Phlux

Rave culture celebration cancelled
iDance a victim of rising costs and a dwindling audience in Toronto
By Ben Rayner
Pop Music Critic

Dwindling corporate-sponsorship dollars and spiralling costs have put a stop, at least temporarily, to hopes of turning Toronto's massive, open-air electronic-music festival iDance into an annual event.

Organizers had floated the idea of bringing iDance — which began two summers ago as a beat-fuelled protest rally intent on overturning a city-council ban on raves on city property — back for a third run this summer after last year's free party drew an estimated 30,000 electronic-music fans, roughly double its original attendance, to Nathan Phillips Square on the Labour Day long weekend.

That plan has been shelved, however, because the non-profit event has been unable to locate enough corporate sponsors (last year's biggest were the Microsoft Xbox and The Star) willing to cover its costs.

"We very quickly found out that most companies that would sponsor this kind of thing had much smaller budgets than they did last year, as a result partly of Sept. 11," says iDance president Will Chang, adding insurance costs for the event were also quoted at "about seven times what we paid last year" in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the U.S.

"At the end of the day, it's really just that the money wasn't there. We didn't make any money last year, and in fact, we lost quite a bit of money that actually came out of our own pockets....

"Unfortunately, the only companies these days that will sponsor an event of this size are cigarette and beer companies like Smirnoff and Bacardi and Benson & Hedges, and they can only sponsor 19-plus events. We didn't want to do iDance on a smaller scale, and we certainly didn't want to make it a 19-plus event."

Still, says Chang, it should be rememberd that iDance accomplished its original goals of getting the City of Toronto to relax the knee-jerk war it briefly waged on raves in 2000, opening a dialogue between promoters and the police and "giving the electronic-party industry some cultural legitimacy in the eyes of the media." And, he adds, no one has ruled out doing another party in the future.

The passing of iDance nevertheless means the loss of a unifying point for Toronto's splintered electronic-music community, which, frustrated at a lack of venues, dwindling crowds and the rising cost of hiring paid-duty police officers for security, among other things, has largely abandoned the enormous parties that were common two or three years ago in favour of club nights in licensed venues and smaller underground events. Younger dance-music fans lose out, since all-ages events catering to the non-drinking crowd are few and far between these days.

"The rave scene is dead, it's finished, it's over. It's gone," says Alex D., editor/publisher of the long-running Toronto nightlife magazine Tribe. "For the last few months, everyone I meet — friends, DJs, promoters — I ask: `What do you think happened?' And nobody really knows. Nobody knows where everybody went and nobody knows what's going to become of the scene....

"I liken it to stacking pennies. You can keep stacking them so they get higher and higher and better looking and more valuable, but there comes a point where it's going to topple over."

anabolic frolic

Thanks for posting that.

I agree with the decision of just not doing the event at all if the funds couldn't be raised to meet or beat the level of idance last year. A half-assed iDance event would have been hugely critisized and would reflect very badly on the entire scene.

The death of the scene I think has been overexagerated. The death of large mega-events every weekend, maybe.

I was very curious and nervous about how our "Anthems" party was going to perform as I considered it a barometer of the scene. We hadn't thrown a party without headliners and flyers in some time. Attendance however was equal to our turnout for our last iDance event, which had full-page ads in 100 000 booklets, me on the cover of Eye magazine that week, plus us listed everywhere as an official event AND being on a Saturday. To me that was very encouraging.

Applefaerie

chris-
i think the attendance was representative of how truly loyal the hullacommunity is. we love our hulla, and we will make the trek for even the smallest-sounding-non-flyered party. the energy there was phenomenal. and whats this about no headliners? idd consider every dj there to be a headliner yo. ALL hulla residents are groovykeen in my book.

i think Alex D. saying the scene is dead is a load of hogwash from someone who obviously isnt paying attention. coming out of hulla this last time, i received several flyers for parties in toronto. granted WEMF isnt physically in toronto, but its close by, and dern it if we get parties like WEMF and The Anthems with the scene "dead", i wanna know what kind of parties we will have when the scene is ALIVE!!! hot damn!

its too bad that iDance cant be held due to not enough funding from willing sponsors. but i agree that its not right to hold an iDance without being able to allow peeps under 19 years old in because of the sponsors. the original iDance was for political boatrockin...it just doesnt seem right for it to become a contrived version of itself in its full glory.

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k-style

Well damn.. i wanted to go to iDance this year... but if they don't have the money or sponsors then there really isn't much they can do..

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anabolic frolic

Well Hulla is definitely in a unique position, but it isn't really seperate from the rest of the scene, and it will be affected positively and negatively by how the rest of the scene is doing.

monstercan-D

AlexD is a tired old man who should stick to Sunday afternoon at Fez. It's more his speed.

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DJ Tranzit

i have never really liked alex d..
always stuck up imo..
he always seemed to look down on people as if he was better than them.

unfortunately it's things like this that make us better than him.

get some new glasses and move onto the next city to take some more redundant pictures there

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RoB-B

shitty deal
i havent attended an idance, and was really looking forward to it

i realize that corperate sponsores are needed for the funding

but something about having huge xbox signs in the back ground doesnt do justice towards the party and the cause

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deciBel

there are alot of things in the message that are true. there is a lack of venue's... for all ages. which the scene in TO has to remain because people don't got out to parties as often in their older age. the club scene in Toronto is dying a slow death with only a couple of biggies open to non traditional forms of dance music (no names) and the odd real club night run by the loyal few promoters in TO.

Things aren't as grim as they seem though. there just has to be support from the raveres of TO and surrounding area. People support Hulla because they have been doing it right for a long time now. iDance is a way for us to show our support to the scene publically. it appears that this won't happen now.... there is always a way to show support that doesn't involve spending money and it may take a little time and effort but thats not too much for me.

it will be a shame if idance doesn't go down this year! i hope that this isn't a view of things to come. This scene in TO has given me so much. i have learned things that i don't think i could've with out it.

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kaleidoscopic ziggurat

was the weekend not set aside for use by the electronic music community? i question whether another event could be planned on a smaller scale, without any association with iDance... after all, you see plenty of sparsely attended shows at NPS and no one says "the X scene is dead". just a thought. i've always been a huge supporter of a smaller scene-wide festie at NPS... but it seems as if many of rave's figureheads would rather hide like rats in a wall, to avoid any kind of attention at the risk of further persecution. understandable, that.

alexd is in the position where he benefits by dictating what is going on and what is cool. does no one remember how he sideswiped iDance last year with logos logos logos! he puts half nekkid people on the cover of his monthly photo album / message board dump. and he's saying rave = dead? well you draw your own conclusions...

korrupt

iDance was an amazing event its too bad it can't happen this year but im glad that the first iDance did what it was set out to do, give the scene a voice.

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