Mighty Hoopla 2023: 7 iconic moments we’ll remember forever
Drag, cabaret, live performance… Britain’s most colourful music and arts festival, Mighty Hoopla, has wrapped for another year.
The festival welcomed over 60,000 people to London’s Brockwell Park over the weekend, and has become famous for uniting Britain’s pop music fans and LGBTQ people over two days of the most vibrant staging the festival circuit has ever seen.
Multi-coloured ribbons exploding from the stages, shiny backdrops for posing against between watching artists and some of the biggest throwback pop names on Earth, here are our seven favourite moments from the day-two festival.
It was the Destiny’s Child set Londoners were waiting for
Beyoncé might have been in town, but there was another Destiny’s Child member performing in London on Saturday night: Kelly Rowland. She performed a brilliantly stripped-back set – often on stage alone with just a spotlight, she let her still-amazing vocals do most of the work. An extended Destiny’s Child medley gave everyone what they wanted, even if the homage to her dancers at the end was a little long and confusing. Since DC she’s done lots of dance tracks, including When Love Takes Over with David Guetta, which she ended on, but Rowland will always be remembered for the other stuff: DC, of course, but also her fabulous early-career hits like Dilemma with Nelly, which sounded stunning live.
Olly Alexander from Years & Years was predictably fabulous
Olly Alexander has become the biggest queer pop export from the UK over the past five years, and he uses his performances – whether they’re on TV shows or on stages – to make political points as well as bring a serious amount of joy. It was all highly sexualised, with Alexander gyrating with another man in a toilet block set piece to make a point about destigmatising gay sex, but there were more subtle points too: he sang a touching version of Eyes Shut with the Trans Voices Choir. It takes something quite special to silence the Mighty Hoopla crowd at that time of night and Olly managed it with this gently arresting choral piece he wrote when he says he was “really depressed.”
Gemma Collins showed up and was even more GC than we ever dreamed
During a drag segment in one of the tents away from the main stages, the crowd had gathered for Gemma Collins. She was set to perform, though the clock was ticking past her scheduled time and there was no sight of her. It had echoes of Katie Price’s cancelled appearance from two years ago about it. Would the GC be a no-show? When she eventually came on, in black and shimmering silver, she sang Hey Big Spender, live, and then she said something cute about everyone being individual and celebrating our individuality and it was all just rather cosy and lovely.
Samantha Mumba did an Irish jig
Mumba was the surprise hit of the weekend. Me and my group had wondered to the Candy Crush stage to see what was going on, and then out comes Irish pop star from the noughties Samantha Mumba, bringing with her not only her arsenal of absolute bangers, like this, but some of the most impressive choreography I saw at the festival all weekend. She has a twelve-strong set of dancers in amazing ’90s themed outfits, doing really muscular, energetic routines, but then out came another four to perform an Irish jig with Mumba in front of the twelve originals. It absolutely went off and was one of the most memorable performances of the weekend.
We saw some absolutely hilarious drag
It’s not all music: the Birdcage stage touted drag, cabaret and variety performances and in the balmy weekend heat, some hilarious, and very talented, performers offered something a little more relaxed for those looking for an experience away from the music and dancing.
Loreen did her Loreen thing and those vocals stand up
Fresh from Eurovision with Tattoo, Loreen belted out into the Sunday afternoon sun. Of course, she brought Euphoria, perhaps the biggest hit to have come out of Eurovision in the past decade, but she also performed this year’s track too. It was a stand-and-sing set rather than anything with more bells and whistles, but then again, that is what she’s known for and straight after her recent win, she served exactly what everyone wanted.
The security were queer too and that’s setting a brilliant precedent
Hoopla hired a queer security team to make the festivalgoers feel more safe and understood. For queer people, and for many of us, frankly, security teams can feel threatening, so it was lovely to know that the security understood what it meant to be queer.
Mighty Hoopla returns in January for their Hoopla Weekender at Bognor Regis, tickets are on sale now. Hoopla also returns next June in Brockwell Park
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