Part of Jul 2011 by

Global Dance Festival at Red Rocks

The ninth annual Global Dance Festival starts this Thursday July 14th at Red Rocks and with over 60 artists performing over a three day period it is the largest electronic festival in the Rocky Mountain region. The GDF is definitely an event that has steadily grown in size and respect in the world wide dance community.  You don’t rent out Red Rocks for three days unless you are confident that a decent sized town’s worth of people are going to show up.  What has built up the reputation of the GDF is the quality of the performers over the years which have included talent from all over the world including acts like Paul Oakenfold, Tiesto, John Digweed, Paul Van Dyk, Ferry Corsten, Sasha, and Benny Benassi.

This year the 60 acts will be performing on three separate stages with set times that are slightly staggered but unless you are a dedicated Red Rocks step runner you will probably end up missing something.  So I would recommend charting your day(s) appropriately.  Ticket prices seem within the parameters of sanity. (The preceding statement only applies to the ticket prices. I have no idea if there’s a hidden fee named Bruno waiting to kneecap your wallet.)   The daily ticket is $69 and the three day pass is $150 which  if you do attend all three days I think they should hand out some sort of high altitude dance fitness medal and name a brand of glow stick after you.

With the amount of bands playing there will be enough great stuff on any given day to be worth your trip to Red Rocks but here’s a couple of thoughts on some performers to check out.  I’m a huge Innerpartysystem fan because they write great music and basically have a bad attitude towards pop culture, government, the music biz and many other life irritants that salves haven’t been invented for yet.   They play on Thursday.  On Friday the headliners LMFAO basically are down to Earth and well grounded individuals…I almost said that with a straight face.  Here’s what Redfoo of LMFAO says about the band, “We’re definitely not a band that’s shy. We love to hear ourselves talk. We want to be seen as much as possible. We want to be so big that we can’t even walk down the street.” I would have to say they are on their way to that goal.  On Saturday I definitely want to give a shout out to Dragon who is a major force in electronica in the whole region.  He’s the resident DJ at Beta Nightclub in Denverand his radio show E-leven on 93.3 KTCL, has been the longest running dance show in Colorado history.  The running joke with my friends after an extreme music show is, “Turn on Ahhhhhh-leven!” because it refreshingly washes the grindcore out of our ears.

All the info you need on GDF  is on their very well designed website:  www.globaldancefestival.com

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