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The Core Citadel: Releasing Dominator's ancient beast
Challenge
The storyline of Dominator's 19th edition takes us to an ancient city long lost to time, buried beneath the sands of a scorching desert.
Our challenge for the Dutch hardcore festival was to create a cohesive festival experience that brings the mythic storyline to life. We needed to transform three different parts of the festival - The Core Citadel, the Extreme stage and the Mainstage/Raw - into a sprawling, mysterious desert city that evokes the mystique of the ancient citadel.
Departments
Play Endshow
01. Brief
The lost ancient-city theme was the centre point of Art of Dance's brief this year, including their storyline and a list keywords such as "force", "ancient civilization" and "sands of time".
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02. Designer insights
"In last years aftermovie, there was one guy screaming “Dominatooor” from the bottom of his soul and that picture stuck with me. What if we captured that energy and turn it into a stage? That was when the idea for this years mainstage took shape and the beast was born."
- Freek Cornelissen
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03. Concept
For Dominator 2024, we created The Core Citadel, an ancient temple with a jaw-dropping 32-meter high hardcore god-like statue. This beast of a structure nails the ultimate Dominator pose, frozen mid-scream: “DOOOOMINAAAATOOOR!”— how we know it from the anthem we all love. With clenched fists and head thrown back, every muscle is locked in a fierce position. The torso, held by massive columns, reveals the temple’s guts on a colossal 300 square meter LED wall.
Etched with custom hieroglyphs, this statue chronicles the hardcore history, peppered with cheeky details for the sharp-eyed audience. After last year’s zipline hype, Guido from Art of Dance wanted to amp things up: the ultimate daredevil ride of getting ‘eaten’ by the giant statue. A reverse zipline draws you from the statue’s fist into its mouth, giving you a killer view of the crowd 24 meters below. You dive down, getting ‘swallowed’ by the statue, passing through the visible esophagus, and land backstage in the belly of the beast.
We also got the opportunity to create and direct the end show, also took care of the visuals all day long. Our motion graphics added a whole new layer, evolving the stage decor throughout the day into mysterious temple interiors with small details that keep the crowd on their toes.
Further down the festival terrain, we gave the Extreme stage a new look as well, continuing with the Citadel's hieroglyph theme to ensure a cohesive experience.
For the ‘Mainstage’, Dominator recycled the core parts of last year’s main stage, and we got to bring that middle LED screen alive with some dynamic visuals.
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04. Results
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