It is seven in the evening on a warm, first autumn evening when I enter the high-tech ID&T attraction Amaze with my heart pounding. Not in a cart, like most theme park rides, but walking. That the heart is in my throat is because the "robot," who explains the do's and don'ts to me right before the experience begins, builds up a lot of tension in her story.
I get the fearful suspicion that I am going to experience a lot in the next hour. That, by the way, is a compliment to the actress who has stepped into the skin of the robot. She has just wished me good luck and wisdom, and she tells me to follow the orange lights. When the door closes behind me, I barely get time to breathe, because I am immediately sucked into the attraction....
When I arrive back in Amaze's reception area/bar after just under an hour, which seemed like a minute one moment and half a day the next, Irfan van Ewijk is waiting for me with a broad smile. Irfan, with the I of ID&T, immediately asks how I liked it. All I can utter is what hippies in the sixties uttered when they had taken LSD: "Wow!
Irfan takes me outside, to a canopy where there are long benches, where it is good to recover from this crazy Wow attraction. "I always let people I talk to on business about Amaze do the attraction first," Irfan quips, "Because then they're still completely in the energy of the event and I don't actually have to explain anything more about what's on offer. That talks a lot easier." Irfan explains that here in Amsterdam's Elementenstraat we are in a magical place. Because at this spot near metro stop Isolatorweg, still past Sloterdijk station and just behind the Burger King is the cradle of the capital's hardcore scene. In a building that was squatted in the early 90s, and was home to the illustrious Multigroove raves, the giants of today's hardcore, hardstyle and techno scene, such as Q-dance and Awakenings, now take up residence.
'Amaze is a 3,000-square-foot sensory experience filled with state-of-the-art audiovisual technology. A new way of going out.'
Irfan says, "Many of the early birds of dance, like Duncan Stutterheim and I, learned the trade here on this street. I stood here handing out thousands of flyers when we started throwing our own parties. That all originated here. This is where we learned from Ilja Reiman how he threw his parties. In the decades that followed we went from small to big to mega. And what I love so much now is that with Amaze we have returned to the place where once the seed germinated."
How long would I have been in the beating heart of Amaze by now? Fifteen minutes, half an hour, three hours? This morning I forgot to take off my watch and my cell phone is in my back pocket. Shall I check how many minutes have passed? I won't. Because otherwise there is a good chance that I will wake up from this real-life dream, which as far as I am concerned may continue even if I drive home in my car later.
I ask Irfan if we owe this unique attraction to Covid. "The reverse is true," he replies. "AMAZE is a long-held dream and now that there were no events, the creatives were at a standstill and the entrepreneurs who typify this company were pacing, the opportunity arose. The end result is stunning and breathtaking. This is beyond all dreams"