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Cultural Festivals Challenges
Dance concert review example
Dance concert review example
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It was a cool, October Saturday evening when I arrived at the venue. I heard the music thumping as soon as I stepped out of my Uber. The entrance was mobbed with dozens of people lined up out the door, waiting to get in. I quickly took my place in the line. Hearing the continuous beat of the music reflect off the walls, my excitement became real. In no time I get to the front of the line, handed the bouncer my ticket and walked in. Lights were flashing everywhere in extravagant, blinding colors. The music was so loud it immersed your entire world, shutting out everything around you. From the entrance I entered into a wide, open room, the size of a warehouse with two bars on either side, a gigantic dance floor in the middle and the main stage towards the back with the DJ booth and LED visuals screens. The room smelled distinctly of marijuana and nearly every person had some sort of drink in their hand, clearly a liberal environment. The place was packed. Dozens of people at the bars, and possibly a few hundred on the dance floor, with everyone grooving and swaying to the music. The speakers enabled you hear every individual beat and melody of the music, while the …show more content…
Seeing for the first time how the crowd interacted with each other was amazing. What astounded me even more were some of the rave “rituals”. For example, next to me two people were dancing together. One of them wore a colorful mask made out of beads and had two dozen beaded bracelets up his arm, while the other was a typically dressed, everyday person. I watched these two people dance together, lock hands, and exchange bracelets. This display of comradery between these people was beautiful and made me feel connected and accepted by those around me. It defines the interconnectivity that these events bring. The good vibes, the culture, how the audience interacted with each other made my experience all that much more
After the long wait to get in you found your seat and waited for the group who was first. You would figure that know one would be doing any drugs due to the search before you got in there, but I was wrong not even ten minutes before the show you could smell the pot in the air. That was one of the few things wrong with this wild and crazy concert. After it was over that was all you smelled like and you were feeling the contact buzz as it felt like things were moving in slow motion.
Ten minutes after lining up, I went inside the nightclub. From the door, I could hear the song and the beat of the bass so loud that my heart could feel it. Inside the nightclub, I saw people were dancing everywhere, on dancing floor, on their own seats, everywhere. They would dance and take a big gulp of their beer. Even the bartenders were dancing too, following the rhythm of the loud funky music. The rainbow rays of light moved through the club to make the mood even more exciting and funky.
The nightclub, is an aged, small wood structure in Rhode Island. The club is reported to have a capacity of 182 people. On February 20th 2003, more than 400 fans packed into the small club to see the band. Although there are discrepancies between reports of how many people were in attendance, it is obvious that the number is well over twice the club's capacity. During the performance, as part of the act, pyrotechnics were deployed.
Raves are often thought of as a “religious experience” displaying the audience as a “dance tribe” causing these electronic dance music culture “as spiritualties of life” (St John 12). There is no denying that the rave consists of “cultures whose participants committed to an ethos most famously expressed as Peace, Love, Unity and Respect (PLUR)” (St John 3). These participants have reported life- changing experiences, transcendence, and even conveying anecdotes of “ascension and re- enchantment” (St John 3). According to Graham St. John, “ [the] rave exemplifies the cultural phenomenon of religion, particularly that which, Bastide regarded ‘instituant’ or ‘savage’ religion rather than the domesticated or ‘instituted’ forms associated with institutional religion,” (St. John 3). Essentially, the rave functions as a religious community but not in the traditional sense; the DJ is thought of as the shaman and the dance floor is the communita (St John 5). Additionally, both the “ecstatic” experiences and ritual framework of raves intensifies the sense of belonging and demonstrates communal characteristics. The ravers experience a reconnection endemic and is considered to be “tribal” by the participants (St. John 9-10). Furthermore, this tribal nature of the ravers allows them to experience a sense of connectedness and inner peace with themselves. When a raver described this feeling as stating, “The MDMA experience makes you perceive by a kind of intuition, the real essence of your being. It’s not something elaborated by your conscious or unconscious mind, it’s something you suddenly realize you know without any doubt. You know the truth because you have experienced it. Now that you know that you, me, everything is one, or God as you wi...
We arrived at the concert around sun set. As we pulled up to the entrance, all I could see was a mass of humans. They scattered around the front of the building, some going in and coming out. In the middle of all the transportation devices there were a few men, in black suits, who pointed in different directions. They stopped groups of humans to allow the transportation devices by and vice versa. We now left our "car" with a group of other "cars" and made our way to the building. As we entered, we were told to form lines. At the end of these lines, we were greeted by a male human who patted each person, head to toe. He took a rectangle piece of material from our hands, and put a different piece of material around my wrist. After this we were ready to enter.
By the time we got to the dance in the cafeteria, the music was pumping, people dancing their butts off, and me, hyper as anything. I was anything but bored. Ready to start jumping as soon as I got there, I raced into the cafeteria and brought my friend , Jimmy , with me. I had never felt so energized at a social event. I felt as if the music was literally flowing through my veins, pulsing with every move, and I was...high. But I wasn't. I was normal but I felt like I was high. Did being high feel like this? Had I had too much caffeine? Damn! I have to suck some helium out of those floating balloons! THe thoughs would not stop racing. Although I had never been to a rave, I thought that this dance felt like one. Euphoric, and as energized as a duracell battery after about 24 hours of charging, I hadn't checked my watch for at least two hours.
The mosh pit was monstrous and seemed to gain in size as it rotated in circles and swallowed innocent bystanders into the craziness. People were being knocked over everywhere and smashed by the surging waves of dancers. People were body surfing and there seemed to be chaos going on everywhere. After that, the seventh song they played was "Hobophobic" (Scared of bums not just because they stink bad. Not just because they're crackers.
Kate's family had rented out a ballroom in a neighborhood country club, and we intended to dance the night away. As I approached the scene, disco lights streamed through the large windows and ran all over the lawn. Music enveloped the parking lot as my adrenaline began to elevate. I sauntered in, waving to my friend...
So began my two-year ethnography on the American rave subculture. The scene described above was my initiation into the underground subculture where rave kids, typically under twenty-one years old, are given secret invitations to attend private warehouse parties with dancing, drugs, and thousands of their closest friends. Because of my youthful and unorthodox appearance, I was invited to join the then-highly-exclusive underground scene and attended numerous raves in several major cities in North Carolina. Although my chosen subculture was not typically examined by academia, I conducted an academic ethnography of what Maton (1993) describes as a "group whose world views, values and practices diverge from mainstream North American and social science cultures" (747). As a result, I received three graduate credit hours for "supervised research in ethnography" and conducted what may be the only academic ethnography on raves.
Once I let my thoughts return to the music, I knew what lie ahead of me. I tapped the nearest "big guy" on the shoulder and pointed towards the ceiling; the universal signal on the concert floor. He nodded, grabbed my foot, and pushed me on top of the crowd. Once I was up there was no turning back. Soon strong hands were surfing me towards the stage. I had the best view in the house and reveled in the moment. I was fueled by an adrenaline rush that was only heightened by the fusion of the music and the energy of the crowd.
...vy urban dance tracks accompanying the rides are making my heart wallop so hard that I can’t stop jumping up and down with the unbalanced rhythm. As the night gets eerie and cold, the deafening screams and screeches slowly gets quieter and tranquil. The rides come to a halt. One by one the lights turn off leaving the twinkling stars to once again regain their glory. Exhausted, flushed faces rush past each other over the drink cans and crisp packets that lay lazily embedded and forgotten about on the underfoot of the mosaic of feet of people rushing to reach the exit before the huge congestion takes place. The humidity of the swarms of people starts to make my skin feel clammy. My parents, my friend and I follow the rest of the exhausted crowd towards the large gates. I clutch my new friend to my chest and glide happily out of the gates, into the mysterious darkness.
Without warning, the lights went dark. This was the moment I had been waiting for. My adrenaline went through the roof. The time had finally come that I would get to see and hear my first live concert.
Then audience members who were perfect strangers who were screaming loudest would turn to each other with knowing glances and smile because they were sharing the same excitement and connecting with one another over their love of this man’s music. There was no pushing or shoving to get closer to the stage – it wasn’t that kind of crowd. Instead, there was mutual respect for one another’s space within the confines of the too-small venue. Nobody wanted to be the person who ruined it for someone else. It was this respect that made the audience members’ connections with one another that much stronger – we were all here to listen to this wonderful man’s music and see his performance – and, of course, we were here to enjoy it.
The audience and I, sat down at tables with food and some sort of beverage, chatting with our friends and family during the performance. When every song was over, we clapped and after a few songs there was a little bit of cheering! Since, I have only been to a concert I will compare it to this. At a concert, I would rate the audience’s interaction with the performance as very involved. I feel this way because the audience tends to cheer before and after every song and sing along to every song played. The main focus of a concert is the concert, whereas here at the Portage Crossing Market District, the performance felt like background music and the main focus was hanging out with your family and