It’s called the Shaft. A disco two hundred meters underground, in an old silver mine. The only way down is the elevator.

I ride the cage down with twelve other people.

The woman on my left has shaved her hair in a stripe above the left ear. She wears a gray Soundgarden T-shirt, with a cigarette burn through the O. The collar is stretched. When she grabs the iron bar and leans forward, it falls open. I see down her T-shirt. She pinches it shut with two fingers.

The woman next to her, probably her sister, has the same stripe shaved above the other ear. She wears a men’s shirt with the sleeves torn off. It almost hides her red hot pants.

The sister isn’t holding on to anything. She’s looking up at the cables.

The cage drops and jerks. She takes two quick steps sideways and grabs my shoulder. She says sorry in Danish. I nod, and she lets go of me.

The woman in the Soundgarden whispers something in her ear, and the other one shoves her.

I hold a bar with my left hand and lean my hip against another. Every time the cage shakes, the metal digs into me.

Two men across from me argue about whether there is still silver down there.

A man at the back wears a reflective work vest over bare skin. He has a borrowed miner’s helmet with the lamp switched on. He taps with the back of the helmet against the mesh. Then he sings.

“Two times seven point five is four… We found the ceiling, but we lost the floor.”

The cage wobbles as it sinks. Black rock slides past the bars. Now and then a bare bulb. Flash, dark. Flash, dark. My ears pop. Halfway down I feel the bass coming up the shaft.

The cage opens. I step out into a dark that has height. There are no lamps, only torches. The shadows move over the walls and over the people.

The drums are weird. Every kick hits my chest, and then the cavern sends it back a second time. The snare goes up into the dark and dies there. The bass doesn’t sound like music anymore. It comes out of the tunnels and up through my boots.

Nobody down here knows what dancing is supposed to look like, and nobody is checking. It is my first time down, and I cannot stop looking. Some stamp. Some fold in half. By a side tunnel, where the rock comes down low, a man shakes his hands at the stone. His tongue goes in and out. It looks as if he is licking the silver veins above his head.

One man has long blond hair and looks like a media manager. White shirt, cuffs rolled up, no tie. The creases from the dry cleaner are still in the sleeves. His hair whips across his face, and he pounds his boots into the dust.

A few meters away dances a woman in her forties, in a tight skirt. Her glasses are pushed up on her forehead. There is a red mark on her nose where they used to sit. She catches the eye of the media manager. The skirt is too tight for big steps, so she dances with the top half. She folds at the waist and snaps back up. On every drum she jabs her elbows out. The glasses bounce.

The air is warm and wet. It smells of sweat and of the old timber the miners put up to reinforce the roof. I expect the walls to be cold. I put my palm on the rock. It’s warm.

I move on, and then I see the woman. She could be twenty-five. She could be thirty-five. Blue top, a short hula skirt in yellow and orange. She is barefoot.

Both of her arms are raised, palms open, as if she has just won something. Her eyes are closed. Her head falls back. Her body is almost still, but her hips are not. They roll and roll. The drums land, and her hips answer a half-beat later.

She rocks from one foot to the other. The weight goes into the right foot, and the right hip goes out. The left foot rests on its toes. Then the hips trade places.

I step in closer. Too close for my own comfort.

She has been doing this for a long time. Now the leg that takes her weight has begun to tremble. It starts at the heel and climbs to the knee. Every breath in catches at the top. Her mouth is open. Half joy, half needing the air.