No one understands the joy of seeing a band from the 00s quite like an ageing millennial. At Bloc Party’s Melbourne show this past Sunday, my bestie and I followed the growing crowds of 30-and-older, skinny jean wearing, middle-aged hipsters towards John Cain Arena, excited to revel in the nostalgic music of our youth.

Because we’re old now, we did the sensible thing and booked reserved seating. But like any reasonable gig-goer, we knew implicitly that just because the seats are there, it doesn’t mean everyone is expected to sit in them for the duration of the set.

I would have thought it obvious that attending a rock gig entails a certain commitment to bodily movement. It’s nice that we can choose to bow out of the sweaty, heaving, foot-crushing, back pain-inducing revelry of the mosh pit but having a seat doesn’t mean we’re completely dead yet, it just means we’re selective about when we dance and no longer have the capacity to stand for more than 20 minutes straight without discomfort.

So when the band broke into the first banger of the night, Helicopter, a moderate number of people in the premium reserved seating stalls stood up to have a boogie. Nothing wild was going on – some head bopping, foot tapping – the usual Melbourne hipster dance moves.

One of these pioneers happened to be an exceptionally tall man in the first few rows. And the audience member seated behind him was not having a bar of it. Cue shouting, gesturing and repeated attempts to make the dancer sit down.

As the show went on, this exchange erupted again and again. The dancer eventually shouted, arms opened wide in disbelief, “It’s a gig, mate! It’s a gig!”, while some of us in the rows behind them started chiming in with, “Let the man dance!”

I observed this with some dismay. Now, I’ll be honest and admit that I have on occasion expressed annoyance at people standing in front of me at gigs. Not to them, obviously, because I’m not that entitled, but I’ve muttered a few choice words to my friends about how annoying it is when a dancer blocks my view. It is annoying. I’m very short and can almost never see the stage.

But just because something annoys you doesn’t mean it’s actually “wrong” – and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to ruin someone else’s experience at a public event where they’re really just doing what it says to do on the label.

Buy a ticket to a gig? People might dance. Some people will dance while standing up. Not everyone who goes to a Bloc Party show is going to be content to sit with their arms crossed and tap their feet as if they’re at the opera (I actually have no idea what people at the opera do).

The thing that most struck me was that everyone at that show – and I feel confident saying this based on the fact that I didn’t see a single face that looked under 30 – was there because they loved the music in that special way that you do when it was the soundtrack to your coming of age.

We all swayed to So Here We Are and we all screamed the words to Positive Tension – I’m sure many of us were remembering doing the exact same things at house parties when we were 17. It was a lovely moment of solidarity and common experience, the way that all live music always reminds me how special art is, and how lucky we are when we experience it together.

So to have someone turn a good night into a nightmare because they can’t handle being in public with other people without trying to control their every movement was a real bummer. At the end of the show, every single person in our seated section surged to their feet to dance to Ratchet but the miserable man who had started the argument stayed seated, his every side crowded by dancing bodies. I hope making his point was worth it. He missed out on a very good boogie.

• Zoya Patel is a writer and editor based in Canberra