Wanderlust Festival: yoga by day, party by night

By Lauren Duffy

World-class yogis and electronic music fans united in a place of extraordinary natural beauty at the second annual Wanderlust Festival. This year's four-day event brought a cumulative total of 15,000 yoga and music fans to Lake Tahoe, triple the attendance of last year's inaugural event, said Jeff Krasno, event organizer. Krasno, the founder of Wanderlust, was pleased with the growth of this year's event and described the weekend as an "excellent, comfortable experience."

At this eclectic event, festival-goers had the chance to practice yoga and meditation by day, while rocking out to performances from world-renowned electronic DJs and a variety of musical artists, including Moby, Pretty Lights, Bassnectar, and Brazilian Girls by night. Along with raucous dance parties, evenings at Wanderlust offered stilt walkers, fire spinners and late night lounges that brought a sense of community and revelry.

Wanderlust took place at Squaw Valley Resort, an expansive ski resort with an elevation of over 6,000 feet that provided stunning views for the festival. Krasno said that he picked the location after touring numerous ski resorts and finally settled on Squaw Valley due to the nearby community that would to support the message of the festival with eco-oriented ideals, not to mention the area's pure beauty.

"(Tahoe) is an incredibly beautiful and striking place," he said. Yoga superstar Shiva Rea was one of the dozens of yogis who taught a wide variety of classes and lectures focused on zen, meditation and various styles of yoga at Wanderlust during the daytime. Yoga classes and lectures proved wildly popular and tickets sold out Friday, Saturday and Sunday; overall, Krasno said the yoga side "ran seamlessly."

"After doing yoga all day, people just wanted to dance," said Krasno with a laugh.

Last year's indie-heavy lineup included Broken Social Scene, Andrew Bird, and Jenny Lewis, among others, and this year's headliners provided dance-oriented, rhythmic tunes for energized yogis, as well as for attendees who bought tickets strictly for music.

Santa Clara senior Siobhan Curley road-tripped up to Tahoe for the weekend to attend shows and rented a nearby cabin with a group of Santa Clara students. Curley, who grew up near Lake Tahoe, first heard about the festival when she was checking out Pretty Lights' upcoming touring schedule, and decided to volunteer at the event to help negate the pricey yoga ticket costs. One-day yoga/music passes were $140 - $90 more than the one-day music tickets; by volunteering, Curley was able to attend all days of music and one day of yoga free of cost.

Moby provided a rhythmic DJ set Friday night that left the audience eager for more when his set was promptly cut at the midnight curfew. Moby, considered by many to be the forefather of modern electronic music, rose to worldwide prominence through his mastery of house and ambient music in the early '90's. On Friday night, he played a hypnotic set that included songs from his breakthrough 1999 album "Play," as well as tracks from his most recent 2009 album "Wait for Me."

One of the highlights of the weekend was an acoustic performance by Moby Saturday afternoon, a surprising performance that was "one of the absolute gems of the festival," said Krasno. Moby played acoustic guitar and was accompanied by soulful vocalist Kelli Scarr in a low-key, intimate performance in a setting that provided unbelievable views of the valley, a show radically different from the previous night's thumping electronic set.

"It seems like a happy song, but it's actually written about a dystopian post- Apocalypse," said Moby during his acoustic rendition of "Southside," one of his most commercially successful songs in the United States. Moby and Scarr also performed covers of classics including Neil Young's "Helpless," a song that had the packed crowd swaying, smiling and singing along.

Bassnectar, a San Francisco-based DJ known for his dubstep musical style, proved to be one of the biggest draws of the weekend with music fans, making Saturday the most attended day of Wanderlust. Despite a delay early in the performance due to technical issues, the packed audience gleefully danced to Bassnectar's heavy beats characterized by a "whomp-whomp" sound, accompanied by trippy visual projections.

Pretty Lights, another crowd favorite, debuted a new drummer in their Friday night show, which proved to be an an energetic, rocking set that fused samples of music ranging from glitch and synth to funk and hip-hop.

New York-based band Brazilian Girls whipped the crowd into a funky frenzy with their Sunday night performance, a show that Curley described as one of her unexpected favorites. Brazilian Girls, none of whom is actually from Brazil and only one of whom is female, played an eclectic set featuring avant-garde costumes and swirling colorful lights; at one point, lead singer Sabina Sciubba hopped offstage and lead the crowd in a joyous conga line.

Looking forward to Wanderlust 2011, Krasno sees the possibility of an artist-in-residence, a unique approach that "happened inadvertently with Moby" at this year's festival. In addition to Moby's DJ and acoustic set, he gave an intimate "speakeasy" talk on Saturday afternoon about his reasons for being vegan. Krasno also sees the possibility of expanding Wanderlust to multiple venues, as a way to further the greater message of the event, as an experience where those who attend the event feel enlightened and learn something from the experience.

"The concept of wanderlust is an 'innate desire to travel,' and we want to create a national and international scope of people that taps into that idea... both spiritually and physically. I think that's an eventual goal," said Krasno.