One of the most popular DJs in the world, Armand Van Helden, has hit Moscow in the lead-up to a huge dance festival on the Black Sea. Moscow’s Gaudi Arena hosted the pre-party for 16th “Kazantip” dance music festival.

“Kazantip” has won thousands of fans throughout Russia and abroad for its beach parties, water entertainment and more than 500 DJs. It’s being held throughout August, for the sixteenth time, on the Crimean coast.

Hundreds of Moscow's clubbers went to Gaudi Arena for the pre-party.

“From the first time I came here I felt a strong energy of people here connected with the music and for almost every DJ who has come here it’s always been pretty much the same,” one clubber said.

Meanwhile, party lovers just couldn't wait for the official opening of Kazantip and have already left for Ukraine, where the summer event is in full swing.

Attracting thousands from Russia and Ukraine, the festival is considered one of the most exciting summer impressions for electronic music lovers. Young people go there to enjoy quality music and crowds of positive thinkers, in pursuit of what many of them call happiness.

The events' critics, however, see it as an enormous centre for consumption of illegal drugs.