Fear.FM Harder

[Report] Dance Valley 2011 (NL)

Normally when I wake up on the day of a festival, the first thing I do is jump out of my bed and run to my window to check what kind of weather there is, and while the last couple of times this routine gave me a terrible morning mood, stubborn as I am, last Saturday I did exactly the same thing. This time I was happily surprised with a perfect blue sky and amazing sunshine burning in my face. “Yes, finally!” I shouted, “Dance Valley is going to bring summer back to Holland!”. I imagined myself lying in the grass, drinking cold beers, watching beautiful people and listen to fresh summer beats. Yes, this would be the perfect festival day. Could I be more wrong? Well actually yes, but I was still pretty wrong.

After an relaxing train ride we took the organized bus to the festival terrain. After a short wait in front of the gates of the festival we scanned our tickets and easily entered the festival area. Ok, we had a little rain shower, but that was probably going to be the only one of the day before the sun burns us away, right? We decided to have ourselves a non-guided tour around the festival area. Everything looked nice and fancy, and in spite of the discount action organization UDC had (2 for 1) you couldn’t tell that they saved any of the budget on decoration or stages. Also the number of different stages was enormous! Trance, Techno, House, Minimal, Schranz, Hardstyle, Hardhouse; almost every different style of house music was represented! This is exactly what makes Dance Valley one of the most famous, biggest and most accessible festivals in the world. There’s something for everyone, and you can notice this in the huge diversity of people that walk around there. I think this is one the reasons why you immediately get that typical Dance Valley vibe when walking on the festival area. Because regardless of all those different individualities, there still is an amazingly good atmosphere which you won't soon forget.

After our tour around the festival, we arrived at the Hard Techno Titans where at that moment the most famous Hardtechno/Schranz DJ was playing: Frank Kvitta. He played a crazy set with lots of industrial influences and hard rumbling beats. The tent was loaded, and the atmosphere was nice. We stayed the whole set because we knew he would play that brilliant remix of “Underworld- Born Slippy”. And off course, we were right! ;-) Great stuff!

The first couple of hours of great atmosphere and nice rumbling beats went hand in hand with a beautiful sunshine and a cool, refreshing wind. And if I would have known what happened after this relaxing weather, I probably would have enjoyed it more. Because in a split second the weather changed drastically, the rain was pouring from the sky like it hadn't rained in years (and we all know that’s not true). When I say that from that moment it didn’t stop raining, I am exaggerating a little, but it definitely felt that way. But of course, you should always remember in these kind of cases, we came to party, not to whine about the weather. So that’s exactly what we decided to do from then on.

The first tent that gave us shelter was the world famous HQ area. Even from the very beginning of Dance Valley the HQ tent has always been one of the a main attractions for the thousands of visitors that come here every year. The combination of Hardhouse, Harddance and Hardtrance obviously appeals to a great variety of people who are into dance music. That fact was proved once again when we entered the great tent which was filled to the brim. At that moment hardtrance veteran Scott Project was playing the decks, so we made one of our first hardtrance moves of the day. And while he didn't play the good old hardtrance tracks I was hoping for, he still got us moving for half an hour or so. This time with a more relaxing/trancey kind of style, which my friends and I really enjoyed.

But hey! What did we hear on the other side of the valley? The open air Hardstyle stage was banging big time with the Italian master DJ Activator! He was playing the last part of his set with some magnificent and extraordinary hardstyle tracks. Some really cool tracks that we never heard before were pumping against the valley and the people were probably the highest jumping crowd from what we saw so far on the day. It was almost like the weather also enjoyed this Italian Hardstyle beats, since it was dry for almost 2 hours (I told you I was exaggerating)!

That 2 hours came in handy, since we decided to stay another hour for the set of Alex Kidd and Kutski. These two Brits are well known for their original record choice and their extreme mixing techniques, so our expectations were high before they played their first couple of records. Of course the highlight for me was the new collab track between TNT and Kutski (“I don’t know which came first; shitty rave music, or the drugs”). Love this track! Just like during Activator's set, the crowd in the hardstyle valley went totally wild and I am sure you can still see the holes that were kicked into the ground during this set. Absolute highlight of the day!

After jumping our legs off, we decided to have a peek at the main stage where at that moment Cosmic Gate were playing their last beats. And while making our first moves we felt a very familiar liquid falling down from the sky. Damn! It was raining again so we ran as fast as we could (yes, some of us were made of sugar) to the first area we saw.

And that is how we came into the so called “Nachtboetiek”. A really small area where they played some classic elektro and house tracks mixed together. The nice atmosphere, the beautiful (mostly sodden) people and chill music made this last station of the day a nice stay for all of us. Funny how you can accidentally wind up somewhere and have a great time, dancing to music you never thought you would dance to. After an hour of having fun there, though, we decided to go home and call it a day.


On Saturday I learnt two things:
1- I shouldn’t quit my job and start as a fortune-teller, because Dance Valley 2011 definitely did not "Give Summer back to Holland”.
2- DanceValley has once again proved to be one of the best all-round festivals of the world. Even though the organization had so much bad-luck the last couple of years, they are still doing their very best to keep their head up and organize a great party that is accessible for a wide variety of people. Organization-wise there was very little to complain about and I won't hesitate to visit this amazing festival again next year!