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COMMUNIQUE: “We’d rather stand than sit: no Hadra Trance Festival in 2021.“
We had made the choice not to announce a 2021 festival and preferred to be cautious before making a decision, not knowing after the cancellation of the 2020 edition if there would be a festival season this year. Last week, the government announced new measures to provide festival organizers with concrete answers for 2021. The specifications were given in a pragmatic and straightforward way: there will only be sit-down, remote festivals with fewer than 5,000 people. It is therefore following these announcements and with great regret that we resign ourselves to abandon the Hadra Trance Festival 2021 project.
We have always claimed the wish to create a space of freedom, exchange and sharing. The announced measures go against our values and we are not ready to make such compromises because we do not want to change the festival’s DNA. The same DNA that has been built over the last 20 years by passionate people, involved volunteers, budding artists and strong partnerships, so that the festival is free. If the Hadra Trance Festival does not take place in 2021, it is also to pay tribute to all these values, to these very foundations. Not to forget who we are and above all, who we want to be in the future.
We will not sit and wait, we will stand together, to shout out loud and clear that we are essential to this society, convinced by the happiness that these spaces of freedom bring to humanity. We will be standing next to our artists, as close as possible to their musical creation. Standing with the people we accompany with the Trancemission section, discovering the practices of electronic music. Standing beside our intermittent workers, imagining scenographies and crazy ideas to come. Standing at Vieure, where other forms of projects than the festival, rich in human experiences, are being refined. Standing alongside cultural actors, to ask for the reopening of venues, theatres, clubs, cinemas, museums and also bars and restaurants. Standing up to propose conferences, shows, to celebrate in our own way the 20 years of the association. We will therefore be everywhere else than at the Vieure lake in August 2021, but it is better to be standing everywhere than sitting nowhere.
Once again, we offer our full support to those who suffer and share the pain of a summer without the festivals we cherish: our audience, our employees, casual workers, volunteers, artists, workers, service providers, partners and friends of Vieure and of the community of communes of the Bocage Bourbonnais.
Our energy and motivation are only strengthened by this: we will come back and continue to plan a gathering worthy of this long absence!
Exchange time: We look forward to seeing you on Saturday 27th February at 2pm on our Hadra Twitch to exchange with the members of the association about this cancellation. The opportunity to share with you our feelings and decisions, and to answer all your questions.