The zero-gravity dance party where everyone floats in the air
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Electronic dance music is thumping out of the subwoofers. Superstar DJ Steve Aoki is on the decks. Colored lights are flashing across the room.
It’s just your regular dance party — right up until the moment when everyone starts floating.
Then Aoki’s long hair takes on a life of its own as the DJ performs backflips in mid-air. In front of him, people are actually dancing on the ceiling, or at least trying to as other club-goers bump into them, arms flailing as they hover uncontrollably.
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What’s being billed as the world’s first zero-gravity dance party (although organizers of a 2016 beer commercial beg to differ) is taking place on board a hollowed-out Airbus A310 airplane normally used for scientific research by the European Space Agency, or ESA.
Genuine, serious astronauts are among those getting down to the crazy techno beats as the aircraft plummets through the sky on free-fall maneuvers designed to induce weightlessness.
And, by all appearances, those astronauts absolutely love it.
CNN Travel also managed moonwalk its way in to the hottest dance party on (or off) the planet. OK… tried to moonwalk.
So how did we all get here, busting some moves in zero-G?
The flight, organized with the help of ESA and the airplane’s operator Novespace, was the work of BigCityBeats, a German promotion company whose annual World Club Dome electronic dance music festival in Frankfurt claims to be the “largest club in the world.”
Dance party in space
BigCityBeats/World Club Dome
While looking for outrageous ways to promote the June 1-3, 2018 event, BigCityBeats CEO Bernd Breiter stumbled on a TV show about astronauts and, after daydreaming about putting on a dance party in space, came up with the idea of using a zero-gravity flight.
He says more than 30,000 people entered a video competition to grab a place on the flight, with 14 winners from places including Australia, South Korea, England and the United States eventually passing the stringent medical requirements for taking part.
“It was so crazy at first I didn’t have the courage to tell anyone,” Breiter tells CNN Travel in Frankfurt Airport on the eve of the party as winners gather for a pre-flight safety briefing.
Surprisingly, ESA was open to the idea. While the Zero-G jet is normally used to train astronauts or conduct experiments, it’s also available to hire, recently seeing action in Tom Cruise movie “The Mummy,” when it was disguised as an out-of-control C-130 cargo plane.
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