Exit
EDC but also the company’s other
mega-popular dance party-cumCoachella experiences (Nocturnal,
Electric Forest, Beyond Wonderland, Escape From Wonderland
and White Wonderland). He’s
been doing it since 1993.
“We’ve been at the forefront of
a lot of challenges that dance music has faced as a whole,” Rotella
told Huffington. “Just like jazz
and rock and roll and hip-hop had
their struggles, dance music has its
challenges. And we’ve been right
there at the front line — investing
a lot of time and money to try to
get things to a point where it’s easier for people who are jumping in.”
Along the way, he’s made quite
a few friends and become a sometimes enemy of the state — at
least in Los Angeles. Rotella, who
is currently dating Holly Madison, a former girlfriend of Hugh
Hefner, regularly books the Armin
van Buurens, Steve Angellos, Tiestos and Aviciis of the world for
his stages. (Madison recently said
she was ready to have a child.) His
events are often lauded as the most
ambitious and enjoyable dance
music events on the continent, but
putting on EDC-scale parties does
not come without its challenges.
Media reports have long associ-
SECTION
ated dance music with drug use and
other risky behaviors, but Rotella
says that’s not a relationship borne
out in the facts. It’s true that EDC’s
flagship event (there are others,
including a stop that draws more
than 100,000 people in New York
and another in Puerto Rico) moved
from Los Angeles to Las Vegas after
a 15-year-old girl died after taking
ecstasy at the 2010 installation of
the event, and that a 19-year-old
died after attending EDC Dallas
in 2011. But Rotella — and nearly
everyone in the dance music community — maintains that these
tragedies are not indicative of flaws
HUFFINGTON
07.01-08.12
Above: A
concertgoer
blows bubbles
below one of
EDC’s light
displays.
Below: A DJ
entertains
crowd
members
during his set.