There will be turbocharged turntables, there will be pillars of fire, there will be black lights, there will be technicolour sky flares, and yes there will be lasers.
The Midsummer's Dream festival is plugging in and sparking up, sending dance beats and ambient waves all over the poplars and evergreens.
"The event is definitely blowing up fast. It was just a party a couple of years ago and now it is a total festival," said Denise Godeau, the director of visual arts for the Prince George multimedia music festival only a weekend away.
It began as the modest staff party for the various deejays and event services people under the PG Entertainment Group umbrella. But their professional visions got the better of them, and over the past seven years it kept growing.
A few years ago it became a ticketed event with a title, and now the organizers happily fear it has broken through into a full-fledged major entertainment event.
One of the organizers on the production team, Chad Bohanan, bounces around the show site with the weary swagger of a labourer in the middle of a project and a little boy who can't wait for Christmas.
"We have a sprawling 10 acres here, and we also have some involvement with some neighbours. This uses a whole forest for a music festival and visual arts event," said Bohanan. "But we are really proud of how we used the forest. We didn't carve the festival site out of the trees, we just used what was available and moved some things around. We piled the dead branches and fall-down on the forest floor to delineate all the paths and natural trails. We have installed bat boxes and bird feeders to enhance the little ecosystem going on here. We pushed down three rotten trees to make room for the second stage but other than that, everything has been just found materials and what was already available from within the bush."
This year, a side stage and an ambient music station has been added that any smurf or ewok would approve of. Each one is nestled into the trees with infrastructure that complements and coexists with the towering trees and bushy under-story. The same applies to the open air massage and raiki room and the art gallery.
The industrial features of the site likewise used preexisting buildings. For example, the mainstage is huge - 62 feet wide, 30 feet deep and more than 20 feet high - but it is a temporary scaffold structure set up in the parking lot. Black-Light Alley is a wildly coloured art feature that utilizes an unused space between two buildings. The duck pond's water will be dyed and made part of the laser light show, but the dye is organic and biodegradable and the lights will be hung from suspended temporary wires over the grounds.
"We believe community sustainability is one of the most important issues we face, and we want to show the public that we can through this high-tech kind of event, we can showcase electronic music and deejaying, but at the same time demonstrate how to care for our environment."
They are also caring for the patrons and volunteers. The security budget alone is more than $7,000, there is also a First Aid team, and something special they augment that with is another group altogether that wanders the grounds "just checking on people, talking to people, looking for any signs that someone might need some help or some information or whatever," said Bohanan.
One key rule also plays a role in the theme of health and harmony. No intoxication. Drugs and alcohol are not permitted and efforts will be made to keep those influences out of the event. Further to that, only those 19 and older may enter.
Those who comply are rewarded with visual stimulation and creative awe. There are uplifting quotes displayed in the forest like "Come as you are, leave as you want to be, enjoy everything in between."
There are random art displays and curio outbursts, solar lights planted to colour the dark woods, even something called "an unnecessary high-five station" where trail walkers can leap up and give a hand-slap to dangling mannequin arms slung from the trees.
At almost any other event, you'd assume the items would be stolen or vandalized but the sobriety of the patrons and the overarching spirit of interconnected love help to minimize these worries.
It has all come together because the organizers are an ad-hoc group that are united in their commitment to apply all profits back to the event, and they are supported by an army of artists and trades people and service providers who invest personal time and tools for the sheer joy of hearing world-class electronic music in a world-class forest.
"In the beginning it was just a lot of manual labour, but now there's all these creative people who go in and decorate the whole area," said Godeau. "So many people bring so many different flavours to the table, and we focus on what each person's strengths are. I'm happiest to see the expansions into the forest. There is a tonne of new pathways, more camping in the forest, that whole second stage is in the forest area, and that's adding a lot to the festival feel."
As arts director, Godeau spent the year calling on artists to sell their wares in the on-site gallery, teach courses or do demonstrations during the two-day show, and adorn the 10-acre spread with interesting and evocative create elements.
Bohanan and his mates, on the other hand, spent the year putting together a lineup of high-caliber deejays and other musical acts.
"We deliberately set our dates so we would be on the [electronic music] festival circuit," Bohanan said. "We wanted to be able to take advantage of some serious talent coming for the other festivals and we didn't want to step on any other festival's toes. We have some people coming to our event this year that are, wow, so big in the industry. We're really lucky to have them. The general public may not recognize these names, but if you are into this kind of music, you know what it means for Prince George to have Freddy J and Vespers and Goosebumpz and BreO here on our stage, and we have an amazing local scene as well, which only gets better when they have events like this to use for their own growth as artists."
The best information sources for the Midsummer's Dream Music Festival are the event's website and their Facebook page. Tickets for admission (and camping if desired) are available online only at www.midsummersdreampg.com.
The Midsummer's Dream wakes up on July 18 and 19. It starts with an opening ceremony and the music plays all night, then into the next day.
