Coachella's already extensive dance offerings are expanding with this week's announcement of a new festival stage dedicated to the genre.
Called Quasar, the stage will feature extended sets lasting three to four hours, with Coachella producer Goldenvoice announcing different lineups for both weekends of the festival. The first weekend will include Honey Dijon playing b2b with Green Velvet, Michael Bibi's first US show since announcing he was in remission from cancer, and Jamie xx playing b3b with Floating Points and Daphni . All of these artists are new additions to the lineup.
For the second weekend, Quasar will present a DJ set from Rüfüs du Sol, Eric Prydz playing b2b with Anyma and Diplo playing b2b with Dutch wunkderkind Mau P. Minus Anyma (aka Matteo Milleri, the who is one half of Tale of Us). All of these artists are also new to the 2024 lineup.
There are also signs that more artists will be on the bill. In the composition announcement on Instagram, Los Angeles-based DJ Heidi Lawden commented “a woman!” in terms of the lineup being almost entirely male. In response, Kobi Dannan — whose company Framework curates Coachella's Yuma stage — wrote “it's not done yet!”
A rendering of the scene reveals it to be a huge area with a futuristic design. A video shared on Instagram by Coachella describes the specs for the stage, which Goldenvoice Executive Vice President Jenn Yacoubian calls “a stage where we can keep talent on it in a way that we thought we couldn't in the past. We see it as a traditional kind of DJ scene. The thought was that we wanted people to see a longer format DJ set.”
Designed by Vita Modus, a long-time Coachella set designer, Quasar will be assembled from two massive LED walls with the performers in the middle.
This is the first time Coachella has debuted a new stage dedicated to dance music since Yuma started the event in 2013. It started during the EDM boom and was designed to showcase more “underground” dance music , Yuma has grown significantly over the years in conjunction with the rise in popularity of house and techno in the U.S. According to Yacoubian, Quasar will occupy a space in the festival grounds formerly occupied by the Sahara Stage, with that stage moves elsewhere.
Dance music permeates almost every stage at Coachella, usually appearing in the festival's second largest area, the Outdoor Stage, the occasional mainstage act (including Calvin Harris and Swedish House Mafia the past two years), along with Yuma, Sahara , the Do Lab area and often in the Gobi and Mojave scenes as well.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/coachella-2024-new-dance-stage-lineup-1235637897/
