FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Twerking Tween Parties of the Netherlands

Even in a country known for its sexual liberation, a party series in the Netherlands that caters to tweens and teens has the country wide-eyed. We spoke to the founder, some young attendees and a resident DJ to investigate.

Photo by Herman Wouters

It's a question that has plagued teenagers and pre-teens across countries and cultures for generations: what is there to do around here? Too old to be under their parents' watch all the time, too young to go to clubs or bars, kids just want to go somewhere they won't be treated like kids. Over the last seven years In the Netherlands, a series of teen and pre-teen parties has emerged named FRIS (the Dutch word for fresh, as well as the generic term for non-alcoholic beverages).

Advertisement

FRIS is now the biggest Dutch event planning agency for kids ranging from 12 to 15 years old. FRIS throws parties at well-known venues throughout the country, like Escape and Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam, Effenaar in Eindhoven, and Luxor Live in Arnhem. The parties have an enormous following—FRIS boasts reach of more than a quarter million teenagers through its website and social media channels. Unsurprisingly, even with stellar DJ talent providing the music, these parties full of hyper-hormonal teens have become about activities that don't involve music. In short: slow dancing is not cool but grinding and twerking have become immensely popular.

Founder Philippe Hes, age 26, explains how he started FRIS: "When I was eighteen, I organized parties for students. I was a trainer of a soccer team consisting of thirteen-year-olds at AFC [Amsterdamsche Football Club]. The boys asked us whether we could organize a party for them, because they never had anything like that to go to on the weekends."

In 2007, he made the first edition of FRIS happen at a venue near the soccer field called Vakzuid. Now, seven years later, the organization is responsible for over a hundred parties a year in eighteen cities around the Netherlands, with more FRIS parties popping up in new cities each year. These parties are so popular, Hes has even secured sponsorship for them, courtesy of DubbelFrisss, a fruit-flavored Dutch soft-drink. This means that at the moment, the FRIS logo appears on over four million DubbelFrisss bottles and cartons.

Advertisement

Where the Future of Dutch Dance Music is Born

In addition to providing a place for underage kids to hang out with their friends, FRIS also functions as a breeding ground for DJs and their fans. In a country as devoted to dance music as Holland, this is no small thing.

"We try to book and promote mainly relatively unknown acts and talents and we actively try to help them grow in their careers," Hes explains, still, it's not only underground and upstart acts who play for these tweens but well-known international stars. "Not many people are aware of this, but almost all current major Dutch DJs have performed at FRIS: Hardwell, Martin Garrix, Chucky, Quintino, so that's really cool. We've had almost all current major EDM DJs at our parties, except for Armin, Tiësto and Afrojack."

"I think a lot of the old FRIS visitors have grown into EDM fans," he continues "The young people who came to FRIS, partying in the early career stages of DJs like Hardwell, now have become the audience that votes for their favorite DJs in the DJ Mag Top 100. That certainly is one of the reasons for the success of these DJs."

Gino Klinkenberg, also known as DJ Novaro Deux, is a resident DJ at FRIS. He sees a big difference between 18 and up events and the FRIS parties. "At regular parties, people tend to go wild because they can get alcoholic beverages at the bar," Klinkenberg says. "Kids are more aware during a party. Playing at FRIS is a lot of fun; the kids like all sorts of music, they practice all these dance routines."

Advertisement

Klinkenberg says there are even portions of the evening when the kids will sit down just to listen to the music, during which he and other DJs play their own material, designed for a more sedentary moment on the dancefloor.

Drug and Alcohol-FRIS

While the absence of alcohol might make for a more music-attentive crowd, there seems to be no expectation that FRIS crowd isn't tempted to imbibe before they hit the clubs. While the parties embrace a drug-free agenda in its motto—translated as "You're cool when you're FRIS"—anyone who has been 15 knows that sneaking a few drinks in advance of a school dance or friend's sleepover isn't completely unlikely. Still, Hes maintains that his parties have largely established a culture of sobriety.

"In the early days of FRIS, we did encounter some drunk kids at the door, but that happens less and less," he asserts. "Alcohol use among young teenagers has definitely diminished. We make sure to check them before they enter the party, and almost never see kids trying to enter while drunk."

Additionally, Hes says there are hardly any kids who come to FRIS while enjoying Amsterdam's most notorious substance. "About twice a year we find a piece of hash on a kid. That's nothing when you consider the 70,000 visitors we get every year. They're just too young for stuff like that. The kids who do smoke, are usually not the ones who go to our parties."

Stijn, a 15 year old from the suburban town of Bussum, about 30 minutes east of Amsterdam, has been attending FRIS for three years and agrees with the assessment of substance activity. "Security is very thorough when it comes to searching for alcohol or drugs," Stijn says. "Drinking before arrival does occur sometimes, but when they find out, you're practically screwed. Once there was a guy who was completely wasted and got picked out of the line by security. They tested whether he really had been drinking, and when that turned out to be true, they immediately called his parents."

Advertisement

Banging Under the Stage

Anyone who's had a cursory glance an average teenager's Instagram can see how pop culture figures like Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber (and good old fashioned pubescent hormones) could inspire the FRIS demographic to use these events as an opportunity to do what they can't under their parents' roof: hook up and have sex as much as possible. Hes thinks ideas of his audience's promiscuity might be a bit exaggerated.

"Years ago, you saw girls and boys kissing 15 different people in one night, but that number hasn't gone up, it might even have gone down." Though Miley might have made twerking preferable to slow-dancing, aside from a few other popular dance routines (that, according to Stijn, "look absolutely ridiculous"), the kids are mainly grinding on the dancefloor.

How that works exactly, is explained by Julia, age 12, also from Bussum. "A FRIS night goes like this: groups of girls are dancing on the dancefloor," she says. "A boy walks around until he sees a pretty girl, and then he starts grinding up to her. Her friends decide whether he's cute enough. If they agree that he is, the girl will turn around and start making out with him. If they don't like him, she and her friends will go to another spot and start dancing in circle formation again."

This often leads to juicy scenes. "Sometimes you see people standing in a corner, putting their hands down each others pants," Stijn explains. "Once a friend of mine banged a girl under the stage."

But when asked how many FRIS-visiting teenagers are still a virgin, he demures insisting, "of course most of them are still virgins. Are you kidding? It's for 12 to 15-year-olds!"

Dabbe van den Brand is based in Amsterdam where he contributes to THUMP Netherlands.

Translated by Amber Mitchell