‘Have a Nice Day Crew’ grooving to the tunes of DJ Adam Lipson at 251 Palm Beach’s Michael Jackson dance party and dance-off in Palm Beach Friday. Gary Coronado/The Palm Beach Post | See more photos from Friday night’s dance-off.

It’s a good night that starts at a sock hop and ended at an ’80s-inspired break dance and moonwalking exhibition.

Earlier in the evening, we hit the Nifty 50′s party at Lake Worth’s The Cottage, an Isley Brothers/Buddy Holly/Big Bopper-accented benefit for the Lake Worth Playhouse. Special guests? The cast of the Playhouse’s upcoming production of “Grease,” who performed “There Are Worst Things I Could Do” and “Greased Lightening.” (And the joyous vulgarity of the lyrics of that one, and how they’re bleeped out every time “Grease” plays on commercial TV, never cease to tickle me.)

Katie McBroom, who plays Frenchie in Lake Worth Playhouse

That’s part of the discovery of that time that I think every generation goes through, probably at the hands of the Travolta/Newton-John movie version of “Grease” – the realization that your generation didn’t invent sex and naughtiness, and that even back in the Fifties, which subsequent generations like to think of as closed-up and boring, kids were randy (it wasn’t the girl’s calculus scores that made the Isley’s want to “Shout.”) Know what else I liked? Seeing a bunch of 50 and 60-year-old couples twisting and shouting to the sounds of Mike Miller, doo-wop singer from The Mystics and Harmony Street and current radio host for Wellington’s W4CY, and unselfconsciously twisting the night away without seemingly caring about not being 25, or loving the classics.

The crowd at 251 Palm Beach was younger, but chronologically diverse – 20-something girlfriends gathered on the floor to dance in a flock while guys looked for a way to break in, and a 50-something couple twirled nearby. The ocassion – the Michael Jackson Dance-Off, DJ’d by Adam Lipson, featuring five MJ-loving contestants vying for a dinner for two and one night’s accomodation at The Resort At Singer Island, and judged by…me. (I’m not a professional dancer, but I came in third in a local celebrity ballroom dance competition. Does that count?)

The winner of the contest was WPB’s Kris Kemp, because of his break dance stylings, but everybody in attendance got a treat – to dance to some of Michael’s best, from his Jackson 5 days (an amped-up “I Want You Back”) to his mid-solo career (“Off The Wall”) and later (“Remember The Time”). It was funny – the night was billed as all Michael Jackson, but every once in a while, Adam would stick in something else ’80s, like Billy Ocean’s “Carribean Queen,” or something MJ-inspired (Justin Timberlake’s “Senorita”).

And when he did, the dance floor would get clear. I guess when it comes to Michael Jackson’s music, the true believers want no imitations.