26/03/2025
Love and Trust: Open Format DJ at an Ecstatic Dance
There's no treasure like a well-seasoned friendship. So when a dear college friend of nearly 30 years invited me to spin for an Ecstatic Dance on the Big Island of Hawaii, I eagerly accepted. My friend and I have partied together since the rave days of the 90s, and she's heard me spin before, so I fully trusted this would be a fun event.
I'd attended these kind of gatherings before, and enjoyed them. Ecstatic Dance is a form of celebration in which participants move freely to the music, often electronic dance music with little to no vocals. Everyone's intentionally sober, present, and focused, so the musical dynamics - a slow build to an intense peak, with a lighter, slower comedown at the end - are essential to the experience.
As I prepped, I learned more about the tradition, and I had some worries my set would not meet my audience's expectations. I'm a party DJ, used to playing for drunk GenXers and Elder Millennials. I'm pretty good with dynamics, but my true love as a mixer is juxtaposing beloved dance jams from all across the last 75 years - I try to include something brand new and something classic from the 50s or 60s in every mix. My sets cross genre constantly, but I knew exactly the vibe I was intending: joyful prayer, love for the world, hope in each other.
Turns out the mutual trust between this community and I was well placed. The buildup dynamics worked, some of the familiar song choices caught some folks attention, and by the time I got to the songs I'd planned for the peak, there was a solid group of dancers getting well loose on the dancefloor. I could tell it wasn't what they'd expected, but that they were still feeling the energy I'd hoped for. From behind the decks, it felt sweet and intimate to share the moment with dancers who were really listening. There's no greater honor as a DJ than to have dancers fully tuned in. And although Ecstatic Dances often feature silent dancefloors, the crowd joined me to sing along with the end of The Killers' "All These Things That I've Done". I took a bit of a risk playing a rock song in an environment like this, but our post-dance discussion (another nice feature of Ecstatic Dances) revealed that this moment resonated with a number of the dancers there, solidifying my gratitude for everyone's mutual trust.
The whole event was a lot of fun, and left me feeling deeply satisfied and sweaty in the best way. It was pleasantly humbling and grounding to return to the roots of dance - just humans moving to beats together - outside of the intoxicants and meat market dynamics so often otherwise linked with this kind of music and dancing. In the end I want to encourage DJs of all formats to play parties like this, and to encourage all Ecstatic Dance communities to invite a breadth of DJs to join you.
Big Mahalo to Big Island Ecstatic Dance Community, shoutout Ophir, Natasha, Katie, Micah, Justin, and every GORGEOUS dancer.
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