Each year The New Yorker magazine comes to life via the New Yorker Festival, a series of special events, lectures, screenings and town hall meetings, essentially turning the cerebral and entertaining weekly into an immersive weekend-long experience.

While EMERGE was eager to check out many of the panel discussions and lectures, ranging from Gary Shteyngart and George Saunders, Jonathan Safran Foer and Edward P Jones, the Winning The War on Terror panel, Malcolm Gladwell's talk on secrets, and a culinary dissertation from Mario Batali, we were even more excited by the less intellectual additions to the program this year. There was a screening of the Borat movie on Saturday, and on Friday night, EMERGE headed up to West 52nd Street to visit a massive dance club to hear Michael Mayer of Cologne's famed Kompakt.

Billed as the "New Yorker Dance Party, we were hoping to catch Hendrick Herzberg and George Packer having a breakdance battle while cartoonist Roz Chast was crumping in the corner. Instead we walked into something a little less absurd and even more exciting: a full-on, hands-in-the-air adult rave with absolutely zero pretension. By midnight, the dancefloor was packed full of young people, downtown hipsters, and more than a smattering of New Yorker staffers and European transplants clearly familiar with the infamous German techno DJ. What's more, the crowd was screaming for every mix Mayer dropped, going whole hog for the kinds of spooky techno that can clear the floor at trendier nightspots.

As the night wore on, the contingent of dancers in tweed sport coats, loafers, and pearl necklaces thinned out but the party never stopped. When EMERGE finally called it a night around 3:30 am, sharing a cab home with cartoonist Eric Lewis- without question the most hardcore staffer of the magazine remaining- there were still loads of well heeled German dudes and some very attractive young women dancing under the strobe lights. The party had been scheduled to end at 2 AM.

The New Yorker dance was an unquestionable success. People who clearly didn't know their minimal techno from a hole in the wall were screaming for more and those of us who keep up with the likes of Michael Mayer were not disappointed by his adventurous and far-reaching selections. And what could have been a very stilted and unsuccessful attempt at Downtown cool turned out to be more than a success. While far too many of NYC's coolest kids pack parties only to stand around looking good and drinking obscene quantities of booze, the New Yorker Dance Party wasn't simply a networking event or a meat market for singles. It was what I'd worried it'd be: a good old fashioned dance.

It appears you don't have Flash installed.