Alright, so this picture accurately represents me during finals week.
Math: Differential Geometry
Philosophy: Love and Sex (gen-ed class that looked like it would be the most fun of the ones I could do)
Note: no classes before noon - I win
ALRIGHT! On to what you actually want to hear about! The show!
So, it was Halfway Home, half way through the time to Burning Man. If you don't know what burning man is, you have no purpose on this blog - go do your research and then come back and read the rest later. Seriously - go, read. If just the wikipedia article, go, find out.
The event was a fundraiser for several camps within the burner community. So I didn't get paid - too bad for me, but I had a blast anyway. The music was fantastic (including a remix of BYOB, and a particular favorite, a remix of Levan Polkka. Again, if you havn't seen it - go - watch - learn) and we were in the company of many fantabulous dancers. There were some other fire dancers there too from the general portland area. Two, in particular, I want to mention. Jay Peace who did some fire juggling, and we had a cool conversation about juggling clubs and had a bitch party about how annoying it is to juggle fire (if you don't know, quicky explanation: when it is nighttime, and the fire is going, it is hard to see anything other than the fire - but you have to catch the handle. Basically, fire juggling is not comparable to club juggling - in fire, you have to catch the thing you can't see, but assume is there) and I found him on facebook - yay! The other one was Baby Doll. She is a hooper who does some fire eating too (respect!) but she was unlike any hooper I've seen in a while. She threw out some new tricks I had not seed before, but being that I am not a hooper, it is not that impressive to impress me. But what she did was more subtle. The way she moved had a quality in it that I really only see in aerialists, a movement independent of gravity. When most of us initiate movement, we do it from our core because that is how we walk. We move from the hips - center of gravity, and then our body follows. When we turn our head, we move from the center of the body. But when you are in the air, you can move from anywhere to initiate movement, and it produces the flowing, beautiful effect we see in good aerialists. But she had this same quality, and she was on the ground. It produced an effect where it looked like she was floating. It was seriously cool.
So I did two rope sets, neither one too difficult, but I threw out some one my more personal tricks (captain underpants, for example) and had a good time with it. However, on my second set, I forgot to pull my high-rise pants up all the way, they were just regular-rise pants, and since I was performing with a mesh shirt, my stomach was pretty much bare with no protection from the rope. Yeah, I got burned, and it sucked.
I was working with a woman named Harper Chang, who was doing silks. We had met about a year ago, once, and were working together now, it was fun. We decided at around 4pm we were going to choreograph a duet piece, where I was holding her up. Props to her for trusting me enough after such a short amount of time to perform a duet piece with her just hours later. Well, we did - kept it pretty basic, but it was still awesome. Crowd response was pretty frickin' excellent.
Then I did my fire set. I ripped out one of the better fire eating/breathing sets in a while. I pulled off the sustain with back bend, and got the full 180 degrees, something I have not been able to do in a while. I also have perfected the tripple blast (breathing through my own previous blast, with no torch - it is a speed thing), perhaps too much - they are getting so close together it is hard to tell them apart. I didn't think I would ever tell myself to do a trick worse to make it look better. All was well until the double extinguish. I burned my lips pretty good.
I figured out a new trick I could use for closing, and I have been using it ever since I moved to Oregon. I do it whenever I have an outdoor show and it is either raining, or it rained recently. I lean down before I do the trick and touch the ground, getting my hand all wet. Then I just straight up grab the torch in my hand and put it out. Well, the ground wasn't as wet as I thought it was. I didn't have as much water on my hand as I thought I did. I figured that out in a single instant, as I heard a hissing sound and thick white smoke rising out of the top of my hand. Thick white smoke as a result of the fire that was using what used to me a part of my hand as fuel. Technically it was really fucking hot metal that touched my skin and I wasn't protected by water like I thought I was, but it sounds much better the other way. But there was some fire burns too (i.e. the rest of my hand). It isn't too bad, I can still use it just fine, it just looks really gross (and it felt like it was on fire for about 24 hours) because I have these giant blister type burns on my palm, and the kevlar pattern burned into three of my fingers.
And through that extremely not fun experience, I learned something about myself. Something that I would have figured out earlier if I had bothered to pay attention, because this has happened many times. There have been times when I am executing a trick, and I know as soon as I do it that I messed up, that I was going to get hurt to some degree. Or I start to get hurt and realize why. But what makes me, me is that I don't stop. Last night, when I saw that the fire wasn't going down as fast as it should have been, and that my hand was starting to get burned, I didn't drop the torch and jump back. I held on to that thing until I was sure the fire was out. Then I dropped the torch all dramatic-like and bowed. I left the torch sitting there and walked back inside. Then... well, then i was less composed. Poured some cold water on the burn and then went back outside to clean up. Note: this is what a safety should be doing.
This fire show was awesome for two reasons: got a couple new tricks, and got seriously noticed by the portland fire community. I got a lot of business cards and people asking for my name and if I was on facebook. I might have some more portland gigs coming up! Plus, if I have anything down here, I can just give Jay Peace and Baby Doll a call and have them come down and kick ass!
Alright, that's all from me, I'm out. Nap Time!
~Fenix
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