Q-dance

Not to be confused with Qmusic.

Q-dance is a Dutch company that organizes events and festivals that focuses on the harder styles of dance music – mainly hardstyle, hardcore, and hard trance. Popular events and festivals organized by Q-dance are Defqon.1 Festival, Qlimax and Dominator. Q-Dance has organized multiple events and festivals in the past such as Qapital, The Qontinent, Impaqt, Q-Base, EPIQ, and X-Qlusive. The events of Q-dance are easily identified by the letter “Q” on the event names. The logo of Q-dance is inspired by the knobs on DJ mixers, which if turned 120 degrees to the right creates the letter “Q”.

Q-dance

History

Foundation

Q-dance was founded in 1999 as Qlass Elite by a group of friends in the northern suburbs of Amsterdam (Landsmeer, the Netherlands). The first event created by Qlass Elite was Houseqlassics, an event that played old-school house music. After two editions of Houseqlassics in 2000, a few more events were scheduled for the year: 91-92 and Qlimax. A year later, in 2001, the name of the company was changed into Q-dance and a new concept was introduced: Qlubtempo.

Q-dance was an early adopter of the genre Hardstyle. This new genre of dance music grew in a few years as one of the most popular dance genres and is still the main type of music played at Q-dance events. In 2002 Q-dance moved the Qlimax event to the Thialf stadion in Heerenveen, the Netherlands, and in 2003 to the Gelredome in Arnhem.

In 2003 on Bloemendaal beach, the Netherlands, Q-dance built a beach club named Q-beach. In the weekends small parties and talent shows were organized at Q-beach. The events stopped in 2004. In 2003 three new concepts were introduced: Defqon.1 Festival, X-Qlusive and the techno concept Teqnology.

Q-dance abroad

In 2004, Q-dance decided to cross borders for the first time. In the German Weeze, on the abandoned RAF-airbase, the first edition of Q-BASE took place. The year 2004 was ended with the first edition of QrimeTime, an event in which visitors were dressed like gangsters and Mafiosi to conclude the year.

Q-Base tent under construction.

In 2005, Belgium became an important country for Q-dance. It was in this year that Q-dance had a permanent venue at Tomorrowland. In 2006, the first Belgian Qlimax was held in Hasselt, Belgium. In 2007, the first Belgian X-Qlusive was organized and a year later the very first Belgian only Q-dance festival was organized: The Qontinent. The events in Belgium are organized by the Q-dance office in Antwerp.

In 2008, it was Australia's turn to experience Q-dance. Q-dance organized a tour on three big cities in Australia: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Later that year Q-dance organized two editions of X-Qlusive Showtek in Sydney and Melbourne. In that same year QrimeTime was replaced by Qountdown, a newer concept to end (and begin) the year at the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

In September 2009 the first edition of Defqon.1 Festival took place in Sydney, Australia. The festival was in the first year sold out. Also, other countries were able to experience the events of Q-dance, in the form of small club tours, countries like: Poland, Brazil, Sweden, France, Italy, Great Britain and Northern Ireland experienced Q-dance.

In 2010 Q-dance celebrated its 10th year of existence in the Amsterdam ArenA, the Netherlands. In its decade anniversary Q-dance recycled materials from past events to relive the Q-dance experience. The Ferris wheel of Defqon.1 2008, the “Flower of Life” of Qlimax 2008 and “The Mask” of Qlimax 2006, among others, were used as decoration. In 2011 Defqon.1 Festival moved from Almere strand to the festival terrain of Biddinghuizen, the Netherlands. With that transition Defqon.1 became an extended festival, where visitors could stay for multiple days in the camping next to the festival terrain. For the weekend visitors there was a pre-party and afterparty. In 2013 Q-dance expanded their concept to South America and the USA, Organizing the first standalone events in the form of The Sound of Q-dance at Santiago, Chile, at Los Angeles, U.S. and Shenzhen, China.

Concepts

Current concepts

Concept	Location	First year
X-Qlusive (On-Hold)	Heineken Music Hall Amsterdam / GelreDome Arnhem	2002
Defqon.1 Festival	Event area Biddinghuizen	2003
Dominator	E3 Strand Eersel	2005

Previous concepts

Concept	Location	First year	Last year	Number of editions
'91-'92	Hemkade 48 Zaandam	2000	2001	5
Club Q-BASE	Hemkade 48 Zaandam	2002	2002	23
Hardcore Resurrection	Various locations	2000	2003	4
Qontact	Heineken Music Hall Amsterdam / Beursgebouw Eindhoven	2001	2004	8
Teqnology	Heineken Music Hall Amsterdam	2002	2004	6
Qlubtempo	Hemkade 48 Zaandam / Heineken Music Hall Amsterdam	2001	2007	31
QrimeTime	Heineken Music Hall Amsterdam	2004	2007	4
Houseqlassics	Various locations	1999	2010	18
In Qontrol	RAI Amsterdam	2004	2010	7
Qountdown	Heineken Music Hall Amsterdam	2008	2011	4
QORE 3.0	Heineken Music Hall Amsterdam	2011	2012	2
IQON	Sydney International Dragway	2013	2013	1
QULT	WesterUnie Amsterdam	2012	2015	15
Defqon.1 Festival Chile	Centro de Eventos Munich	2014	2017	3
Freaqshow	Ziggo Dome Amsterdam	2012	2017	6
Q-Base	Airport Weeze	2004	2018	15
Defqon.1 Australia	Sydney International Regatta Centre	2009	2018	10
WOW WOW	Ziggo Dome Amsterdam	2018	2018	1
IMPAQT	Weeze Airport Weeze (GE)	2019	2019	1
EPIQ New Year’s Eve	Ziggo Dome Amsterdam	2019	2019	1
Dediqated - 20 Years of Q-dance	GelreDome Arnhem	2020	2020	1
Qapital	Ziggo Dome Amsterdam	2013	2022	8
The Qontinent	Recreative area Puyenbroeck Wachtebeke (BE)	2008	2024	15
Qlimax	GelreDome Arnhem	2000	2024	27

Defqon.1 Festival

Main article: Defqon.1 Festival

Defqon.1 Festival is a multiday festival on the festival terrain of Biddinghuizen, the Netherlands. The first edition of Defqon.1 took place on the Almere Beach in 2003. In a few years time, Defqon.1 grew to be one of the most popular hard dance festivals in the Netherlands. In 2011 the Defqon.1 festival moved to the festival terrain of Biddinghuizen, where visitors could stay camping for the first time. Defqon.1 is organized once per year in the Netherlands.

Q-BASE

Q-BASE was introduced in 2004 as “The international dance festival”. On a former RAF-airbase in Weeze, Germany, thousands of partygoers from all over Europe come together to experience Q-BASE. Apart from the location, Q-BASE uniqueness is that it is a day and night festival. The festival lasts for 14 hours long. The latest edition of Q-BASE took place on the 8th of September 2018.

Dominator

Dominator
Genre	Electronic music, hardcore techno
Location(s)	E3 Strand Eersel, Netherlands
Years active	2005-present
Founders	Q-dance (and Art of Dance)
Attendance	50,000+
Website	DominatorFestival.nl

Held at E3 Strand Eersel since 2005, when there were 20,000 attendees. This event is one of the largest festivals for hardcore techno, with styles such as gabber.

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Qlimax

Main article: Qlimax

Qlimax used to be the longest running event of Q-dance for over a decade. In 2000 the first few editions of Qlimax were organized in the Beursgebouw at Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

Since 2003 Qlimax became a yearly returning event at the GelreDome in Arnhem, the Netherlands. The characteristics of a Qlimax event were that the show was organized around a theme, where much attention was given to the show and technology. The predominant music at Qlimax was hardstyle; however, it became tradition to open the show with a jumpstyle, hard trance, or subground act, and end the show with a hardcore act.

On the 25th of July 2024, Q-Dance announded that Qlimax 2024 will be the very last edition. With this announcement, Q-Dance has ended one of the oldest hardstyle events.

Q-dance hostings

In addition to concepts created by Q-dance, Q-dance is often presented at big events and multi-day festivals in the Netherlands and abroad. Q-dance has a permanent venue on national and international events of Mysteryland. Since 2003 Q-dance has hosted a venue at Mysteryland in the Netherlands as well as in Chile since 2011. In Belgium, Q-dance hosts a permanent venue at Tomorrowland since its first edition in 2005. In 2015 the company started a cooperation for a stage with Electric Love Festival, Austria and Tomorrowland Brasil

Q-dance has hosted a stage at Planet Love, Ireland; Global Gathering, Poland; the Monday Bar Cruise from Sweden to Latvia, Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC), USA and BigCityBeats World Club Dome (WCD), Germany.

External links

• Media related to Q-dance at Wikimedia Commons
• Q-dance.com