Student disc jockey Brian Scavo’s Beatday 5 celebration filled the Clazel Tuesday night, with bass-rich electronic rhythms and a wide range of interactive visual elements.
The fifth annual event celebrated Scavo’s birthday in the best way he knows how, by bringing together a whole community of those with a passion for electronic dance music.
Previous Beatday celebrations had been held as weekend house parties and brought in acts from far-away stretches of geography. This year’s event moved it for the first time into a concert venue and was held on a weekday which, according to Scavo, caused a slight narrowing of the acts it could bring in. Despite the few setbacks caused by the change of days, Scavo said he was very pleased with the event and believes hosting the show in a club can only take the event to the next level.
“On all regards it was a complete success,” Scavo said. “It was almost perfectly in-line with what I expected as far as raw numbers, as far as the vibe that was created and as far as how the crowd reacted to the performers and the environment.”
Among other advantages, the penetrating music system at the Clazel was what attracted Scavo to bring the event to the venue. As the show’s DJs spun their tracks on stage, the heavily bass-driven music could be felt inwardly as long-wave, high-decibel pulses passed through the chests of the dancing mass the floor became.
Crowd members wore glow-stick jewelry in every conceivable fashion: crowns, necklaces, bracelets and anklets. Some wore elaborate balloon-animal hats made on the spot just above the dance floor. All danced, much independent of one another and in diverse ways, yet with a collective purpose and mentality.
Break-dancers in attendance took the dance scene there to new heights as they battle-danced in the floor’s center, attracting a surrounding circle of spectators.
Break-dancer Joe Whitacre hurdled over the upper-level railing to land on the dance floor below in a smoothing somersault, then snapped up to continue dancing, never breaking stride. Whitacre believes his talents add to the whole feel of the show.
“Basically you have five senses and you want to appeal to all of them,” he said. “Every musician tries to send a message … break dancing is another way to send that message.”
Break-dancers were not the only visual integration to the show’s presentation. Live abstract paintings were created on-stage beside the DJs. A juggler wandered through the crowd, tossing juggling pins into the air with varying speeds according to the rhythm of the ambient song. Some dancers spun hula-hoops around their abdomens, next traveling up to their necks and arms; within the spinning blur their bodies moved in-time.
A poi dancer named Manu Duhamel leaped through the air at times as he twisted glow-sticks on strings around his frame, transforming them into blurring arcs of blue and orange. Duhamel was in town from Quebec, visiting relatives in Bowling Green. He wore Rastafarian-colored clothing from head to toe and spoke with a strong French-Canadian accent as he spoke of the importance he feels is in the visual element of the shows.
“The light really reaches a different part of your brain,” he said.
Senior music major Caitlin Stoner said she has attended many electronic dance concerts and that it is the culture’s focus on dancing and the created feeling of community that attracts her.
“It’s not like other shows where you might dance or you might not dance,” she said. “EDM is for dancing and it is for vibing with each other; it’s cool.”
Beatday 5 is the first of a monthly event series at the Clazel that will host electronic dance music acts on the last Tuesday of every month. Scazo is optimistic for the future of the series.
“This is just the beginning of some great things to come,” he said.
