Patrick ShannonIt’s 3:42 a.m. in the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and a militarized sisterhood in neon orange-colored vinyl corsets is preparing to make the rounds. Its members are tasked with seeking out Electric Daisy Carnival revelers whose energy is depleting in the wee hours of the night and arresting their lethargy.
The moment they leave the performer prep room and their black knee-high boots collide with the raceway’s pavement, the half dozen “party officers” snap into character. Their unyielding posture is fortified by akimbo elbows and hands anchored on lean waists. Their shoulders are open, rhythmically twisting forward and back in unison and emitting an authoritative poise.
The Military Bratz march in a flying V formation to Rainbow Road at the center of the festival and fall back into a single-line phalanx. Young ravers encircle the them, taking pictures. One member of the team steps out and locks on her target: a young woman in a one-piece bathing suit and marijuana-leafed tube socks. She has a hula hoop in her grasp, and colorful kandi enwrap her forearms.
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The officer steps in front of the girl with a flat-palmed hand signal and a firm “stop!” In a few seconds the two are doing double-digit repetitions of body squats, and the rest of the troops surround their mark with cheers of encouragement.
These and the hundreds of other street performers instigating jocular chaos on the EDC grounds are the progeny of Insomniac Events’ entertainment director, MsEasy.
MsEasy (center) and a selection of her characters; Credit: Curious Josh
The veteran raver and performance pioneer is the nexus of a technicolor cast of dancers, actors and street performers. Her vision has careened its way through the festival since 2007, when Pasquale Rotella, Insomniac’s founder, first brought the EDM staple to the Los Angeles Coliseum. Her crew of entertainers fittingly go by the name Team EZ.
“This is a career that happened to me,” MsEasy says. “It wasn’t something I could aim at. It was something I felt and kept going forward with — that passion and hard work — until it developed into this thing that it is now.”
MsEasy grew up in St. Louis, the daughter of a discotech DJ and a technical seamstress. She first took interest in costuming after visiting her mother’s work and taking home scraps of fabric to personalize her dolls.
“People don’t know what to do when 15 clowns fall out of a porta-potty when they open it.” —MsEasy
In her teen years she joined St. Louis’ small electronic-music counterculture and assumed a role as an informal creative director. After school she spent her time acquiring an alternative education in warehouses, learning how to design parties, costumes and characters for the club kids and drag queens who frequented the events.
As a young adult, MsEasy lived a transient lifestyle associated with rave culture at the turn of the millennium and developed a penchant for New Orleans’ uninhibited revelry. The city’s cultural liberalism suited her affinity for performance pieces that confused and captivated unsuspecting audiences.
“We were doing this kind of guerrilla clowning,” she recalls. “It’s very over the top, in your face, crazy antics. Not super traditional clowning. Surprising. People don’t know what to do when 15 clowns fall out of a porta-potty when they open it.”
She met Rotella in the mid 2000’s, and her subsequent work with EDC has grown to encompass all facets of performance art.
MsEasy as Peezy the clown (in blue); Credit: Skyler Greene
“She was a character that stood out to me,” Rotella says. “I had used her as an independent contractor to bring some troops in. And when Insomniac started growing rapidly, and we were getting 300 or 400 performers to show up to one event at a time, I wanted someone that was super passionate about that specific thing, that wanted to live and breathe it every single day. And MsEasy was that person.”
She keeps an open-door casting call for the world’s most ardent entertainers at any skill level, and the annual auditions overflow with hopefuls. Her staff is composed of stage performers, studied ballerinas and the unassuming nine-to-fiver next door.
“You may have a girl that’s like, 'I toured with Lady Gaga, and I did the halftime show with Coldplay, and I’m in that music video, and I did Cirque, and now I’m at Daisy Carnival;’” MsEasy says. “And then next to her you have a girl that’s like, ‘I’m a 9-5 professional engineer, I studied all of this stuff when I was younger, but I took this other path. But ya know, I gotta come back.”
MsEasy's presence at Insomniac instills confidence in a misfit subculture of performers. She's a beacon that embodies unbridled creative expression.
“We found our own way,” MsEasy says of her tribe. “Then we found each other.”
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