Feel the beat: intergenerational silent disco parties for radical leisure in long-term care
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Abstract
Pleasure in later life is too often treated as incidental – an accidental byproduct of health-focused interventions – rather than a legitimate and vital aspect of human flourishing. This paper challenges dominant biomedical and neoliberal narratives of aging by exploring the radical potential of intergenerational silent disco headphone parties as a source of immersive, playful, and socially inclusive leisure in three Canadian long-term care (LTC) homes. Drawing on video recordings, interviews, observations, and focus groups, we examine the experiences of a group of 180 participants, including older adults living with and without dementia, family partners, and interdisciplinary staff members who participated in our disco parties. Thematic analysis revealed three key themes: (1) sharing intergenerational joy, (2) creating welcoming aesthetic spaces, and (3) embracing spontaneity and playfulness. Rather than serving as a therapeutic intervention to manage decline, these disco parties centered pleasure for its own sake, resisting dominant tropes of aging as loss. We argue that reclaiming leisure as joyous, relational, sensorial, and embodied is a radical act, one that affirms older adults’ right to delight, dance, and be with others, while advancing culture change in dementia care toward more relational and pleasure-centered ways of living.
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