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Rave culture may seem like a product of the ’90s, but massive modern events such as the Electric Daisy Carnival prove young people will always want to get high (on life) and shake what Shiva gave them. The Identity Festival is a traveling rave featuring nearly 30 artists whose main goal is to get this party started right—and quickly. While Identity side-stagers DJ Shadow and The Crystal Method could have headlined this same event 15 years ago, acts at the top of the main stage’s bill now include Kaskade, Rusko (right), Avicii, Markus Schulz, and The Disco Biscuits. Other names of note include Steve Aoki, Modeselektor, Holy Ghost!, and Hercules & Love Affair. But really, who cares who’s dropping beats when you’re hot-stepping in Ganesha’s loving quartet of arms? (Christopher Porter) Identity Festival begins at 1 p.m. at Jiffy Lube Live, 7800 Cellar Door Drive, Bristow, Va. $46.35–$110.80.
THEATER
The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s annual Free-for-All begins today, with a free (yes free!) run of performances of Julius Caesar. It’s a remount, in fact, of the production from several years back. At the time, Bob Mondello wrote that the play’s central betrayal
never generates much heat in David Muse’s staging, led by Tom Hammond’s stiff, uncharismatic Brutus, against Dan Kremer’s distracted, similarly unprepossessing Caesar. Both men, surrounded by followers nearly as undifferentiated as their senatorial togas, appear impressive mostly when situated on balconies, high above the throng. And when lesser folks stand out, it’s not always in ways that are dramatically useful. Scott Parkinson’s Cassius has a lean and mostly petulant look, Nancy Rodriguez turns Portia’s pleas to Brutus into a florid, woe-struck aria.
Still, there’s often an eloquence of gesture when Muse finds ways to blend intimacy into the surrounding spectacle, seen in Caesar’s brusque impatience on the morning of his assassination as he shrugs off both barbering attendants and his wife (a wonderfully natural Kim Martin-Cotten), and again in the shock with which he realizes there’s a knife in a hand he’s reached out to for support.
Want tickets? There’s an online lottery every day, you could line up at theater around 4 p.m., you could try to snag tickets via Shakespeare Theatre’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, or you can become an STC subscriber or member of Friends of Free for All. Tonight’s performance is at 8 p.m.
MUSIC
Ryan McLaughlin, the frontman of local folk-punkers Typefighter, opens up for Smoke Fairies. McLaughlin recorded a great mini-set on the parking deck of Washington City Paper back in December. It was fucking cold. 8:30 p.m. at Red Palace. $10.
Tonight’s Moombahton Massive party is the strongest, lineup-wise, since the first. Nadastrom’s Dave Nada invented the microgenre, Sabo and Heartbreak helped popularize it, Munchi—-a Rotterdam DJ who hasn’t been able to travel to the U.S. in recent months because of now-resolved visa issues—-might be its biggest star. Here’s a free mix to get you pumped.
Moombahton Massive V ep by SolSelectas
Books
You’ll probably want to avoid former U.S. Senate candidate/Tea Party fave Christine O’Donnell‘s book event at the Barnes & Noble downtown.
Film
A selection of Disney short films commissioned by the U.S. government during World War II, including Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Firing Line (!). Noon at the National Archives. Free.
Dance
Step Afrika! is the centerpiece of tonight’s Phillips After 5. Which is at the Phillips, after 5.
Sopranos Fans
See Alicia Witt play music! On the roof of the W at 9 p.m.