Movement techno festival, a Memorial Day fixture in Detroit, moves to September
Brian McCollum
Detroit's arts and music calendar continues to get turned upside down: Twenty years after electronic music became a Memorial Day weekend fixture on the riverfront, the Movement festival has postponed its 2020 edition to Sept. 11-13.
The Hart Plaza techno fest, initially scheduled May 23-25, is the biggest Detroit festival affected so far by the coronavirus pandemic.
Existing tickets and passes will be honored at the rescheduled September fest or in 2021, producer Paxahau said Thursday evening in a statement.
Refunds are available if sought, but Movement organizers stressed that ticket buyers are a critical revenue plank: "Your financial investment literally creates this event," they wrote.
Detroit-based Paxahau took the reins of the annual May event in 2006.
From the onset of the coronavirus outbreak, the techno festival was clearly among the most vulnerable local gatherings on the immediate calendar, given its substantial international audience and number of traveling artists.
The techno fest typically draws three-day audiences of about 100,000 at Hart Plaza. Movement weekend also includes an array of afterparties and other events beyond the riverside site.
Top acts at Movement this year were to include Underworld, Adam Beyer and Deadmau5 performing as Testpilot.
"We are receiving commitments from production teams and performing artists for the new dates and have been working around the clock to share some positive news we can all look forward to," the Movement team wrote Thursday.
The Hart Plaza techno festival has been the de facto kickoff of the summer music season in metro Detroit, bracketed on the other end by Labor Day events including the Detroit International Jazz Festival and Arts, Beats & Eats in Royal Oak .
The shift to Sept. 11-13 means Movement will run Friday-Sunday — rather than Saturday-Monday, as the techno fest had done since it began as the Detroit Electronic Music Festival (DEMF) in 2000.
"We look forward to coming out on the other side of this together," Paxahau wrote.
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.