When the idea for a silent dance was first suggested, CPB officers were a little unsure.
“Some of them were a little hesitant,” Castro said, “But after we showed them promotional videos and things like that they were like ‘Oh! That’s kind of cool!’”
Luke had seen people dancing with headphones on at dancing venues before and he was a fan from the start.
“When I was traveling in Europe, I saw a couple of guys with headphones on dancing and it was separate from (what) the DJ was playing,” he said. “It just looked like so much fun. They were doing their own thing. I thought it was great. (The dance is) going to be fun!”
