She can’t get in, but she doesn’t seem to mind either. Israeli DJ Lady Dragon steps out of the long queue in front of De Brakke Grond, where hundreds of producers and DJs participate in workshops and masterclasses during the Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE), and rolls a cigarette. Too bad. “Do you have headphones with you?” she asks. ‘Listen to my new track, I just made it. It’s not finished yet, but tell me what you think.’
Lady Dragon, who can hear from that track in an atmospheric trance, has just flown in from Israel: yet again to ADE, at the last minute. Not even to party, but mainly to network, for example queuing in front of a tent that you don’t fit in. ‘You can almost do anthropological research here,’ she says. ‘See what the profession looks like.’ And put yourself in the spotlight with colleagues or any other music professionals. ‘What’s your zero six? I’ll also app you my track. But don’t share, please.’
Anyone who lives in Amsterdam knows it. The annual five-day dance event has become colossal, a noisy monster taking possession of the city. This year parties were held from the old Bijlmerbajes to an office called RAW, of a well-known clothing brand. And yes: local residents of, for example, the Hollandsche Manege on the Overtoom also noticed that ADE had started again after a few years of forced rest, when their crockery danced cheering out of the kitchen cupboards to a bass four-quarter time from the horse stables. There was a lot of complaining and probably not only about the Overtoom, but that too is part of the largest manifestation for dance and club culture in the world. Amsterdam can also be proud of that.
Those ADE parties, which are sold out without exception, are a boost for the Amsterdam nightclubs. They have had difficult years and are still in a state of emergency because the prospects have not improved due to the current crisis cluster bomb.
But ADE is also important because at the conference worlds come together, and dance culture and what it can mean for humanity is discussed in a global context. This year there is a lot of attention for the emerging club life in the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab Spring, however extinguished it may have been, has triggered something from 2010 that is now, after corona, really coming to fruition.
Clubs are opening in Bahrain, Tunisia and Palestine and the first dance festivals have been spotted. The story of Palestinian DJ Sama Abdulhadi is impressive, who tells how a modest techno scene is bubbling in cities like Ramallah. “All music in Palestine is political and patriotic, from pop to hip-hop,” she says. ‘You are constantly reminded of the misery in our country and that is why something like techno is an excuse. You can get lost in something else for a while, with each other, not thinking about war or violence.’
Abdulhadi first played cassettes at parties and then managed to get his hands on a cheap mixer that became the beating heart of a small music community. “Everyone used that thing.” The first raves were held in Ramallah, for example, but we should certainly not think of a stamping spectacle such as in Amsterdam, which is attended by 400,000 people this weekend. ‘We were surrounded by soldiers at the first parties. In any case, nothing is possible in Palestine at the moment. The atmosphere is so depressed because of the new violence that no one thinks about music anymore.’
Nevertheless, dance in troubled countries gives hope, club owners from Lebanon and Saudi Arabia also say during a group discussion on Friday about dance in the Middle East. Because dancing together offers redemption, and also because a new generation can unleash their own DJ talent on the nascent dance culture. “The public is eager instead of spoiled,” says Tunisian Amira Guetif, co-organizer of the Bahraini festival Soundscapes. Dance in the West has proven that from that hungry feeling that flared up here in the 1990s, the most beautiful dance culture can arise.
And no matter how ordinary club life may be here, despite the problems of recent years and the contempt that nightlife has fallen to the people during corona, according to those involved, the Amsterdam parties certainly do not seem washed out. In the harbor area around the old NDSM wharf, the summer festival Into the Woods celebrates an autumn ADE edition, around nine stages and a mountain of stunning DIY art. The corny but also quite sharp pop and hip-hop of the Zwollenaar Nonchelange is juxtaposed here with the experimental, compelling techno of the Brit Setaoc Mass. Talk about a joint dance experience.
Fafi Abdel Nour, who emigrated to the Netherlands from Syria, who founded the LGBTI party Homoost in Groningen, shows at the DGTL party a little further away that his sometimes strict underground house can get everyone dancing. At the same party in the huge NDSM warehouse, the Australian DJ Teneil Throssell, aka Shark, plays together with Romy, the singer of the band The Xx. Although their joint set is not flawless and a beat sometimes jumps out of time: the pleasure with which the two house with influences from eighties pop and new wave together is transferred to the audience.
You can see how broad dance has become over the past thirty years around the Johan Cruijff Arena on Saturday night. The seasoned DJ Carl Cox transforms the Ziggo Dome into the largest techno bunker in the world: what an unheard of tight and brutally hard live set the Brit puts together here, and what a hallucinatory light show reveals itself in the concert hall.
Meanwhile, trains full of hardcore enthusiasts are spat out at Bijlmer Arena station, and a line of dance-goers in camouflage pants forms at the Afas Live for a session of pounding until dawn. While in the adjacent football stadium, audiences from eighty countries report for a night of cheerful ‘progressive house’ or EDM, for the annual Amsterdam Music Festival, also associated with the ADE.
A spectacular fireworks display is also lit here, which feels extra festive because ADE is back at full strength after three years. But also because the line-up shows that the Dutch greats from the very beginning, such as Armin van Buuren and Tiësto, still reign at the top of the most accessible dance genres. With Tiësto’s euphoric trance and house set, you can’t help but respect this perseverant, who emerged in the 1990s, then became one of the most beloved DJs in the world and now, after almost thirty years of service, still scores huge pop hits. from The Business until The Motto.
It’s wonderful to see dance-goers from India, Malaysia, Tunisia and Israel, recognizable by the flags they have thrown around their shoulders like party clothes, indulging in a long night of dance fun, for a moment without worries.
You never know
The ADE is sometimes a hilarious culture clash. For the opening concert on Wednesday with the Metropole Orkest, a considerably older audience turns up. But security is strict and searches ladies and gentlemen in their 70s very thoroughly. It’s ADE after all, and who knows what they want to smuggle into the room behind their waistband or in their handbag.
