Dance Valley

Dance Valley ("The Woodstock of Dance") is an annual dance music festival held in the summer in Spaarnwoude, Netherlands. The first edition was in 1995 when 8,000 people attended (and in 2001 90,000 visitors). Dance Valley grew rapidly, both in duration and number of visitors.

History

2005 was the first time the event lasted 3 days in the weekend with camping available for the concertgoers at the campsite. It rained. A record-breaking 53,000 people attended that year. There were some big changes to the festival in 2006. Traditionally held on the first weekend of August, due to colliding with another festival UDC (the Dance Valley management company) brought the festival forward two weeks to 14–16 July. While this had little effect in terms of sales it did affect the last two hours of the festival when sunlight was still visible on the horizon. This in turn affected the use of lighting with the lasers not being switched on until later. Dance Valley also hosted BMX, skate boarding and motorcycle competitions sponsored by LG. The back field in which HQ resided was not used; instead a large tent towards the entrance was specially erected for the harder side of dance.