Mind, Body & Soul

I arrived at the Electric Picnic intending to make straight for the Body and Soul area and catch a load of freebies in the yoga/reflexology/massage department as the hotpress reviewer of ‘non-music’ events.

I saw a bunch of fit-looking Capoeira dancers leaping about doing leg lifts and ducks in their baggy white pants and thought... man, that looks like hard work. Who was I trying to kid with these wholesome aspirations? Forget the yoga and the aphrodisiac herbal tonics, this whole event is such a turn-on it’s enough to make your chakras spin just walking around observing the hedonistic wonder, madness and unleashed creativity (anyone see that 8ft lit-up plastic robot walking through the crowds?)
I cruised around for a couple of hours, taking in the Body and Soul’s art and stunning tent, installation and psychedelic lighting design. At the Costume Drama tent, beautiful fairy-type women were initiating new arrivals out of everyday reality into magical consciousness by inviting them to transform themselves with brightly coloured floaty materials. Meanwhile the Aura Photography stand around the corner showed people their invisible colours.
I left the amniotic safety of the Body and Soul and got swept up by the crowd along the main drag, quickly eschewing asking for and trying to follow people’s surreal directions, or the even more imaginary so-called maps of the event, instead handing it over to fate that I’d find the Hot Press Chat Room. It materialised in front of me, a little energy vortex all of its own, providing music lovers with brilliant opportunities to hear their favourite musicians interviewed live.
Soon I bumped into some friends who urged me to come and see this circus dance troupe from LA called Lucent Dossier. Lucent Dossier had one of the most enchanting large tents of the whole festival, a big white dome with these exotic, erotic wooden chandelier-type sculptures suspended from the ceiling above a raised, centrally-placed stage, upon which they performed the sexiest, most thrilling dance and acrobat act that I’ve ever seen, making this the best ‘non-music’ event I have witnessed at the festival. Incorporating striptease, burlesque, vaudeville, slapstick and trapeze, these outrageously costumed dancers would make you want to run away and join their circus. In one little vignette, Lucent Dossier performed what appeared to be a simulated bus crash in slow-motion, while onlookers gasped in ecstatic awe. I and the male pals I was with agreed that we’d never seen such a fine display of female posteriors in one place at the same time.
A huge flock of human butterflies with inflated wings fluttered round on Saturday afternoon, chasing after anyone who looked like they had a hangover to sprinkle them with sparkles and restore their sense of humour. A sudden squall broke out and the butterflies ran for cover. It looked like tents might be blown down as a shortlived mini-hurricane had its own party across the Stradbally grounds. The rain drove party-goers into the Cultivate Sustainable Living tent, to imbibe an unexpected dose of reality about climate change under beautiful orb lights and chandeliers made from plastic bottles.
Here, Green Minister for Energy, Eamon Ryan, spoke eloquently about how we need to think outside the box to communicate the climate change issue in a way that motivates individuals to take action instead of becoming despondent. I recalled going to the Big Green Gathering in England a few years ago, an environmental/music/rampant creativity festival that’s the same size as the Electric Picnic but run entirely on renewable energy ­– not a diesel generator allowed on site. There were small tasters of climate change awareness at the Picnic – I saw a couple of bikes powering lights and mobile phone chargers, while Cultivate had a solar-powered cinema and a carbon confession box – but there was nothing like the large sound systems powered by festival-goers on racks of bikes which are common fare at the Big Green. It’ll be good to see this necessary consciousness and the amazing human ingenuity that it fosters impacting Electric Picnics of the future.
My favourite way to see in the dawn was chilling out in Spacecraft’s Gramophone Disco where top DJs played pre-1960s vinyl as they steered tired party-goers into the day. Meanwhile the best fiver I spent during the whole weekend was on a spin in the Flying Chairs. Flying through the air above the bright light night-time Electric Picnic blur brought on the kind of massive dose of pure joy that’d keep you buoyed up for weeks.