Burning Man I May 2017
The rise of electronic dance music, the maturing
of the rave culture, the popularity of TED-like talks,
the mainstreaming of yoga, and the YOLO spirit of
festivalgoers who spread the word on social media.
Unlike more mainstream music gatherings like
Coachella and Lollapalooza (with their focus on
pop music, celebrities, alcohol and fashion brands),
transformational festivals embrace feel-good val-
ues like ecological sustainability, organic food,
community building and wisdom sharing. With
names like Beloved and Wanderlust, Envision and
Lucidity, these festivals seem like bastions of the
nouveau hippie, grandchildren-of-the-Woodstock
generation. And, to a certain extent, they are.
At Archaic Revival, held June 6 in a plantation
outside of Houston, revelers spent three days danc-
ing (including a form called “Flowetry in Motion”),
meditating at sunrise in a drug-and-alcohol-free
zone. At Costa Rica’s Envision Festival, held last
February in beachfront jungles, participants cov-
ered themselves in “healing mud,” chose among
two dozen yoga instructors and bathed in bamboo
showers w ith filtered water.
“This is not a retro-nostalgic Woodstock,” said Jeet-
Kei Leung, 44, a documentary filmmaker from
Vancouver, British Columbia, who has chronicled
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.isms I May 2017
this scene in a web series called “The Bloom,” as
well as in a 2010 TEDx talk. “This is a forward-think-
ing culture that is embracing social entrepreneur-
ship, permaculture, spirituality, self-actualization
and conscious living.”
It was the first day of Lightning in a Bottle, a
blisteringly hot Thursday with temperatures over
95 degrees. A yellow school bus and trailer drove
to the far end of the San Antonio Recreation Area,
a lakeside camping ground in central California,
and dropped off mounds of gear and festivalgoers,
some in elaborate costumes.
Three men in animal-shaped onesies (a giraffe, a
red bull and a white cartoonish character) inquired
whether there was any chicken to eat. (There was
not: It is officially a pescatarian festival.)
Attendees, clutching their still-charged iPhones,
pored over the schedule. There would be count-
less opportunities to dance, do yoga, see art, sit in
workshops, watch performances, listen to speakers
and meet like-minded truth seekers.
Moby, Phantogram and the avant-garde circus
troupe Lucent Dossier shared the five stages with
acts like the Ambassador and the Earth Harp.
.isms I May 2017
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