Friday night, downtown Minneapolis was fully alive and electric. Dada Life brought the Dada Land experience to the Skyway Theatre and fans were definitely ready for it. There was no doubt in my mind that the show was going to be a sellout success.
The buzz in the air as fans and pure rave-aholics anxiously waited to get inside. There were plenty of security outside to keep the crowd at bay. High security measures are not foreign to the avant-garde Dadaist inspired Swedes. Their Dada Land Compound in Miami last year turned into a riot scene and as a result, the boys could not attend the 2013 Winter Music Conference nor the Ultra Music Festival in 2013 because the Swedish government took away their passports preventing them from leaving their country.
Once fans got in, they were faced with the reality of how packed it was inside. People were beyond amped. There were a multitude of guys wearing the traditional Dada Life banana costumes, gals dressed in their edm club attire, and a ton of people dawning the creepy Dada Life “One Smile”-masks. The crowd had definitely showed up beautiful and was prepared to leave ugly (yet satisfied).
The main core of the nights music took off with Yultron. His mix was massively strong and instantly had the crowd engaged.
The feel for the show was a crazy, chaotic, Dionysian-inspired, celebration of all things positive. Blowup champagne bottles and bananas, the staple of a Dada diet, floated through the crowd. A gigantic “DADA LIFE” inflatable bold font stage piece framed the DJ stand where bananas were attached to the stage. Trippy, frenetic, adventure time-like animated graphics were synced to the electronic music. There were occasional big, bold font lyrics instructing the crowd to all get on the same page. The response from the crowd was highly energetic, fascinated, and appreciative of a crazy good time. Before taking off, I spoke to Gina who best describe the evening as ‘It’s an overall explosion of the senses that truly come together’.
