Festival Fire

Here it comes – the season is on! Symbiosis kicks it off in Pyramid Lake Nevada! Friends, Musicians, Fans, Vendors and Festival goers and heading their wagons to the desert for some Celebration!

If you are heading that way – here is an important message:

IMPORTANT URGENT MESSAGE about SYMBIOSIS GATHERING 2012 – Pyramid Eclipse. Bring WATER. Bring SHADE. Come prepared to WALK. There is BEAUTIFUL WALK-IN CAMPING but Pyramid Lake is a HARSH ENVIRONMENT. Do not show up with out at least 1 gallon of water per day per person. WATER IS LIFE! Bring water. Bring water. Bring water. And did we mention that you need to bring water?

Now that you’ve got your water in tow – What will you do when you get there?

Looks like lots of music to be had – plus art, yoga, dance, and plenty of activities.

The music line up is VAST – heres a taste – but there looks like 80 or 100 bands will be performing:

Wow! Thats FOUR! Earthdance joins Harmony, Emrg+N+See and the Northwest Herbal Fair in taking a year off for 2012!
Choosing how to plan your festival frolick this summer is getting simpler….

Dear Earthdancers,

Spring greetings to you all.
We would like to inform you that the Earthdance Northern California Festival will officially be taking a year sabbatical for 2012. 2011 was a major transition year for us, which stretched us on many levels. Not only did we move Earthdance to a new location, but we also helped birth the new Gaia Festival at the Black Oak Ranch. plus in addition, Earthdance founder Chris Deckker made a permanent move back to Australia. After 10 wonderful years, we feel that now is the perfect time to “take a breather” and refocus our energy into rebuilding Earthdance into a new and exciting festival for 2013 and beyond. We will keep you updated with our progress, so please stay tuned.

We thank you all for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you again in the future.

Many blessings,

Earthdance Northern CA

Just got this press release from the Gaia Festival! What a terrific lineup this year!
Early Bird prices end April 24th!

Michael Franti and Spearhead, Yonder Mountain String Band, Kinky, Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars, Dumpstaphunk, Baka Beyond, Hot Buttered Rum, Bomba Estereo, Orgone, Pimps Of Joytime, David Lindley, Rupda & The April Fishes, SambaDa, Indubious, Afromassive, MaMuse, and many more!

The Black Oak Ranch in Laytonville, California, is Northern California’s most loved concert venue. So it’s no wonder that The Gaia Festival is fast becoming a “destination festival” for music lovers with its extensive grounds covering approximately 150 acres, year-round flowing creek , and camping in old growth oaks. This is a “green festival” and the event is powered by biodiesel generators. Just a three hour drive north of San Francisco and two hours south of Arcata. It’s the perfect place to enjoy a weekend with friends, family, and lovers of great music. Black Oak Ranch is home to the Hog Farm and Camp Winnarainbow — a circus camp for kids, and has hosted many world-class events over the years including Earthdance – The Global Festival For Peace. 
www.thegaiafestival.com

March 29, 2012 :: Special Announcement

Dear Harmony Festival Family,

On behalf of the Harmony Festival Board of Directors and management team, we sincerely thank you for your continued support and encouragement as we have grown and evolved The Harmony Festival from a grassroots community event in 1978, into the nationally renown music, arts and cultural festival that you’ve come to expect year after year. It is with a deep sense of regret that we announce that after 33 years we will not be producing a Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa, CA in June 2012.

As you can imagine, this is a very difficult announcement for us to make. We have appreciate your continued patience as we took the necessary time to prepare a thoughtful message to inform the greater Harmony community of our decision, which is now effective immediately.

You might ask why we made this decision. Please trust that we have spent many months creatively exploring dozens of promising options in the hopes that we could keep this magical event alive this year. We know this news is a great disappointment to the entire Harmony community, and we share your feelings of disappointment. We ask that we work together to move beyond this stage, toward hope and optimism for future Harmony Festivals.

We are working on plans to reorganize the company and the possibility of creating Harmony Festivals in the coming years. We are counting on engaging your support and participation going forward as we re-envision a sustainable future for the festival.

We welcome your comments and feedback at www.harmonyfestivalonline.com and look forward to the possibility of rekindling the Harmony Festival flame so it shines even more brightly again in the future.

Respectfully,

Harmony Festival

The Symbiosis Gathering is one of the first of the season, and is just a few weeks away. If you can be in the bay area this week – Don’t miss the Pre Party! Thurs April 19th, at 1015 Folson in San Francisco!

Symbiosis Gathering 09 from Symbiosis Presents on Vimeo.

The Symbiosis Gathering – May 17-21, 2012 Pyramid Lake, Nevada

[What an awesome invitation that expresses so well what the festival world is all about: - editor]

Symbiosis intends to facilitate peak experiences through a synaesthesia of art, music, transformational learning, and sustainable living integrated into an unparalleled extravaganza of fun beneath the starry skies.

Our organization was founded on strong principles of environmental consciousness and ecological sustainability and each event has continued to advance this vision through the implementation of both time-tested and innovative eco-action initiatives.

We seek to provide a space for the fusion of aesthetics, sound, and natural living, in an atmosphere of interactive co-creation so we may share in moments that are transformative and inspiring, based in a deep respect for our community and environment.

THIS IS A CALL TO ACTION
We believe in the healing, transformative potential of intentional gatherings. We have dedicated our lives to facilitating these opportunities for collective evolution. This eclipse is the culmination of all we have learned along the way.

From the dark side of the moon, we are called to gather, to bring the unique gifts we have each been cultivating in order to enter together into this time of reckoning. Within this great shadow of the eclipse we have the opportunity to engage with our own shadows: personal, ancestral and cultural, and work together to transform these challenges into the blessings of a new day.

THIS IS A COMPLETELY UNIQUE FESTIVAL
In fact, our intention is for this to be a time when we get to taste the village life we all feel missing from our lives, sharing food, song, prayer, dance, art, performance and the day-to-day beauty of being alive.

Focused around a central elemental altar, where offerings and ceremonies will occur throughout the gathering, there is a sacred container being collectively created and held, in collaboration with the Native peoples who have honored us with the use of their land.

Every facet of this gathering is an opportunity for the work, whether it be on dancefloor, in the skill shares, gathering in ritual or connecting with the land and each other.

We do not know exactly what these times hold, but we do know that when we enter this moment together, with real intentions for global healing and awakening, we can participate in these cosmic cycles in the best possible way,

[After the video "Oh the Places You'll Go" went viral, (see earlier post) Burning Man Organizers had over 1 million people wanting tickets at their early release date....- Saphir]

Ticket Update: Radical Inclusion, Meet the Other Nine
Posted by Andie Grace

First things first:

For all the frustration, anxiety, stress, and heartache this year’s ticket lottery has caused, please accept another humble apology.

This is no time for issuing statements or putting a spin on anything. The system may have worked, but the cultural outcome sure didn’t, and even though some of you saw that coming and said so, we didn’t, and for that we are sorry.

The current trajectory is not acceptable. Even people who did get tickets aren’t cheering right now, since so many of their camps and friends are standing out in the cold. Entire groups are worried they’ll have to scrap all their plans. Burning Man is a participatory and collaborative event, and many collaborations are perilously close to falling apart. [Read more...]

From the enchanted land of Burning Man comes this collaborative production of Dr. Suess’s final book.