This weekend a unique concept will take place in our little A-town. Some even call it quite controversial. Which immediately drew my attention, of course. The creator of this event, Wolfram Ghesquière, is as mythical as his genesis, . He created an event or rather a genuine get-together between like-minded souls. Because Leave Us At Dawn is not your casual Friday night bore fest. No, it’s a night to remember, a night that will flow into dawn before you know it. Since I’m a virgin to these parties, I was rather pleased to speak with its’ notorious creator. Especially since he is hard to catch for an interview. Lucky me!
I met Wolfram on a rainy Wednesday evening. But when he started talking about his party concept, sparkles of joy shot from his eyes and the rain was just a faraway memory. He explained he was rather tired of all the typical parties where we head out to every weekend. Most of the times they felt like an anti-social gathering to him, where it is hard to meet new people. He wanted to change the game and make sure that at the end of the night everyone had at least a handful of new acquaintances and preferably even a new friend.
I would call getting to know the others his trademark for the Leave Us at Dawn parties. That’s why he introduced speed dating to the valentine edition. And a confession booth. And a message board. And Chatroulette. All of these funny ideas have been brought into the party concept with the sole idea of meeting new people. This entire set of activities will create a perfect harmony between the people and the music, between the performers and the DJs, it will be a glorious night if you ask me.
When I asked him why this special edition for Valentine, his answer was so poetic that I’m quite envious the words aren’t mine. He calls his Leave Us At Dawn Far l’Amore parties, a once in a year celebration entirely devoted to the freedom of love.
I can’t imagine why you would still doubt in joining this evening of guilty pleasures but if you need some more convincing, listen to this. For us twenty-somethings, life is not easy. We don’t know if we want to travel the world and live it up like there ain't no tomorrow or rather settle down and pretend to be real adults. We are always the in-betweens even though the teenagers and the real adults are envious of us. We all still long for our easy late nineties lifestyle when we didn’t have to think about anything and ravage through the night without thinking about the consequences. So if you want to relive this time, even for one night, you should definitely go out and play at the Leave us At Dawn Far l’Amore party.See you all then! Oh and don’t forget to dress up, it’s a fancy party after all where the entire beau-monde of the city will be present and the cult-photographer Athos Burez will do staged photoshoots with guests so it’s time to take that party gear out of the closet!
:: Maarschalk Gérardstraat 4 :: 2000 Antwerp :: 20/02/2016
Text by Cleo Klapholz
Pics by Esther Sla