Best Dance Party in North Texas

The Retro Dance Party is back again for an Encore Event! We started this event in 2017 (originally called Back To The 80s Dance Party) and it became a SMASH Hit right out of the gate. We are going to party like we did back in the day!

You have never been to a benefit/party like this before. Do NOT miss it!

What Is The Retro Dance Party — And Why Is Everyone Who’s Been There Already Buying Tickets Again?

Here’s what most charity events get wrong: they make you feel the weight of generosity. The silent auction paddles. The tearful video montage. The keynote speaker reminding you, for the fourth time, what your dollar means. By the time the rubber chicken arrives, you’re emotionally spent and desperately wishing you’d stayed home.

The Retro Dance Party is not that.

It never has been.

Born from a Birthday, Built into a Movement

It all started in 2017. Mike wanted a dance party for his 50th. A real one. The kind you had in the 80s, when nobody stood around holding drinks and making polite conversation — they moved. If he was going to spend that kind of money throwing a night to remember, he figured it may as well mean something beyond the hangover.

So The Retro Dance Party was born. Originally christened Back to the 80s Dance Party, it became a smash hit immediately, igniting something in the DFW community that clearly hadn’t been scratched in a long, long time: the primal, uncomplicated need to dance until your feet ache and your throat is raw from singing along.

Nine years later, after raising well over $150,000 for designated charities across its run, the event is back for an Encore on October 24, 2026 — and this time, the decade dialed in is the 90s.

So What Is It, Exactly?

The Retro Dance Party is a full-throttle, professionally produced dance party and benefit event held at The Marq in Southlake, Texas. It is not a gala. It is not a fundraiser dinner. There are no speeches imploring you to open your wallet.

There is a massive dance floor with neon lights blazing, and live performances on a stage. From the moment you walk in, every sonic and visual cue in the room exists to do exactly one thing: make you forget every woe you walked in with and move your body like it’s 1999.

For this Encore Event, the theme is precisely that — Best of the 90s — priced with irresistible wit at $99 to go back to ’99.

The Lineup That Makes It Legendary

This isn’t a party with a playlist. It’s an experience featuring:

• DJ Bueller — a name that carries genuine weight, with credits including Sirius/XM and KROQ. The man knows how to read a room and hold it hostage in the best possible way.
• Starstruck Tribute Show— a live band that brings the era roaring back to life on stage.
• Some of the top tribute artists in the country, delivering performances that blur the line between memory and the present moment.
• Music videos projected throughout the night, folding you back into the specific texture of an era.
• The beloved Red Carpet Experience — step-and-repeat backdrop included, which means your costume will be photographed and it will be glorious.

And yes — costumes. People arrive as Blues Brothers, as Austin Powers, as Prince draped in purple velvet, as Oingo Boingo devotees in vintage tees. The costume commitment at this event is not casual. It is competitive. Come dressed, or come prepared to feel underdressed.

This Year’s Cause: Stepping Stones Foundation

Every dollar of charitable proceeds from the Encore Event goes to Stepping Stones Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to at-risk youth in the Keller, Texas area.

Their work is the kind that doesn’t make headlines until you hear the specifics: Stepping Stones recently intervened to rescue three children discovered living in a home without running water or electricity. They didn’t stop at rescue — they have walked alongside those children’s educational journey ever since, providing the kind of sustained, invested support that transforms a crisis into a trajectory.

That’s who you’re dancing for. And here’s the radical brilliance of the model: nobody tells you that while you’re on the floor. You’re not guilted into generosity. You simply buy a ticket, show up in your finest 90s regalia, and the dancing itself becomes the donation.

What Your Ticket Gets You

The Retro Dance Party Encore is a full night, not a moment:

• Open bar — adult beverages flow all evening to keep you refreshed and your inhibitions appropriately loosened
• Light bites from Food Partners — enough to fuel you, not enough to slow you down
• Access to all performances — DJ Bueller, Star Struck, live tribute performances, the works
• The Red Carpet Experience — step into the frame, strike the pose, own the decade
• A night that people who have attended before describe with the particular reverence reserved for things they didn’t expect to love as much as they did

The Thing That Sets It Apart

Every city has charity galas. Every October calendar is lousy with benefit dinners and silent auctions and earnest paddle raises. The Retro Dance Party occupies a category of exactly one, because it made a deliberate choice that most organizations never dare to make:

It’s just a dance party.

No donation talk. No somber interludes. And no obligation performed in front of strangers. Just pure, percussive, neon-drenched joy — and a dance floor big enough to lose yourself in.

The people who come back year after year aren’t coming back because they feel like they should. They are coming back because they have not felt that free since back in the day.

Get Your Tickets

The Retro Dance Party Encore Event takes place 10.24.26 at The Marq in Southlake, Texas.

Tickets are $99 — a price that doubles as the punchline and the promise.

Dust off your finest 90s look. The dance floor is waiting.