Coachella‘s already extensive dance offerings are expanding with this week’s announcement of a new festival stage dedicated to the genre.
Called Quasar, the stage will feature extended sets that run three to four hours, with Coachella producer Goldenvoice announcing different lineups for both weekends of the fest. Weekend one will feature Honey Dijon playing b2b with Green Velvet, the first U.S. show from Michael Bibi since he announced he was in remission from cancer, and Jamie xx playing b3b with Floating Points and Daphni. All of these artists are new additions to the lineup.
For weekend two, Quasar will feature a DJ set by Rüfüs du Sol, Eric Prydz playing b2b with Anyma and Diplo playing b2b with Dutch wunkderkind Mau P. Minus Anyma (also known as Matteo Milleri, who is one half of Tale of Us), all of these artists are also new to the 2024 lineup.
There’s also evidence that more artists will join the bill. On the lineup announcement on Instagram, Los Angeles-based DJ Heidi Lawden commented “one female yay!” in regard to the lineup being almost entirely men. In response, Kobi Danan — whose company Framework curates Coachella’s Yuma stage – – wrote “not done yet!”
A rendering of the stage reveals it to be a massive area with a futuristic design. A video shared to Instagram by Coachella outlines specs for the stage, which Goldenvoice’s Executive Vice President Jenn Yacoubian calls “a stage where we can book talent on it in a way that we’ve felt we haven’t been able to in the past. We’re look at it as a traditional kind of DJ stage. The thinking was that we wanted people to see a longer format DJ set.”
Designed by Vita Modus, a longtime Coachella stage designer, Quasar will be assembled from two massive LED walls with the artists in the middle.
This is the first time that Coachella has debuted a new stage dedicated to dance music since Yuma launched at the event in 2013. Launched during the EDM explosion and designed to showcase more “underground” dance music, Yuma has grown substantially over the years in tandem with house and techno’s rise in popularity in the U.S. According to Yacoubian, Quasar will occupy a space on the festival site formerly occupied by the Sahara tent, with that tent moving elsewhere.
Dance music is otherwise spread across nearly all the Coachella stages, typically appearing on the festival’s second biggest area, the Outdoor Stage, the occasional mainstage performance (including Calvin Harris and Swedish House Mafia during the past two years), along with Yuma, Sahara, the Do Lab area and often in the Gobi and Mojave tents as well.
