WECANDANCE

After their first collaboration creating a single stage design in 2023 WECANDANCE asked Studio Dennis Vanderbroeck to creative direct the entire festival for the 2024 edition. From creating the artwork, redesign all the stages and curate collaborations with artists for site specific installations on the festival. 

WECANDANCE is an electronic dance festival on the beach of Zeebrugge Belgium. Four days, two weekends, from noon to midnight. For this year's edition the theme was 'Drop in the Light - Rise in the Dark'. We wanted to embrace the duality that houses within all of us. From bright longings to darker desires. Since WECANDANCE is both a day and a night festival we worked around the transition from day to night, from light to dark. 

The Studio's methodology always departs from the guests' experience therefore positioned the Lighthouse in the heart of the festival site, a reinterpretation of our 2023 design. This gigantic circular shape in the middle of the festival functioned as an invite to the guests to circle around the site as planets circling around the sun. 

While all the stages 'exteriors' played with the notion of layers of transparencies, all of the individual 'interiors' question the idea of togetherness and collectivism. With using a series of set materials, such as mesh nettings, recycled polycarbonate panels (both transparent and opaque), and mesh gratings in color combinations that refer to the key visuals the Studio tried to create a visual cohesive narrative that can transform from day to night. From natural light to artificial light.

Besides the design of the festival site the Studio curated a series of installations created by different artists. Leon Vranken created a 12 meter high fountain at the entrance of the festival. The scaffolding structure around it functioned as a viewing tower accessible for the guests to overlook the entire festival. 

To highlight the idea of a lighthouse the Studio asked Nick Verstand to create a light installation that connected the entire festival with the use of laser beams, entitled “Lodestar”. 

Lastly Leila Alice, in collaboration with The Constant Now, created a performative parade that circled around the outer rings of the festival, one during the day and one during the night. 

*All rights, images and video content belongs to WECANDANCE.