文档已移动

At most music festivals, we’ve grow to be conditioned to anticipate traces longer than airport safety, levels crammed tighter than rush-hour subways and dancefloors on asphalt heaps. We Belong Right here flips every of these issues on their head.

By designing festivals round seamless entry, spacious dancefloors and scenic venues, the boutique pageant model is elevating the bar for the reside music expertise.

“It’s known as dance music… it’s best to be capable to dance,” Justin Dauman and Charles Hochfelder, the co-founders of We Belong Right here, inform EDM.com.

The duo grew disillusioned with the state of dance music just a few years in the past. They seen that their associates, who liked going to exhibits, stopped going as a lot as they grew older. “Why does somebody who liked Extremely after they had been 18 not return 5 or 10 years later?” Dauman puzzled. “It’s not that they don’t love music anymore, however issues like getting smushed in a crowd matter extra.”

The COVID-19 pandemic, Dauman mentioned, was the turning level: “After each of us misplaced all of our work on this trade in the course of the pandemic, we didn’t need to leap again in until we had been doing one thing significant.”

The duo evaluated every thing they didn’t like in regards to the reside music expertise and launched We Belong Right here to rectify the most important ache factors they discovered. Their core precept was that their occasions must happen in distinctive places. “We do landmarks, naturally scenic settings, or locations which have historic significance,” Dauman explains. “We’re bored with going to exhibits in warehouses and parking heaps.”

In October 2021, We Belong Right here held its debut occasion inside the previous New York Inventory Trade constructing, reworking its historic marble halls right into a membership night time with MEDUZA. From there, they’ve continued to decide on venues with character.

In New York, that meant Pier 16, the oldest energetic pier within the metropolis providing sweeping views of the New York skyline; and Governors Island, a former army base turned nationwide park with the Statue of Liberty as its backdrop.

In Miami, they’ve introduced their flagship annual music pageant to Historic Virginia Key Seashore Park, a waterfront oasis with panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean; and held occasions contained in the historic Alfred I. duPont Constructing, the town’s solely Artwork Deco skyscraper in-built 1939.

Whereas most organizers pack venues to the brim, Dauman and Hochfelder deliberately undersell tickets relative to venue capability. “We genuinely simply need to make the attendee expertise as nice as doable, generally to a fault the place financially it doesn’t make sense for us,” Hochfelder says.

Their 360° stage idea—artists acting from the center of the gang with none LED partitions—turns the outsized dancefloor right into a circle of shared vitality with room to bounce and sight-lines in each path.

All of those are measures aimed toward constructing a way of group that impressed the title We Belong Right here. “If you happen to really feel such as you belong someplace, you don’t need to go away,” Dauman and Hochfelder consider. “And that’s one of many largest emotions we hope to offer all of the attendees.”

They consider that belonging isn’t one thing you possibly can slap on a flyer. “The title isn’t a gimmick,” Dauman asserts. “We even restrict how usually our emblem seems onsite.”

As an alternative, it’s about “getting the little issues proper to make sure each attendee is a VIP.” That interprets to brief traces for drinks and clear, air-conditioned restroom trailers as a substitute of grim porta-potties.

“The extra time that you just spend ready for one thing, the extra a 10-minute dialog with a stranger turns into a significant inconvenience,” Dauman explains. “But when every thing is handy and easy, you don’t really feel rushed. You’re feeling relaxed and open-minded to satisfy new folks.”

Additionally they provide loads of shaded lounge areas with daybeds, cushioned seating and quiet corners, giving revelers significant methods to recoup between lengthy stretches on the dancefloor.

A lot of their design philosophy comes from their love of home events. “Everybody at a home get together was sort of a pal of a pal ultimately, even if you happen to didn’t know them, even if you happen to didn’t have an curiosity in speaking to different folks, you continue to felt such as you had been at one thing that was a group,” Dauman and Hochfelder mentioned.

However whereas home events usually include the chaos and rowdiness of youth, We Belong Right here isn’t chasing that vitality. As an alternative, they’re targeted on designing occasions for a “mature viewers.”

Most music festivals are both 18+ or all-ages. We Belong Right here occasions are strictly 21+. “Maturity isn’t nearly being older,” Dauman expands. “It’s about the place you’re in life. We’re not right here to evaluate individuals who simply need to get together and get wild—however our vitality goes into creating one thing for individuals who need music, dancing, and group to be a part of their lives long-term.”

In observe, this doesn’t imply door insurance policies or concrete methods to curate the gang. As an alternative, they consider that each one the ideas they construct their occasions on will create a domino impact of individuals self-selecting themselves into the mature viewers We Belong Right here goals to domesticate.

“I feel we realized we had been onto one thing after our first Miami pageant in 2022,” Hochfelder remembers. “We had been getting so many compliments on the gang. Particularly on Reddit, which is a brutal place, so Redditors could be cutthroat in the event that they didn’t resonate with We Belong Right here.”

That validation gave them the boldness to scale on their very own phrases. Over the previous 4 years internet hosting exhibits and festivals in Miami and New York, Dauman and Hochfelder have resisted the temptation to develop too quick. They’re continuously weighing the right way to broaden with out sacrificing the intimacy that defines We Belong Right here.

“It’s a problem we’re battling each single day,” Dauman admits.

Because the workforce grows, they’ve made a degree of bringing in individuals who first skilled We Belong Right here as followers. “All the things we did to get Miami off the bottom is now the accountability of somebody on our workforce who’s actually captivated with it,” he explains about their hiring practices.

Balancing development with intimacy additionally means drawing boundaries on scale. “We don’t need to be Extremely or Coachella measurement,” Hochfelder says. “We’d quite broaden to extra cities than do bigger-sized occasions. When you hit over 30,000 folks, it’s a lot tougher to regulate the standard.”

That “mixture of being affected person however resilient” is what led to their three-day boutique pageant in Central Park final 12 months. “If we had a really particular timeline that every thing needed to occur by, it wouldn’t have occurred. However we had been useless set that if we had been going to do one thing in New York, it wanted to be actually particular and distinctive.”

Initially deliberate for 2023, they needed to push again their timeline a full 12 months to fine-tune their execution and reduce exterior dangers and stress. “It’s arguably probably the most well-known park on this planet, we needed to be very meticulous and cautious,” Dauman says about constructing the operational muscle on the degree Central Park demanded.

When it lastly occurred in 2024, their takeover of Central Park’s storied Wollman Rink was a roaring success. That includes headliners like Kaskade, FISHER and Monolink in addition to native expertise like Ria Mehta, Shahar and Stello, the curation matches We Belong Right here’s ethos of “mixing ‘industrial’ and ‘underground’ artists in a tasteful manner that appeals equally to the seasoned fan of dance music and people with no prior attachment to the style.”

After proving a dance music pageant may thrive in Central Park, Dauman and Hochfelder are bringing We Belong Right here again to Wollman Rink subsequent weekend for one more three-day takeover. This 12 months’s headliners embrace Lane 8, Porter Robinson and Nora En Pure.

However the return to Central Park is just half the New York story this 12 months. For the primary time, We Belong Right here is increasing throughout the river with a Brooklyn debut in Greenpoint, turning the neighborhood’s waterfront into what they describe as an oasis.

Not like the Central Park lineup, which largely options melodic home, the Greenpoint lineup has a unique theme every night time. Friday kicks off with a “high-energy begin to the weekend” led by SIDEPIECE and Gordo. Saturday shifts gears right into a “experience by way of indie and experimental sounds” with Elderbrook and MGMT. And Sunday closes with a journey “rooted in deep sounds and emotional builds” from Franky Wah and Carl Cox.

Nonetheless, for Dauman and Hochfelder, probably the most rewarding a part of operating We Belong Right here isn’t sold-out exhibits or big-name bookings.

“Having the ability to present alternatives on our workforce for individuals who really want it—and provides them a platform to make the scene higher—that’s probably the most rewarding half,” Dauman says. “I understand how exhausting it’s to interrupt into this trade, even simply attempting to get an internship is so troublesome.”

It’s the serendipitous moments on the finish of a pageant weekend for Hochfelder. “Often on the finish I get fairly emotional,” he gushes. “I look out and suppose, how on earth did we do that? Seeing folks off the dancefloor with their arm round their associate or simply sitting with associates and laughing, it’s indescribable, I’m even getting slightly emotional simply desirous about it.”

Get tickets for We Belong Right here’s New York occasions right here.

The publish “It’s Referred to as Dance Music… You Ought to Be Capable of Dance”: How We Belong Right here Is Fixing the Largest Flaws of Music Festivals appeared first on EDM.

Source link