This Valentine’s season, Cupid is flapping his wings over Battersea Power Station and paying a visit to The Lost Lovers Ball. Whether you’re blissfully coupled or on the prowl, you’d be crazy not to make it to the four-chimneyed Castle of Love to feast and dance ’till your heart’s content.
One of i-D’s tip-top festivals of the summer season was The Secret Garden Party, a hedonistic jaunt in the Cambridgeshire countryside filled with lush lakeside dancing and secret gigs galore – see here for more. Now the folk responsible for the kooky festival are once again bringing their magic touch to the big smoke, sparking a brightly burning bonfire of love south of the river.
The Lost Lovers Ball is a weekend-long extravaganza, starting with lustful parties on Friday night and Saturday night and culminating in an oh so tender and true high tea on Sunday afternoon where you can gorge yourself on cakes, cocktails, scones and sandwiches. And if you’re wandering eyes can’t find a Romeo or Juliet to settle on, there’s entertainment from a host of stellar acts on every one of the Lost Lovers days, from interactive performance artists Gideon Reeling, to Shakespeare as you’ve never seen it with the Tax Deductible Theatre and ‘creature collective’ The Artful Badger, supported by the Dance Off crew. On top of all this, if intellectual debates from The Forum and Guerilla Science, hot tubs, champagne and the most divine of potential partners doesn’t keep you on your toes, there are a handful of surprises to be revealed during the course of the event.
The icing on the cake, in keeping with the trend set at Lost Lovers’ summer sibling, a recommended fancy dress theme of Tainted Love means the revelers are advised to come dressed to impress. And if the powerstation partying doesn’t satiate your lust then Eros will be leading the crowd (on a free shuttle bus should your love stoned shows require it) down the road to a late-night after-party, where the good times will roll long into the night.
The rep the gardeners have garnered after a good few years of bringing smiles to faces on the festival circuit means that tickets are shifting super swiftly; you’ve already missed the boat on Saturday but delights aplenty await Friday and Sunday visitors. So what are you waiting for?
