Kaupapa
A Platform for More
Realising that 20-something-year-olds in this country don’t have very many opportunities to enter a crafted dance floor experience with an actively engineered kaupapa, we suddenly find ourselves with the opportunity to offer one for our peers, just like us, who deserve more.
We realise that most of the independent scene left standing in our market exists in an inherently underground culture. One that by nature is harder to discover or trickier to see yourself fitting into (you actually fully would though – look up our neighbours, Shipwrecked, if you want to play dress up and dance a lot in February). This means a lot of us who like to party, go out, meet new people, experience music & dance just miss the stepping over point into the alternate worlds that exist out there. This was our personal experience. A reality which fuels our motivation to enrich the offering.
Passion for such magical environments comes purely and simply from experiences felt and witnessed within them. There is great power given to society at large by personality breakthroughs enabled at a transformative, spiritual, or just really fun events. These are all the more accessible in the context of a New Year’s celebration. A ritual coded into our DNA, played out with modern technology, culture, and sensibilities.
The feeling of pure glee for being human, together, is something SO RARE in our day-to-day modernised world. Space to smell the flowers, lie in the grass, pull a stank face to a homie or a stranger as you both felt that shit. A refresher to the momentarily obvious truth that being present with those around us is what we’re really here to do. There’s nothing else to life in that moment.
Our appreciation for the vibe as a punter began with instinct, but since our debut in the professional party world, our understanding of our place in the fabric of the scene has massively evolved. Only as recently as this summer can we say we’ve had the first clue of what has come before us in Aotearoa.
Intrigue Turned Inspiration
On our journey, it was 121 Festival in 2023 that provided the first window into how good it can be. Two Minds in 2024 followed up with a clue to a blueprint. Experiences in Europe later that year blew our imagination wide open, and those in Australia since 2025 have been the most illuminating – exposing what could be if we had a platform to germinate culture amongst our youth on the dance floor. That sentence captures a big chunk of our recently crystallised mission. We wanna be the petri dish!
Our latest forays into the underground have brought boundless inspiration, plentiful and intentional encouragement, and a sense of home. A welcoming legacy created by our figurative forebears of the party world. Yet, despite so many flourishing creative minds and practicing enjoyers of the weird and wonderful from all age brackets, the resolve of these communities is undeniably being tested.
And perhaps strength can be found in the naivete we began with. The naivete we will openly admit remains, by nature of being so early in our exposure to these spaces. We didn’t know about any industry norms when we began planning last year’s edition, so as we came across certain ones that don’t seem for the best, we simply didn’t follow them.
Resolve for a Better Future
It’s also becoming clearer that we can help shape new norms at a cultural level. We can spawn a rich platform for social connection. Connection fuelled by silliness, confidence to be oneself, eagerness to create moments of fun with strangers. The type of stuff that makes us all feel like unique, valuable, human characters. We’re all dependent on each other for that feeling.
And well frankly, that’s true on an existential level. Confused more and more by inauthentic, auto-generated, image-focused, [insert]-maxxing, anxiety-inducing shit flooding our consciousnesses… It should be of the highest priority to get out and be face to face in blissful environments. We need to PLAY, CONNECT & DANCE to function healthily.
Our generation has more access to empathy and understanding than any previous. We are armed to appreciate individuality with acceptance. We must get in front of soundsystems and use the universal language of music and dance to express this.
The whole planet has enough negatives & horrors going on to pay attention to for infinity. But how can we respond effectively to the problems without being inspired by the beauty we all share in common. The joy brought by each other’s existence. The privilege we have to access gatherings like these en masse should not be taken lightly. We have a duty to bring goodness to each other.
TL;DR: In order to save the world, we must dance 🙂