Roches

Bustin' a move or two
Electronic music festival booms on City Hall square
Ben Rayner
POP MUSIC CRITIC


JIM ROSS/TORONTO STAR
George Fewster, 21, of Kingston, left, dances with Tim Panting, 17, of Orangeville at the iDance Festival yesterday.


JIM ROSS/TORONTO STAR
A RAVE: Mobs of electronic music fans and curious passers-by converged on Nathan Phillips Square yesterday.


JIM ROSS/TORONTO STAR
MOVING TO THE BEAT: Armenio Oliveira, 18 of Brampton dances with Kirsten Kisiela, 17, of Burlington.
Ravin' at city hall
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The absence of a galvanizing political purpose and the encroachment of a few corporate logos on the party did nothing to dampen the enthusiastic spirit of this year's iDance event, as mobs of electronic music fans and curious passers-by converged on Nathan Phillips Square yesterday in even greater numbers than for the original to toast Toronto's booming dance community.

By late afternoon, attendance at the free, day-long bash had already matched last August's 15,000-strong show of support for the city's perennially embattled rave and club scene, and organizers estimated as many as 30,000 people would pass through the square and bust a move or two by the end of the night.

"It's a beautiful day, it's great music and people are here united with a common cause, even if it's just hanging out with their friends and meeting some new people," opined DJ, iDance emcee and tireless rave champion Don "Dr. Trance" Berns from the side of the stage.

"This could be the beginning here of a Love Parade or our own annual electronic music festival like Detroit's. This year it's one stage, next year it'll be two stages, the next year it'll be three stages. Hopefully it's only going to get bigger ... That's why I played `It's Our Future' at the end of my set."

A steady barrage of beats, supplied by such impressive out-of-town imports as U.K. techno heavy Dave Clarke, Chicago house guru DJ Sneak, Robert de la Gauthier, Andy C and local favourites Freaky Flow and MC Flipside, Anabolic Frolic, Mystical Influence and Big League Chu, among others, and the prospect of one last outdoor party before summer's passing made iDance an easy sell, but the festival adhered to its protest-rally roots by reminding attendees at every turn that the fight for the right to dance in Toronto is not yet over.

As with last year, a series of guest speakers, including pro-rave councillor Olivia Chow, former mayors Barbara Hall and John Sewell and civil liberties expert Alan Young, voiced their support for a musical and cultural movement that, they agreed, has received undue harassment at the hands of the media and the authorities. And whereas the first iDance was staged to protest (successfully, it turned out) Toronto council's muddled ban on raves on city property, this year's event attempted to publicize what local rave and club promoters say are stealth tactics by the police to stamp the scene out of existence.

By bringing the "rave" concept, complete with a blindingly well-lit disco ball suspended by crane 60 feet over the crowd at sundown, out of its wee-hours netherworld and into the sunlight, iDance organizers hoped to demonstrate to the wider public that electronic music fans are just as non-threatening, if not less so, as the packs of boozy boomers who routinely cavort to the Guess Who and Don Henley at the Molson Amphitheatre. Encouragingly, no arrests or major incidents had been reported by sunset, but the Daily Bread Food Bank had received enough donations from iDance supporters that it was halfway toward smashing a record for one-day donations.

Although iDance president Will Chang conceded he'd been dogged by reporters' stubborn questions about drug use earlier in the day, he was upbeat that, by and large, the public's perception of dance culture had improved since the first rally. Evidence, for instance, that corporations are aware of how large and influential post-rave culture really is flapped in the wind around the square, which was bedecked with banners for sponsors like Microsoft's X-Box game system, The Toronto Star and Eye magazine

"The media have listened to our speakers, the stories are written, the message gets out and people listen," Chang observed backstage. "I've spoken to a lot of people who just came up to me and said `Wow, where can I get a hold of some of this music?' And they went and bought iDance CDs."

(ref: Bustin' a move or two)


iDance was brought to you by Microsoft Xbox

Everybodies_Daddy

I personally didn't feel threatened by the x-box banners... a green X covering the speakers for a free night with Andy C and DJ Sneak... I'll take that trade any day.

MCED

What the hell is an xbox anyway?

__________________
Dirty Little Secrets

Hot + Dirty

=cyprus=

^^^ Who knows who cares! Something like a gaming system I herd? I don't know...

Either way it is not going to make me go out and buy one just cause iDANCE was brought to us by that 'thing'

"JUST DON'T LOOK, JUST DON'T LOOK!"

Roches

hmm..yeah, true, true...

i haven't paid for a microsoft product since i got windows 95 bundled with a puter in 97.

so, MS has a long history of giving me free stuff
and they might as well give me free parties, right?

i'm not buying an xbox, so they wasted their money on me. you could think of it that way.

i think i will, because if i don't, the consequences are unthinkable.

ehh.. if you don't know what an xbox is though, thats why there's a picture and a link. frolic *should* get paid for it, but he won't, so... hmm, click on the banners too, and then don't buy whatever they sell.