Dominator; a paradise surrounded by a world of mayhem…

Last Friday I returned from my vacation to Valencia and our aeroplane was slightly delayed as an immobile guy had to be installed. Safely landed back in The Netherlands at Eindhoven airport, I found myself walking behind this immobile guy and his friend. With an ingenious device, the guy moved his wheelchair with his chin and I figured that he was paralysed from neck to toe. Then, I noticed that at the back of his hair a strange symbol was imprinted and people around me started whispering and speculating about the meaning of this symbol. He was wearing a Masters of Hardcore vest and it soon struck me: “This was the symbol of Dominator… This immobile Spanish guy is going to Dominator!”      

At this moment, people are slowly waking up from an intense day of raving at Dominator – although some who after-partied a little too hard are holding deeply conversations with their ceiling. The immobile guy must wake up too, waiting for his friend to lift him in his wheelchair. I figured that he is still in a state of euphoria. At the same time, the rest of the world is slowly waking from a wave of terror that washed over earth’s surface this week. In France, Turkey, The Middle-East, The United-States and other countries, thousands of lives have been taken by horrific acts of violence. It makes me often wonder in what kind of paradoxical world we are living in. As thousands of people are partying in a house of Eden at Dominator, including immobile ones, others are devastated as some of their relatives’ and friends’ lives are destroyed by another wave of terror and violence.

However, with every terroristic attack, with every act of violence, with all the bloodshed, with every tear that is fallen, and all the mothers heart’s that have been broken, it hits me why I love this scene, the music, and the people so much.

This scene is so innocent. Yes, we use drugs. Yes, we drink too much. Yes, we barely sleep. But hell, for a weekend we turn a tiny little of Earth’s surface into a paradise of Eden where there is no violence, where there is no fear, where there is only love, tolerance, and brotherhood. It is at times like these, when the world seems to crash into a complete mayhem, that I feel blessed to be part of something so peaceful and loving.

This is something the immobile guy knew all along. This is why he takes all the effort to travel from Spain to The Netherlands. He knows that he must take every opportunity to attend this paradise of Eden. At all costs he needs to attend these kinds of festivals while he is still able to. I can only imagine his smile when they lift him into the airplane back to Spain. This smile symbolises the power the Hard Dance scene holds. It can create tiny spaces of paradises in a world seized by flows of mayhem.