Daniela
Meet daniela
Deep Playa NYC Founder and resident DJ Daniela books the talent, manages the Deep Playa community, dreams up wild sunrise shenanigans, and works on event collaborations. Jersey born and Brooklyn-based, she learned to DJ in 2001 while working at the now defunct Satellite Records, NYC's largest independent dance music record store. She fell in love with dance music before she was a teenager and with over 25 years of experience dancing around the globe, she prides herself on vast musical knowledge and her ability to weave many different genres into her sets, from breakbeat to playatech, acid house to organic house and so much more. If you know your dance music, you'll always be able to trainspot a classic in her sets. She lives to play sunrise sets on the beach (and usually forgets to record her sets!)
Daniela is also the founder of Her Name is Shakti, which showcases all female talent from the DJs to the artists, vendors, tarot readers, priestess guardians and more. She is a champion of women in every room and on every floor, especially on the dancefloor.
Daniela is also a NYC Regional Contact for the Burning Man Organization. Her playaname is Stardust Catapult and she is indeed a torchbearer, carrying NYC's dance history deep in her soul, in her sets, and sound.
From The artist
From a very young age, music was my emotional outlet. I started playing piano at age 3 and I don't know if I would be alive today if it weren't for my piano. I trained to be a professional pianist starting when I was 16 but stopped when I was 21, realizing I had other professional aspirations. Since then I began to play guitar and drums and then in 2020, I came out of DJ retirement and it was the best decision I made for myself in a long time. I love playing sunrise sets because it offers an opportunity to span many different genres as the light comes in, changes the scenery, thus changing our moods and mindsets. Curating music is a dance between the DJ and the crowd, balancing who is leading and who is following— sometimes the DJ leads the crowd, and sometimes you read the crowd and follow their lead. We all know music is a form of communication, of expression. My songs are my love letters: I write them for you.
Deep Playa
Ideas for Deep Playa and its evolution come to me in dreams and in spiritual visions while meditating for example (and sometimes randomly, like at the gym.) But on a deeper level, it relates to my childhood and to family. I grew up constantly surrounded by family-- I was raised by the proverbial village, and community is everything to me. We're all just subconsciously recreating childhood memories, just like David Mancuso was, unknowingly for a long time, with The Loft parties. So I always think of some fun thing that brings us back to childhood, like a 14-foot trampoline appearing at sunrise, or a slip-n-slide that goes right into the ocean, or a 20-foot long jump rope, or bubble guns. It's another way to spread love and to remind everyone of their loving innocence, their child heart that they should never lose. The energy and love you emit attract your people. It's always heart and nothing else.
Deep Playa is my heart outside of my body. It's our baby and it's growing up so fast. We had a vision for what Deep Playa was going to be and how it was going to be, but now its taken a life of its own-- it and its people teach us how to be and what it desires.