Rave revival explodes at Cat's Cradle

If you were at the pajama rave at Cat’s Cradle last month and smelled something burning on stage, it wasn’t a short in the expansive lighting setup, one of the lasers overheating or a glitch in the 3D projection mapping rig — it was actually the frying of a particularly tasty meat.

“We fried bacon onstage,” said Rob Sekay, UNC student and owner of the company behind the new monthly rave series at Cat’s Cradle, Cynamatiks. “It was just this weird, completely left-field idea, but when I thought about it, I was like, ‘you know what — that would be badass.’”

It was a smart move for Cynamatiks. It certainly garnered a response from the audience, and people were talking about it for days to come on Facebook.

What looks like the spontaneity of a zany amateur actually comes as the work of a seasoned promoter. Sekay learned from his job with Los Angeles-based Insomniac (who puts on Electric Daisy Carnival, for one) that the raw information of a show — its theme, who’s headlining, where the show’s being held — can only get a crowd so big.

When you’re in the business of selling a good time, Sekay said, you’ve got to get people talking.

“Where’s that buzz? Where’s that like, ‘Oh my God, did you hear about that party?’”

And so when it came to trying to generate word of mouth for a new monthly electronic dance music event in a sleepy college town, Sekay had a vision of bacon among the crowd surfers.

In the midst of pounding bass and beams of laser light, Sekay said as soon as the bacon hit the grill, the crowd seemed to erupt.

“It wasn’t a show any more — it just turned into a rager,” Sekay said. “People were super excited about it. They went home, and for everybody that chose not to go that night, they hear about that, and they’re like, ‘Man, I missed out on that.’”

Friday night, for the third month running, Cynamatiks will host a “wild kingdom” themed rave at the Cat’s Cradle, featuring influential moombahton and electro house producer Tittsworth.

The story of how Sekay and Cynamatiks brought this rave to Cat’s Cradle, the only monthly residency the venue holds, starts with the impressive work of a high school student.

Danusha Chenchik, a senior at a “Quaker school in the middle of the woods,” Carolina Friends School, thought he would be moving to Montreal last year.

As a going away party, Chenchik started to organize a dance for about 100 people at Street Scene Teen Center, a small venue underneath the post office on Franklin Street. But once he started getting responses to his invitations, he realized he had to find something bigger.

“I made a Facebook event and the Facebook event just kind of started to blow up, and get lots and lots of people, like way more than that could fit in that place,” Chenchik said. “It was like 600 people a month before.”

While clicking “going” on a Facebook event doesn’t necessarily translate to a ticket sold, Chenchik was feeling ambitious.
“So I went up to the Cradle,” Chenchik said. “One day, I just decided to go up there and see what would happen if I asked them how I go about coming there, and they said, ‘I mean, if you have $1,200, we can do it.’

“So I borrowed some money from some friends. I just kind of gathered hundreds of dollars from specific friends and did an investment sort of thing.”

In June of last year, with the basic supplies of colored light-bulbs and fluorescent paint, Chenchik brought a crowd of 650 and sold out the Cat’s Cradle. As a crash course in promoting and business investment, he was learning fast.

“It worked out well — everybody tripled their money,” Chenchik said.
When he found out that he wasn’t moving, Chenchik decided one rave wasn’t enough and started planning for his next show. In September, in the newly renovated Cat’s Cradle, he brought an even larger sell-out of 850 for another themed rave.

And that’s where Chenchik met Sekay. As a transfer student from Craven Community College, Sekay was new in town and checking out the local scene. After seeing the rave’s success and the young audience Chenchik could draw, the next step for Sekay was obvious.
“He knows how to get to the Cat’s Cradle, I’ve got connections — Let’s throw a party,” Sekay said.

The two formed Cynamatiks, and in January, hosted their first themed rave. With a turnout of nearly 1,200 people, it was a recordbreaker for the Cradle.

“We had a couple of ‘80s dances back five or six years ago that had pretty high numbers, but that’s definitely probably the highest number we’ve ever had for a one-night Cat’s Cradle event,” club owner Frank Heath said.

“The high school crowd showed up and were pretty much pounding down the doors when we opened at 8. People sort of filtered out, and by 11 we were letting in more people. There were still people coming in at 12, 12:30, straight up until 2 in the morning.”

Contact the Diversions editor at diversions@dailytarheel.com.