“This might be a dumb question, but is it like a concert?”
My friend Gabrielle asked me this when I first mentioned the Freaknight Traveling Circus coming to CWU. I was covering the event for CWU Hype, and was trying to explain my excitement.
Any USC event, like Paradiso, Life in Color, EDC (Electric Daisy Carnival), of which the Freaknight Traveling Circus is one, is kind of like a concert, only with more strobe lights and lasers, more people dressed in crazy costumes and a lot more bass. Also, there are no seats, so the whole crowd is dancing and jumping around together for the entirety of the show. Electronic Dance Music (EDM) may not be everyone’s cup of tea, especially in a country town like Ellensburg, but none of us were thinking about tea anyway when the beat dropped last night.
http://http://instagram.com/p/twtLm-n81d/?modal=true
This was the first time ever that USC added a Traveling Circus to their famous Freaknight event, which takes place each year in Seattle. CWU had the privilege of hosting the tour’s finale, and sold out (that’s about 900 tickets sold) before the doors had even opened.
Because it was a Halloween themed event, attendees came out in costumes ranging from gypsies and angels to comic book characters and flower children. A couple dressed as Jasmine and Aladdin were in attendance, as well as Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz.” Basically, at an EDM event anything goes, and people encourage each other to be themselves and let their freak flags fly.
Botnek and Caked Up were the event’s headliners, and here’s a basic outline of what went down: Botnek came out in “Adventure Time” garb and blew our minds with mixes of “7th Nation Army” and “Sweet Dreams,” Caked Up entered to a remix of the Harry Potter soundtrack, 1800 hands hit the air each time Botnek and Caked Up commanded it be done, I wondered if Caked Up’s Oscar Wylde was part frog by the way he jumped around the stage, a kid with an insane amount of kandi (colorful beaded bracelets and necklaces that ravers trade) got pulled up on stage, the Traveling Circus clowns on stilts and professional gogo dancers in ringmaster outfits danced their hearts out, Wylde did a stage dive, and I tried not to drop my phone while recording all of the above and dancing in a crowd of 899 other EDM fans.
So, for all the people who thought that since the event was at CWU it might not be the full EDM experience, think again. And for everyone who was in attendance, lucky us. Shout outs to 88.1 The ‘Burg and CWU Campus Activities for making it all possible, and to USC Events for bringing their crazy carnival to this country town.
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