A thumping proletariat mash-up at Disney Hall

Dance music and Stalinism seemed a strange mix, and even stranger coming together at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the domain of the L.A. Philharmonic. Yet the young crowd packing the venue for Saturday’s late-night “Pravda” event willingly went with the visual and musical flow provided by DJs and other artists as part of the Phil’s “Shadow of Stalin” series, illuminating the clash of art and tyranny during the rule of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (who controlled the country from the late 1920s until his death in 1953).

It was less about the politics of dancing, since nobody danced, and more about the cult of personality, as the audience consisted of fans of DJ Spooky, Amon Tobin, Cut Chemist, J-Rocc & Peanut Butter Wolf and Mumbles & Gone Beyond, rather than aficionados of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Mosolov and the other Russian composers that these DJs mixed into their sets. Meanwhile, at the bar outside, Dublab Soundsystem and MC This with Michael Allen provided satellite support with additional visuals and sounds.

“Pravda” means “the truth” in Russian, and it was also the title of the Communist Party’s official newspaper. But Stalin’s version created the sinister contradictions satirized by Stalin-opposing British writer George Orwell in his novel “1984,” with the slogan, “War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.”

An animated version of Orwell’s “Animal Farm” showed up amid the visual backdrop of sliced-and-diced images, including the ubiquitous hammer and sickle, propaganda films, Russian cinema classics and other works that looped through the history of Stalin’s regime on a screen above the stage. At the back of the stage, artist Norton Wisdom also evoked this era with iconic scenes. Both began with the excitement of a workers’ revolution as local Russian DJ Alex Ratushnyak kicked things off at 10 p.m., but watching and listening passively in one’s seat created a disquieting sensation that foreshadowed the oppression to follow.

The party line was gleefully subverted, of course, through the fusion of image and sound. Amon Tobin’s cacophonous, viscera-rattling turn, which caused the entire hall to vibrate, had an oppressive industrial feel that reflected Stalin’s murderous ideological juggernaut. DJ Spooky handled the gloom of World War II and Stalin’s demise. Upon dispatching that duty, he blasted Kool and the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie” to herald a lighter final half-hour for the relative handful of listeners left at 2 a.m.

Earlier, Mumbles & Gone Beyond reached a symphonic, percussive peak while the “Animal Farm” directive “no animal shall kill another animal without cause” was intercut with frames from the film “Battleship Potemkin” of executed soldiers dropping into waiting trenches. If the audience responded more vocally to snippets of Portishead and themes from “The Simpsons” and “Austin Powers” that J-Rocc & Peanut Butter Wolf sneaked into their set, well, many of the artists weren’t experts on Russian art, either.

“It was challenging and academic to prepare this set,” Cut Chemist said after his entertaining and edifying performance, which included a mind-blowing comparison-contrast between Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” and John Williams’ score for the first “Star Wars.” The DJ acknowledged that that was cheating, as Stravinsky’s work was created before Stalin rose to power. “But how else was I going to do my ‘Star Wars’ mash-up?” he asked playfully. More seriously, he noted that it was satisfying to see high-art organizations such as the Philharmonic “recognizing DJs as artists and musicians,” adding that his good friend Mumbles, a Russian music expert, helped familiarize him with the classical works. He mixed them with his current CD, “The Audience’s Listening,” abetted by Mumbles on piano, rapper Hymnal and harp player Ricky Rasura of the Polyphonic Spree.

Another crowd-pleaser was Christoph Bull’s performance on the hall’s great organ, blending Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” with techno beats and fuzzy guitar. But the rarest thrill was the 10-piece Theremin Orchestra, which made an eerie, almost choral sound that perfectly fit the mournful Russian “Song of the Volga Boatmen.” If Gershwin’s “Summertime” and the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” seemed beyond the show’s theme, they nevertheless radiated a strangely melancholic beauty, somehow reminding listeners that, in the end, the tyrant fell, but the art lived on.