The real thing no one tells you about midlife is that at some point, the weddings that felt so relentless and budget-draining in your late 20s and 30s are going to dry up. You might get invited to a fund-raiser here, a 50th birthday there, maybe the odd bat mitzvah, but these will be few and far between.

And if you’re like me, you might move out of New York City to a small town in, say, bookish, bucolic Western Massachusetts. While this small town has many charms, nightlife is not one of them. Which means, with the weight of child-rearing, mortgage paying, climate disaster and a terrifyingly polarized culture bearing down on you — just as your opportunities to dance begin to evaporate, you will find that you need them more than ever.

So on May 2, four friends from Massachusetts and I left home at 3:30 p.m. on a Friday afternoon to drive two hours to Providence, then back again, just to go dancing.

Which is to say, you can understand why I — and 199 other ticket-buyers — really needed this party to work. And around 7:30 p.m., after the golden hour had mercifully receded and our bodies, lightly lubricated by a round of cocktails, were finally filling the floor, I could feel it starting to happen:transcendence.

“I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks!” said Jodi Burke, a fresh-faced 50-year-old, as she bound past me. She was wearing a short, zip-up jumpsuit she said she had picked up during her child’s recent college tour. Marveling at the crowd, she added, “All the dancers are so polite!”

Holly Ferriera, a 55-year-old artist and belly-dancing teacher who wore a fascinator of her own design, said she typically goes dancing at gay clubs, where “you can just be yourself.” She echoed the thoughts of many attendees: “You need space to be free.”

Elizabeth Fleck, 38, a real estate agent and, according to her best friend, Christen Poole, 40, a “single mom badass queen,” said that dance was a form of therapy, though one usually practiced at home, with noise-canceling headphones, after her children’s bedtime. The friends wore matching constellations of silver face glitter and sheer T-shirt dresses scattered with black stars.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5725386&forum_id=2...id.#48933640)