Opulent Temple is the longest-running dance camp at Burning Man and arguably the most architecturally ambitious. Founded in San Francisco in 2003 by Syd Gris and a small crew of Bay Area house heads, the camp builds a different large-scale temple structure on the Esplanade every year — often involving fire effects, flame towers, and a stage that wouldn't look out of place at Coachella, all hauled out of Black Rock City when the event ends.
Where Robot Heart is intimate and Mayan Warrior is cinematic, Opulent Temple is loud, communal, and built for the body. Sets lean toward big-room house and peak-time techno, the kind of music that rewards a crowd of two or three thousand people moving in unison under fire. Lee Burridge, Dubfire, Carl Cox, Paul Oakenfold, Sasha, John Digweed, Skream and Boris Brejcha have all played the temple over the years, often as the headline act on a themed evening curated by the camp.
The camp also hosts the annual Sacred Dance Wednesday — a queer-positive, fundraising-focused night that has become one of the most beloved fixtures of the Burning Man week, raising money each year for the Black Rock Arts Foundation and other Burner-aligned non-profits.
Many of the live recordings preserved in the Dust Vault from the early-to-mid 2010s come from the Opulent Temple stage, and the camp's archived sets are the best single document of how main-stage Burning Man house music has evolved across two decades.
