Dancing in the park

Earthdance Sydney is an art and music event with a social conscience. It’s also one of the few dance music festivals you can safely take your parents to.

But more importantly, Earthdance is a precursor to World Peace Day on September 21.

“The really important thing about Earthdance is how it unites different factions in the community,” says Earthdance media coordinator Chris Honnery. “We’ve got a children’s area. We’ve got things that would qualify as high art. Then we’ve got the musical side of things. The charm is its ambition.”

Incredibly, most of the performers are playing for free, while entry is by gold coin donation.

Aside from its focus on families and charities like the Wilderness Society and the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience, Earthdance will also feature an Earth Village arena and a Living Essence space offering group meditation, plus there will be an introduction to Tantra.

“We’ve got these associations of Tantra with sex,” says Honnery. “But it appears it’s far deeper than that.”

Beyond the music stages, Sydney Earthdance will feature live art and installations by the likes of Ana Wojak, Gavin Barbey, Anthony Babbici and Elizabeth Day.
Another program highlight is Kreative Kids World, where a guy named Pterodactyl Man will enlist pint-sized recruits to make live sample-based music. There will also be a performer blowing 20-metre wide bubbles into the air.

“We made a conscious effort to not do gimmicky entertainment for kids,” Honnery says. “It’s conceptual and educational and awareness-oriented.”
Earthdance has its roots in the bush. Australian Chris Deckker established the event in 1996 as a kind of hippy throwback dedicated to peace and unity. While those ideals have remained, the event has expanded to the point where it is now held in more than 60 countries.

The Sydney event is in the hands of local dance music impresarios, Marco Mazzucco and Raf Gimelstein, known for their Deep As Funk parties.

The pair have assembled a killer line up of artists, with Fretless, Theatre of Disco, The Versionaries, Deepchild, Mark Pritchard & Steve Spacek (UK), Kingtide and S.Y.L.K all performing.

The Earthdance organisers are quick to disassociate themselves from the city’s other major festivals, which they say offer little more than an “opportunity to get tanked and act like an idiot”.

Last year, 40,000 people descended on Sydney Park in St Peters for Earthdance. This year, the event has been relocated to Prince Alfred Park and they are expecting an even larger turn out.
And though dancing is not compulsory, it is recommended.

“It’s all about peace and uniting. We use music and art as a medium to do that. So often at these festivals that ideal is perverted for whatever reason.
“We don’t do it to make money. Every artist, we’ve researched them and put them on the bill because they believe in the concept.”

The similarly idealistic New York-based musician Andy Butler from Hercules & Love Affair spoke about the benefits of dancing in front of strangers in The Guardian recently. Butler said: “I think to do a little interpretive dance to express yourself in front of 20 people every day would change the way people approach each other. It’s a good wholesome thing to do. It lets your guard down and communicates so much to other people without saying a word.”

While Butler probably wasn’t thinking of Earthdance when he made those comments, his remarks neatly sums up the ethos behind this global movement.

Earthdance Sydney, Saturday September 13, Prince Alfred Park, Surry Hills; www.earthdance.org.au