Temperatures in the mid-90s all weekend couldn’t dissuade thousands of sweaty club kids from packing into MoMA’s PS1’s courtyard on Saturday for opening day of Warm Up, the museum’s indefatigable summer dance party series. Now in its 21st year, Warm Up will once again run every Saturday until September, with musical acts and DJs such as Soul Summit, Gang Gang Dance, Toro y Moi, SOB X RBE, and A-Trak taking the blow-up-pool-toy festooned stage. Last weekend headliner honors went to Norwegian DJ Cashmere Cat, with rappers Valee and the Nigerian Burna Boy, and a Los Angeles punk band Fuck U Pay Us highlighting the lengthy undercard.
Opening day of Warm Up also neatly coincided with the unveiling of this year's courtyard installation by the Young Architects Program winner, Dream the Combine, a Minneapolis design firm run by Jennifer Newsome and Tom Curruthers, who worked here in collaboration with Clayton Binkley of ARUP. The piece is called Hide & Seek and it involves lots of mirrors (most of which are kinetic), a long shaded runway, and a massive hammock that can fit at least 60 people. There's a water element to the hammock as well, with sudden sprays of mist coming from the sides, but this seems to have been out of commission for most of Saturday.
By early evening all the lines were long (to buy drink tickets, to get drinks with said tickets, for the bathrooms inside the museum after you've had your drinks), and the dance floor was too crowded to really even move, so hitting the event early is a good idea. But overall the atmosphere was chill and festive as always, the people-watching prime, and the food from M. Wells delicious.
(Scott Lynch / Gothamist)
Warm Up will be at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City every Saturday through September 1. Doors open at noon, and the first act goes on at 3 p.m.
