Fourth-year political science student Anthony Kapitanski, who performs under the DJ stage name A-Klap, performed at Pauley Pavilion this Saturday for the 13th annual Dance Marathon presented by the Pediatric AIDS Coalition. Kapitanski performed a three-hour set Saturday as participants danced for 26 hours straight. Kapitanski has performed in the Westwood and greater Los Angeles area since he first started mixing dance music live a little more than a year ago. Kapitanski spoke with the Daily Bruin’s Max McGee about his Dance Marathon set and performing in Pauley Pavilion.
Daily Bruin: Can you describe the experience of performing in front of a large crowd at such a significant venue?
Anthony Kapitanski: The experience was pretty crazy at times. It definitely had its ups and downs and was quite humbling to be honest. Pauley is incredible. It was awesome to see what PAC did to put on the event; their teams are running around and working super hard to keep the event running smoothly – major props go out to them.
DB: How was the energy of the crowd during the show and how do you feel that your music blended with the overall environment?
AK: The energy was all over the place. There were preplanned moments to do certain activities throughout the set and I think that helped me kind of regain my bearings as to gauging the overall vibe of the crowd. I still can’t get over how awesome everything was set up and how much energy all of the dancers and especially the PAC committee members were bringing. I think that there was some definite moments when the crowd was feeling the music and I was really feeding off of their dancing and having a blast. With any show you can always look back and think to yourself that a particular song in a particular moment would have been great to try, but I’m overall really happy with the way things turned out.
DB: What was the most memorable part of your set?
AK: The set in its entirety was memorable. I tried out a few heavier progressive drops, and I was really surprised to see the crowd jumping up and down and loosing it just like at any major EDM festival – the dancers were incredible. I left the stage sore from jumping up and down. It was an incredible experience.
DB: How did the three-hour set time affect your style of performance at this show?
AK: The time was really a major impact into my overall set. I’ve been used to bringing it super-high energy for an hour to an hour-and-a-half, so I had to adjust on the fly to the different vibes that were going through the event. I had some unfortunate technical difficulties about an hour into my set so that definitely threw me off a bit. But I tried to bring a variety of styles from house to trap, even airing out some of my favorite deep house tracks – it was a blast.