Drishti Beats/Courtesy Photo
Early morning meditation and late-night silent discos bookend the daily schedules for the three-day Drishti Beats Festival, which comes to Snowmass Village on July 8-10 with a wall-to-wall lineup of yoga, electronic and dance music and talks on physical and spiritual wellness.
This year marks the first for the festival, which is spearheaded by Lori and Jeremy Lowell, the cofounders of the enterprise Drishti Beats that combines yoga training courses with electronic and dance music. Launching a festival setting seemed like a fitting next step, Lori Lowell said in a phone interview.
“The whole idea of this festival is how yoga and movement and music take one to a higher level of consciousness — and the collaboration, the beautiful collaboration between yoga and music in this mindful setting,” Lowell said.
Programming runs from the early morning (classes begin at 7:30 a.m. Friday and at 7 a.m. Saturday and Sunday) well into the evening hours, with the last event, a silent disco, ending at 11 p.m. each night, according to the schedule posted online.
Some classes will focus on the foundations of yoga, while others will level up with acro yoga and other styles of the practice; offerings range “from meditation to ecstatic dance,” Lowell said. The lineup of instructors and speakers includes familiar local faces like Jayne Gottlieb and Aaron King as well as national names like instructor Jonah Kest and speaker Vince Kadbulek (co-founder of the experiential arts company Meow Wolf).
“All levels are welcome,” Lowell said. “There’s a lot of classes where you can just listen, watch, or just dance. It’s not like you have to go in there and be an advanced yogi.”
Every yoga class will include a music component, and there also will be standalone concerts from electronic and dance music performers like Desert Dwellers, Phantoms and The Polish Ambassador.
Most of the festival experience will be spread out throughout Base Village, and people without tickets should expect limited access during the festival to some spaces that are usually open to the public. The Collective will host some speaker events inside; the rink outside The Collective will become one of the yoga spaces, as will the lawn near the Village Express chairlift, and some classes offer hikes. A wellness tent will be set up on Fanny Hill.
There also will be vendors set up in the village selling food, jewelry, clothing and other wares.
Festival passes range from $65 for one day of music only and $85 for one day of yoga only up to $349 for a three-day, all-access pass to music and yoga. There also are $45 drop-in tickets for access to a single Drishti Talk session.
Tickets haven’t sold out yet. Lowell said that the lack of camping-style accommodations in the area have possibly deterred some potential festivalgoers, but she estimated there could still be somewhere in the ballpark of 300 people on the festival grounds during the daytime yoga and speaker programming and said there could be “at least” 500 people attending at night for the concerts.
Though it may not be as filled up as organizers initially expected, still, “we’re going to have a beautiful, sophisticated, mindful, intimate event,” Lowell said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that expected attendance numbers are ballpark estimates.
