PORT TOWNSEND — As Above, So Below, two days of dance music, performances, installation art, group activities and community building will take over Jefferson County Fairgrounds this weekend.
Festival organizer and DJ Mark Hardy, who has put together a lot of dance music events, said there’s something special about dance party-goers on the Olympic Peninsula.
“The beautiful thing about where we live is that people love to move and love to dance,” Hardy said. The secondary thing that people are doing: Meeting new people and talking to old friends, he said.
In a time when community gatherings have been supplanted by social media, Hardy said filling the function of coming together to celebrate is essential.
“I think that celebration and coming together in this way is really a core part of the human experience,” he said.
Gates will open at 3 p.m., and music will start at 7 p.m. on Friday at 4907 Landes St.
Tickets can be purchased for the weekend or either Friday or Saturday passes. One-day passes are $40 before fees. Second-tier weekend passes, while they remain available, are $99 before fees, and third-tier passes will cost $111 before fees.
Fairground camping is included in the cost of the weekend passes and costs $10 for single-night attendees. Recreational vehicles sites with no hookups can be purchased for $50.
Previously a 21-and-older event, people 17 and younger can now attend for free with a guardian present.
Hardy said the event is experimenting with all ages, based on his observations of friends losing their ability to engage in the same community, following having children and his experience of seeing full families out in nightlife environments in Spain, where he traveled to study electronic music last year.
Music will be split between three stages at the festival: the Above stage, which will feature faster, higher-energy music, the Below stage, which will bring slower, calmer sets, and the Beyond stage’s room, which will feature an interactive art installation and a tea lounge.
“People might have a mood change where they want something with kind of a different vibe,” Hardy said. “People energetically might favor a different type of music. We want to make sure we have something that contrasts.”
DJs and musicians playing will include self described pop-band XOHNO, Sequim and Port Townsend’s Sweater Weather String Band, singer Rowan Katz, Port Townsend producer Sh333in, KEXP radio DJ B.Fly, Seattle duo DJ Girlfriends, Port Townsend’s DJ Lunchlady, billboard charting Bluetech, PNW duo Michael Manahan & Jamie Schwabl, Seattle-based Manatee Commune, Port Townsend songwriter Ellie Baird, Port Townsend’s Captain Peacock, internationally touring Atyya and more.
Hardy and a collective of Port Townsend-based DJs strive to bring exciting bookings to the festival, he said.
“Some of these artists have played on giant stages and headlined festivals nationally,” Hardy said.
Atyya was a favorite of everyone when a group of Port Townsend DJs went to Cascadia this summer, he said.
“He was our favorite act at the festival,” Hardy said.
After running into him multiple times on the dance floor at British Columbia’s Bass Coast festival, Hardy asked if he would consider coming to such a small town as Port Townsend. He said he would do it. Hardy was amazed that an artist of his caliber was accessible and wasn’t signed.
A week or two after the festival booked him, Atyya was signed to Prysm talent agency, Hardy said.
Hardy also will perform a set at the event.
The festival will host a number of art installations, including a 20-foot-tall dragon sculpture that breathes smoke, made by Nico Pendragon, founder of Port Townsend store Pendragon’s Labyrinth.
Analog visual synthesizer collective Decay will do immersive projections on the Below stage and on the Beyond stage.
“I’ve been told they have 99 projectors,” he said.
Triangularis Design will do projection mapping on the Above Stage.
Fastbreaker Farms will have hot food options, including waffle sandwiches and dessert options, Hardy said.
In addition to a 21-and-older beer garden, the festival has a new sponsor in Curious Elixirs, which will make non-alcoholic cocktails.
“A lot of people in this day in age are drinking alcohol less and less, so we got a pretty large sponsorship from a company that makes cocktails out of different herbs,” Hardy said.
Hardy said he thinks the company aligns with the ethos of the event.
“We’re not trying to be a for-profit bar or club, that’s not really the point of the event, it’s not to sell a bunch of expensive drinks to make money,” Hardy said. “It’s to do community building.”
Though he’s a DJ and loves catching the other DJ sets, Hardy said connecting with people and conversations in the downtime is a favorite part of these events.
The event will include multiple chill-out areas. One of them will be themed as an interdimensional hunting lounge. It will have rugs, couches, with paintings and fantastical wool animal busts by artist Jillian Gericke of Woodland & Wool Creations.
It is not uncommon for people to find exactly the conversation they need over the course of an event, he said.
“Maybe someone comes to the event and they’ve been going through some sort of challenging time in their life and they end up having a chance conversation with someone who’s been going through something very similar,” he continued.
Community connection is the reason the primarily electronic music festival maintains its tradition of having a square dance.
“If you look at the way that the dance is constructed, it gets people in the community to have to interact with each other, by nature of the mechanics of the dance,” Hardy said.
As an artist, Hardy has seen some major milestones this last summer. Most recently, he was able to do a DJ support set for Barclay Crenshaw, founder of San Francisco-based Dirtybird Records, called one of America’s most successful dance labels by DJ Mag.
Earlier in the summer, he closed a Seattle evening headlined by notable DJ Justin Martin at SODO’s Monkey Loft.
Hardy’s previous collaborations include work with rapper Juice WRLD and Columbian singer J Balvin.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.
