The world's largest paint party returns to its home city of Miami, spraying everyone and everything in its way.
Revelers at a Life in Color party. The Miami phenomenon regularly sells out arenas around the globe.
If the idea of dancing wildly for hours with a sweaty mob slathered in paint sounds a bit much, you’re not alone. Once upon a time, the crew behind Life in Color—dubbed “the world’s largest paint party”—felt exactly the same way. “We thought it was really crazy, to be honest,” says Sebastian Solano, who founded the traveling event with partners Paul Campbell and brothers Lukasz and Patryk Tracz. “We ended up having the time of our lives.”
Seven years and millions of gallons of paint, partiers, and dollars later, it’s safe to say the team doesn’t think the concept is so crazy anymore. Regularly selling out arenas and nightclubs for more than 200 performances yearly in over 60 countries around the world, Life in Color isn’t simply a party. If anything, it’s a full-on, blown-out bacchanalia with DJs, paint, confetti, and upwards of 25,000 revelers. The event is coming back home to Sun Life Stadium in Miami, this time for an expanded two days on December 26 and 27, for its biggest throwdown yet, featuring over 100,000 gallons of paint and superstar DJ Kaskade.
Not bad for a group of local boys, none of them older than 30. It all came together when they were attending Florida State University in Tallahassee, plunging deep into the college party scene. Electronic dance music hadn’t quite taken a hold of the public yet, but the guys were early evangelists. “We were already all best friends, and we all have a serious love for the music,” says Lukasz Tracz. “We started throwing a bunch of house parties for fun.” They went to one party in particular, with paint being sprayed everywhere, and an idea was born.
Patryk Tracz, Sebastian Solano, Lukasz Tracz, and Paul Campbell.
The concept? Douse attendees in a cascade of nontoxic, water-based bright paints (via giant cannons) and let the human rainbow bounce with the music—it’s often nothing less than pure, beat-and-color-fueled euphoria. Inspired, the team held its first party here in Miami. It was a massive success. Sell-out after sell-out saw the paint parties spread north, and with club promoters all over America calling to get the then-dubbed “Dayglow” brand to their city, immediately. A career turning point came when legendary New York nightclub Webster Hall sold out in minutes, reached capacity, and then was shut down by the fire marshal when too many people without tickets showed up trying to get in. “It was almost like a riot in the streets,” says Solano.
It was this kind of rapturous mania that made it clear to Solano and his friends that they had to devote all their effort to it—even if that meant a serious change of plans. “One of my teachers saw what we were doing and just asked me, ‘What are you doing here? Go pursue your dream,’” Lukasz Tracz recalls.
Giant cannons spray the bouncing crowd with streams of dayglow paint.
“I remember being in class with Lukasz at FSU just when we were about to start a tour of eight cities,” says Solano. “All we were talking about was tickets and marketing. We realized that this was a multimillion-dollar business and we had to pursue it, especially because we all came from nothing.”
In the years since, Life in Color has been staged in such far-flung locations as Poland and Australia, and in 2012 it was acquired by SFX, one of the world’s largest live events production companies. All the success aside, however, the founders still become giddy when it comes to throwing another party in their hometown.
“We’re such proud Miamians,” says Solano of the festival, which last year featured ziplines and Ferris wheels at Sun Life Stadium. “We became big here before anywhere else, and this is our flagship event. This is going to be the best show we’ve ever produced.” Life in Color Festival 2014 takes place Friday and Saturday, December 26 and 27, at Sun Life Stadium, 2269 NW 199th St., Miami Gardens