Faerieworlds Harvest 2011

SO FAERIEWORLDS AGAIN! Yeah, as if you guys thought that we had enough fae to keep us happy for a year, we come back and have ANOTHER FESTIVAL! This was in the middle of September and the weather was much different... ish. Ok, it was similar, as was the level of awesome fun we had, so I'm going to give you the run down on why harvest festival kicked serious faerie butt.
1. It didn't rain on saturday. Right off the bat, I call this one a hardcore success, because the rain in the summer totally ruined my saturday. Also made packing up sunday morning really not fun at all. But this time we got sun and clouds, but no water!
2. The music was incredible. We got to play host to Faun, Delhi 2 Dublin, Tricky Pixie (minus Alec, very sad), and a band who played and blew my little fishy mind named OKA from Australia. There was didj, there were drums, and a whole lot of other awesomeness going on there. And if their music wasn't cool enough, they closed the set with their didj player doing a traditional Australian aboriginal dance, which he can do, because he is actually an Australian aboriginal. It was way cool to watch.

I also decided to do FW this time without a tent. I was homeless, and planning on crashing with my friends each night. The plan was to sleep in someone different's tent each night so as to keep myself sheltered, but not impede on anyone too bad. Tons of my friends had tents and extra space, I was counting on their kindness. Turns out I didn't need it. Emily Fae who we met at faerieworlds in the summer came back to us from North Carolina (actually, Connecticut I think, she was in school) for the weekend, and it just happened that is got REALLY cold at night and we were quite good at keeping warm, so I had a place to stay almost the whole weekend.

During this weekend, we danced, we sang, and I was sung to - because my 21st birthday was on sunday night! That's right, I got to drink beer and mead at Oberon's Tavern on sunday night of FW, and all my older than me friends were gathered and we sang and drank and, because I really want to say it, were merry.

But the coolest single part of faerieworlds by a significant margin was friday night. Friday night Delhi 2 Dublin performed, and they were great as usual and I shook myself silly dancing to them. It was great. But before they went on, a band that is basically Woodland and friends called Treguenda performed, and we got to do the fire ceremony during their set. There were six of us, including Lulu the belly dancer, Erika the star belly dancer, Lyra the poi spinner, and some other people to help with the more ritual aspects of it. It was decided that I was to do fire breathing again, which was no surprise, but that I would also finally get the chance to perform with fire fans! I've been working my ass off to learn how to use them for the last several months based on my mission for fans. I think that is another post, and I don't think that I've written about my mission for fans as well as several other toys. But suffice it to say that getting to perform with fire fans at a major festival was a huge step and an amazing thing to do.

But here's the thing - fire fans are a two handed tool, no room for taking fuel into my mouth, and I didn't want to take fuel in the middle of Lyra's set, not when I am holding a giant flaming steel staff and standing powerfully in the middle of the stage. So I decided a few days before that I would hold the fire breathing fuel in my mouth. It was a 12 minute show, and I help that fuel in my mouth the entire time. I had to keep my lips closed but my jaw open and breathe only through my nose for about 12 minutes, and then I let out a glorious fireball at the end. And people got it too - there were people talking to each other after, I was told, saying "I know that was the same guy as at the summer festival, did you see him drink any fuel? Because I didn't see it at all" and everyone was equally confused an impressed, yay me.
The other thing that happened was I proved that my fans worked.

I have been working on the alternative style of fans as part of my mission, and I had the opportunity to perform with them in a duet with the style I deliberately rebel against, and I got to show people a different way - it was a very rare opportunity. And the reaction was great, I got so many compliments about the style and how much they liked it. It made me feel that my hard work and on this mission is not being wasted, people are learning that there is more to fans than they had been led to believe.


Edit:
I just remembered that WE HAVE A VIDEO! A good friend of mine whipped out the ol' iPhone and captured this glorious night for me to look back on.
Oh, and you can find that if you click on THIS.


So that's my faerieworlds post.
Here are the other two September posts
Earthdance Northwest
First Week Of Senior Year