RAVE REALITIES

Dance Parties Are Raucous And Splashy -- But Perhaps Not As Dangerous As
Grown-Ups Imagine

The main dance floor at the 4th Avenue Theatre was dark, lit only by green
and red lasers, video and strobe lights that pierced the artificial smoke.
Bass from the music throbbed so strongly that it made the fabric of my
pants vibrate. Dancers facing the stage writhed and turned.

Alone on the stage, surrounded by enormous speakers, disc jockey "Baby
Anne" stood in front of a 30-foot-high screen displaying computer-generated
graphics. Wearing a big set of headphones, she concentrated intently on the
two turntables before her, glancing at the gyrating crowd below her only
occasionally. Baby Anne was the only person in the room on whom a light
shone. From below, she resembled a fantasy dictator from a sci-fi film.

To an adult, the mere mention of the word "rave" conjures up a vision of
young people out of their minds on ecstasy, dancing trancelike to
repetitive music, sex, and the eventual brain and eardrum damage caused by
drugs and music.

But when I -- a folk music aficionado in my late 30s who hasn't darkened
the door of a dance club in a long, long time -- checked out Anchorage's
rave scene, the reality blew most of those preconceptions away.

So what is a rave? Opinions differ.

A party on the afternoon of June 23 at Hilltop Ski Area consisted of about
150 kids in their late teens and early 20s gathered on the hillside to
listen to the music in the sun while a dozen or so people danced -- like an
outdoor high school dance. When asked if that party was a "rave," most
people screwed up their faces and cocked their heads to one side.

"Well-l-l, the music's right, but S"

"Kind of, except it's outside."

"It's not loud enough."

The consensus at Hilltop was that a rave has to have loud, driving
electronic music ("techno"), lasers and lights, lots of people and lots and
lots of dancing.

And what about ecstasy, the drug associated with raves?

While some of the partygoers defended raves as drug-free and completely
innocent, most were honest.

"There's people who go for the music, and there's some people who go for
the drugs," said Isabell Johnson, 19, from Palmer.

Johnson admits to having tried ecstasy once. But she said drugs aren't
essential to raves, nor are they the draw for the vast majority of people.
For Johnson and her friends, it was the music and the sense of community
they found. She disapproved of people who came for the drugs.

"People act really stupid when they're using (drugs)," she said.

She added that she would rather be at a party where there's ecstasy than
one where there was drinking.

"Alcohol is the real problem," she said. "When you go to a bar and it's a
bunch of drunk people, it's gonna be much rowdier."

There was no evidence of drug use at the Hilltop party. The only impaired
person was a young man turned away from the party by security personnel
because he had been drinking before he arrived.

Nor were drugs obvious at the big dance party last Friday at the 4th Avenue
Theatre. Instead, the scene was hundreds of kids having a good time,
apparently without pharmaceutical enhancement.

Pubescent girls in bikini tops and crop tops, some wearing homemade
gossamer fairy wings, squealed and hugged when they saw one another in the
foyer. Some went all-out on their outfits: day-glo streamers woven into
hair, spangles, pants trimmed with neon-colored fake fur, wrists full of
candy-colored plastic beads, and the ubiquitous glitter.

Boys tended toward baggy pants, urban street wear, numbered sports jerseys
and Hawaiian shirts. Many carried plastic glow sticks in a rainbow of colors.

According to everyone I asked, this was the real thing.

"It's the music, the lights, the scene," said Adam "Macki" McDonald, 20,
who also had been at the Hillside event. "You asked last week what a rave
was. This is a rave. People are here to party."

McDonald was one of many young men who had their glow sticks on short wires
with handles. Dancers swung the neon tubes, creating swirls of color in the
dark. Guys and even girls took turns break dancing, spinning on their backs
and heads, stopping in midturn to show off a cool position. Crowds of
dancers stood around, watching and cheering. People doing a lot more than
the shuffle-and-swing-arms that has characterized the dancing from high
school or college days for most of the past several decades.

"You gotta have a love for the music," said Shane Smith, 24, aka DJ
Samurai. "Like anything, this is a way for young people to separate
themselves from their parents. In every generation, there's something for
kids to come together on to say, 'This is ours.' "

"As soon as I started coming to raves, I felt accepted," said Jennifer
Marshall, 19, who was covered in glitter and plastic beads and smiled
continuously. She hugged the girl next to her. "It's like a family."

Marshall, who is an outreach worker at the Covenant House youth shelter,
said her boss was unhappy when he heard she was attending the parties.

"Then I began to see kids from work and they started talking to me and
seeing that you didn't need to do drugs to have a good time," she said.
"Now he thinks it's a good thing."

Authorities at the party seemed to think the night was a good thing as
well. Security personnel said the event was calm except for an incident
about a half-hour after the doors opened -- again, someone got loaded
before showing up. One security guard estimated that 5 percent to 10
percent of the crowd was using "something."

But security effectively kept problems outside, patting down patrons,
checking hat bands, pockets, boot legs, forbidding bags, bottles and
cigarettes.

Greg McDonald of the Anchorage Fire Department, assigned to the event,
thought it went smoothly.

"When I was a kid in the '70s, it was crazy," he said. "Ninety-nine percent
of these kids are great, and they need someplace to go."

McDonald said he thought there was a difference between the scene in Alaska
and what he's heard about parties in the Lower 48.

That impression was confirmed by out-of-staters like Ben Sorenson, 24, and
his brother Dan, 18, who came from Idaho to do some fishing. It was their
first night in town; they saw the crowd and decided to check out the party.

"I've been to raves before in Salt Lake," Ben Sorenson said. "But I never
heard of a rave like this. It has everything a rave has except there's no
drugs, no older people and no SWAT teams busting people."

He and his brother went to the oxygen bar upstairs. "It's neat how everyone
is dressed up," Ben said as he put on his oxygen tube -- backward.

Caitlin Brown also said raves in the Lower 48 were much more "wild." She
had been the center of attention on the dance floor, making snakelike and
intricate motions with her body and hands. It was obvious she'd spent hours
in front of a mirror perfecting her moves.

"In Kansas City, there are a lot of cigarettes inside the rave and you know
a lot of those people are smoking bud (marijuana) too," said the
16-year-old. "Here, it's a nice environment -- people are dancing, having
fun, drinking water."

Her friend Genevieve Gabbert, 18, interrupted. "Raves are for you to show
off. The moves are improvisations, and you do whatever you want."

"It's a great place to express yourself," Brown said. "You get to express
yourself and people don't care. They're not judgmental."

As the night wore on past curfew and younger dancers left for home, the
atmosphere took on more of an edge. Some new arrivals had clearly been
drinking. The sexuality became less Britney Spears and more Christine
Aguilera. Dance moves took on a more sinuous quality. Otherwise, the scene
and consensus remained the same: It was a good party and, with 700-plus
people having come through the doors, amazingly well-controlled.

Organizer Jon Murphy of Chaos Productions said the party was about 100
people short of breaking even. But he denied being discouraged. He said he
did it for the love of the music and the satisfaction.

"It's really fun to do something for kids," he said. "I'd rather do this
than be out at some house party and getting in trouble."

REPORTER'S NOTES

I'm not sure I'd ever go to a rave on my own. The music's not my style. I'm
not 19 anymore, and I was glad. I don't have that kind of energy.

What struck me was that the dancing was very self-oriented, done in a crowd
of people dancing solo in front of a solitary DJ. It made sense to me that
kids might be looking for a way to connect and create community.

But in general, the atmosphere was appealing and accepting, and I had the
impression that kids looking for a good time could do a lot worse.