Sandance beach festival
8 Comments 16 October 2011
Sandance the Third had one extremely important factor on its side: timing. The weather was bearable (although still too hot for anything but shorts), the Dubai crowds are back with a vengeance; the tourist and visitor season is in full swing. All this resulted in hundreds and hundreds of partiers swarming towards Atlantis in taxis come sunset last Friday, like moths to a big sandy flame. Richard Ashcroft made a fantastic start to things, impressing even non-fans with nothing but his guitar, a few mic effects and his powerfully rasping voice (although he did moan about us mentioning his age in our interview – it’s nothing to be ashamed of, Richard!). After a brief silent interlude, Chicane followed, smoothly making the transition from guitar-based music to dance. Example was up next, with a short but highly-charged set that crescendoed with current smash ‘Change The Way you Kiss Me’. (And, according to insiders, he was most keen to stick around and watch the other DJs afterwards). David Morales then stayed on stage for a long while, mixing up recent hits a treat, and many of the crowd were relieved when Sasha’s performance wasn’t as trance-heavy as we’d expected it to be. The real win of the night, however, was the organization: drinks queues were kept to a minimum by the army of bar staff, the enormous taxi queues were extremely well managed, and those waiting were even given free water. The third Sandance has shown us that its organisers can now easily handle 10,000 slightly sun-singed people. All the emphasis for the fourth one next month, then, is on the quality of the performers.
User reviews:
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Posted by: Cat on 22 Oct ' 11 at 19:01
Had a great time. Although slightly spoilt by a very rude Example looking miserable and refusing to take pictures after his set, and even swearing at some people. Nice way to treat your fans!!
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Posted by: laoise on 20 Oct ' 11 at 10:13
Waited about 30 mins to order a drink and was told there was no ice left. Then queued for over an hour for a taxi. Not good!
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Posted by: Dirty Dutch on 19 Oct ' 11 at 21:58
No negatives from me. I danced and jumped the whole time and could score enough drinks to keep me spirited!
Well done! -
Posted by: Mark on 19 Oct ' 11 at 13:22
Well worth the trip from Abu Dhabi just to see Richard Ashcroft, fantastic !
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Posted by: Alexandra on 17 Oct ' 11 at 16:10
Positives: really good quality of sound even 100 meters away from the stage, Richard Ashcroft, Example and Joris Voorn were great. surprisingly enough toilet cabins for girls. Delicious food! regrdless the long queueing
Negatives: disorganized bar, very slow staff and not enough inventory. Also Sasha and Chicane were dissapointing. Sand was full of huge rocks which made it painful to dance
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Posted by: Mariam on 16 Oct ' 11 at 18:08
Chicane was a complete disappointment. Sasha got better towards the end only. Richard Ashcroft rocked the night! Great performance, brilliant selection of songs!
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Posted by: Bones on 16 Oct ' 11 at 10:34
Found it very bad to be told after queing for 30 minutes for a drink at 10:30pm that there was just water left! Very poor drinks setup in the standard tickets area!
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Posted by: Vishal on 16 Oct ' 11 at 10:01
No mention of Joris Voorn? He absolutely rocked the (sandy) floor and along with Richard Ashcroft was the only artist consistently brilliant enough to keep the crowd on it's toes.........Sasha was at his mercurial best (worst?), a set full of magical peaks and head-scratching troughs
As for drink queues, please speak on behalf of those who didn't have the corporate experience-having to wait upto 20 minutes on average in a disorderly, sweaty queue while some of the 'battalion' of bar staff just stood by staring blankly ahead......
Note to the organisers: there is massive room for improvement
