San Mateo County Fair

We do a lot of private parties, and people are often asking me where they can see us perform in public.. well, tonight is the night - the first of many!

We'll be performing tonight at the San Mateo County Fair at 9:00 PM on the Carnival Borough Stage. If you can't catch us tonight, we'll also be there tomorrow (Sunday), as well as Wednesday and Thursday the 19th & 20th.

San Mateo County Fair

Then, starting on Friday we'll be at the California State Fair in Sacramento. We'll be doing 3-4 shows a day, every day from 8/20 - 9/7 in the "Weird Wild and Wacky" area.. shows will be at 4, 6, and 8 pm with a 2:00 show added on weekends and holidays.

California State Fair

Please come on out and play with us!

That 70s Show

Yesterday I had a pretty unusual show - it was a blacklight / glow light show for kids at a summer camp at Club Sport in Fremont. The summer camp theme was centered around the decades of the 20th century, and for a blacklight show, I was assigned the 1970s.

What fun it was! I got to dance to great songs like "I will survive," "Dancing Queen," and of course, "Greased Lightnin'" from the Grease soundtrack. It was also my very first public hula hooping performance (I recently got a blacklight reactive hoop and so was very excited to try it out). It went really well!

I feel oh-so gutsy, being brave enough to perform a hula hoop routine for the first time ever, in front of a big group of 7-12 year old girls.. ALL of whom could probably hula hoop me right out the door. But they loved it.. and I knew a trick or two that some of them didn't, so they were duly impressed. :)

I also had the opportunity to perform with my new amazing light poi. A friend made these for me recently. They are about 5x as bright as any other light poi I've ever seen, let alone owned, and are programmable (!!!) so I can make them do pretty much whatever I want - colors, strobe rates, brightness, patterns.. there's even a music reactive mode, where they listen to the ambient sound and flash accordingly. Amazing! And they're controlled by a remote control, so my tech guy can make them change on the fly. The kids went crazy!

The third new thing were the Dancing Wings I got at Faerieworlds.. these are amazing. They're a beautiful costume addition, a very easy performance tool, and they were everyone's favorite thing! With light shows I let the kids play with the lights after I'm done dancing, and the kids wouldn't put these down. I got the black light reactive ones in green, and let me tell you, they SCREAM under UV light.

I really need to get some photos of all the new stuff, but black light is notoriously hard to photograph or videotape. If you're local and wanna help, please drop me a line!

Fire Arts Festival

Fire Pixie had the wonderful opportunity to perform at the Fire Arts Festival this year with Copper Lantern Fire Theatre.

Fire Arts happens once a year and people really pull out all the stops: huge metal monsters that shoot fire, all kids of art and beautiful kinetic sculptures everywhere, great people and great energy, and lots of amazing performers! We were honored to be invited to perform this year. :)

Fire Pixie's performance was an acrobatic balancing, fire eating routine which was just a small piece of Copper Lantern's longer show. Our costumes were very much fun - the story line was full of beasts and lizards and fantasy creatures, and we got to be slinky, silly cat creatures. We went crazy with the face paint and crazy cat-eye contact lenses. Performing as a non-human is so fun and silly and liberating!

Also, we LOVE doing big stage shows, and love performing with so many wonderful dancers, fire spinners, and artists. Fire Arts Festival really does a great job of building and fostering the fire community in the Bay Area.

Tissu at the lake

I've been up at the lake the last couple of days and it's been lovely. We strung the tissu between two trees and did lots of photographing.. it's a lovely place to hang out. I haven't been motivated to actually practice any choreography, which is becoming a more pressing problem as faerieworlds is in 2 weeks and I've only got the first 1/5 of the dance choreographed. The bugs, the sun, the breeze, the beauty, the big box of gingersnaps, all seem to distract me though. Also, the lack of music.. and the lack of mirrors. I'm pretty spoiled by my living room performance space I guess.
There was much adventure in rigging. Darrell was the mastermind and had a whole bunch of tools and confusing-looking gear.. several tree-scrapes, rope burns, failed attempts, near-death frights, trips to the hardware store, and hours of precarious ladder-balancing later we managed to string a cable between two trees and hang the tissu from it. It works really, really well! I'm very impressed with Darrell. We were describing the idea to lots of folks before we tried it, and got lots of skepticism and nay-sayers, but the amount of tension on the cable is just perfect - a little bouncy but that actually makes it more comfortable to bounce and drop and stuff, and it feels super safe.

Originally we wanted to hang it at 30 feet but we had only a 16 foot ladder. The first time we tried rigging I climbed all the way up the rope to a 30 foot tree branch and then freaked out and my body seized up and brain stopped working, and I had to BREATHE and slide back down the rope and shake for a while (got a nice rope burn on my shin from that one) and we decided rigging lower down, from the ladder, was the way to go this time. We've got ideas for setting up a belay so we can rig from higher heights but this time it just wasn't gonna happen. Plenty of height for close-up shots though.. the far-away silhouettes will just have to be next time.

We did 2 shoots on Monday - a sunny one and a dusk one. Then Tuesday we did an early morning shoot and a late-night, after dark shoot (at which the swarming bugs were the main event, oh MY), and then one more early morning

on Wednesday. Tissu dancing is one thing.. tissu hanging-and-posing is a bit different, and pretty tough on the ol' arm muscles - most especially at 6:00 am! (try to squeeze your fists hard enough to support your body weight right after you wake up.. combined with morning stiffness and chilliness.. that photo shoot was TOUGH!) The light was just beautiful though, with some mist on the lake and everything really still.. I think we got some really beautiful photos.
It's funny.. I remember going through this phase with fire dancing, when I'd been doing it for just a year or so. All I wanted to do was dress up, experiment with the techie stuff, and take pictures.. fun locations, crazy costumes, interesting lighting, colored flame.. no

w that bit of fancy has been transferred to tissu. I really hope tissu follows the same path as fire dancing, where I've gotten to perform so many amazing places that I don't feel the need to bother with photos anymore. :)

In the meantime.. my next wacky idea is to rig from the Donner Lake Rainbow Bridge. Let me know if you want to be involved! We'll need photographers, grips, and someone to stand there and spin me around so I'm facing the right direction.. ;)

Iowa State University Trip

It's a sleepy Monday after a long weekend of traveling and fire.  We had a 5-dancer show at the VEISHEA celebration at Iowa State University on Saturday night, and really had a great time on the trip.  

This is the second year we've performed at VEISHEA and this year the weather, despite forecasts to the contrary, was just beautiful.  The party was hopping, the crowd was really enthusiastic and the show was really well received. 

We did two sets, ending at around 3:00 am, and dragged ourselves back to the hotel room to sleep while the college kids continued to party.  (It seems they do it right, it Iowa.. :)  This type of event always has lots of other fun entertainment as well, and we got to see glass-walking, juggling, mentalism, fun with a tesla coil, and even chainsaw juggling between sets.  I loved being a part of such a wacky show!

Got home a day late, due to missed connections at the airlines, and not all the dancers have made it back yet but everyone is finally aboard a plane and on their way back to the Bay Area.  Trips like this fill me up at the same time they tire me out.  I'll be sleeping really well tonight.. but I'm glad I did make it back in time to take a nap before performing at the 4/20 party for Harborside Health Center tonight.  (Oasis Nightclub in Oakland!  We're at 9:30 and 10:15, come on out and don't miss us!)

San Francisco State AIDS Awareness Day

Today we're doing a fire show at San Francisco State University for their AIDS awareness day.  We've performed at this event the last 2 years as well and it's always a lot of fun.  The student organizers do a really great job, and despite the bright sun (never a fire show's best friend!) the crowd always seems to enjoy our show.  

This year we've added a whole bunch of new acrobatics, especially during the fire eating routine.  Here's hoping it's not too windy!  Eating fire while standing on someone's shoulders can be slightly problematic in a stiff breeze ;) and yesterday's windstorm was pretty intense.  Well, I will do my very best.   Come on out and see us, if you can make it!  1:16 at the Student Union.

Fire Show Season

As winter turns into spring our Fire Show season is really picking up.  We're doing a lot of interesting shows this year, and really enjoying the dual challenges of performing in new and different spaces, and of creating new material and new shows for our fantastic repeat clients.

The Bollywood theme is hot this season!  We've been doing a lot of Indian and Afghani weddings and parties.  Our Bollywood show is rapidly becoming our new favorite.. with such upbeat music and silly, fun energy and dance styles, it'd be hard not to love performing to Bollywood music!  

We also had the privilege of performing at Rhythmix Cultural Works this past Sunday morning for a church service put on by the Alameda Spiritual Living Center.  Each month they focus on a theme and March's theme was fire.  We had a really wonderful time performing for such a connected, loving group of people - their "handshake" is a warm hug, and their enthusiasm for fire and new experiences was really unmatched.  What a wonderful way to spend a Sunday morning.  :)

We're looking ahead to several really fun shows in April, including performing at San Francisco State's AIDS awareness event again this year, and traveling to Iowa State University's huge springtime party called VEISHEA.  Here's hoping the weather stays beautiful!