Thoughts on Negypt

I saw Negypt twice this weekend. I made it a point to do so, in fact, because it took me two times to actually collect my thoughts on it. The first time I sat in the front row, the second I sat almost at the back, so that I could see others' reactions.

While I'm not a dancer and am not really well-versed in all the trends and schools of thought that dance is composed of, it's impossible to think that, even without a background in dance, I might have nothing to say about Negypt. One things for sure: whether you liked it, hated it, thought it was interesting or walked out of the show (I think one or two people did on Saturady), it's impossible to walk away from it without a reaction.

Personally, I really enjoyed it—even though I doubt many people would say the piece is not "enjoyable". The movement was a lot of convulsive, repetitive motions, highly emotive yet silent, and usually self-defeating. Hence the kind of movement Negypt is composed of, as it is self-described: "Deletist".

Some might find the idea to be pretentious or overthought. For me, such movements have their time and they place, and, when properly placed, can have great meaning. I appreciate it in that way. There were certain sections of the piece that I found to be downright peaceful. There is a certain place in the mind that is full of emptiness, and a simple state where one accepts that there is a profound lacking—and certain sections of Negypt evoked that place, which I know in my own mind as part of that which harbors the Muse. Negypt brought these hidden places to life in a palpable manner, palpable enough to remind me what it actually was like to exist in those places, and to absorb their reality.

However, there is a point where Negypt stops and does not go beyond. It visits that place of emptiness, that kind of nihilistic angst and the fact that the emptiness will not go away—but it stays there. I would dare to say that it wallows there, and is so introspective that its own angstiness, as beautifully expressed as it is, shows another kind of lacking—a lacking of redemption.

This is where people's various stages of personal growth and belief come into play. At a certain point you can't judge another person nor their work if they or it is nothing but honest—and Negypt certainly was. But, to use an analogy, if one is to truly embrace Taoism, for example, they can't just stay in the black/ying, they also have to venture into the white/yang. Negypt embraces the dark, but is so shocked by that embrace that it can't let go of it, and in forgetting to let go, refuses to grow from and beyond it. At a very deep and subtle level then, I would venture to say that it's imbalanced. You can't just gaze into the abyss—the abyss will also gaze into you. The pain that is in Negypt can be healed—at least, I believe it can. But it takes a certain measure of acceptance of that pain—and not the kind of acceptance that embraces pain as all that there is, and that's the end of it. It stops short of moving beyond the pain into the world beyond the abyss. If one is to be truly detached from this world, they have to be detached from detachment (it's not the same thing as attachment). That's the paradox of enlightenment—at least, what I've learned from it (I wouldn't claim to be enlightened). To be normal is to be enlightened, to be enlightened is to be normal. After awhile, it looks no different.

If Negypt's goal is to show the nature of enlightenment, according to Taoists and Buddhists (and darkness is part of it), it only presents half of the paradox. But as an intermediary step, a step into the initial darkness before the dawn, it is brilliant and beautiful. It truly does evoke the primal womb, and I would gladly stay there in those spaces if I could—it evokes the khora.

It's just necessary to remember that khora is a creative force as much as it is a destructive one. The movements in Negypt may be futile and self-defeating—the irony is that they have a great potential for peace and healing as well. Unfortunately, this isn't followed through with in the piece. Too often in such angst other side of nature is forgotten—and often it becomes only another form of blindness.

Seeing Negypt Tonight

My good friend and… very happy to say, significant other, ;) Natasha of Lunarius Graphics is performing in a psuedo Butoh piece tonight called Negypt. She also designed the promotional fliers for it, which in my opinion came out lovely. I've got one complimentary ticket, so I'll be seeing it on its first of three nights this weekend. A number of the rest of the Flam Chen family are involved as well, even though the piece is not Flam Chen. Aurelia Cohen, Barry Hatchel, and Katherine Tesch are all part of it (and others). The piece is written and directed by one Brandon Kodama.

From what I've heard from the rehearsals the piece promises to be intense and very conceptual, if not a number of other adjectives. If you're in the Tucson area and are looking or something that will probably jar your psyche a bit, it's playing at the Zuzi Theater tonight Friday, and then Saturday and Sunday night as well.

Feel free to check out the Facebook event.

I will look forward to writing my responses to it either tonight or Saturday. My apologies for the lack of blogging lately—the month of December, and January for that matter, have been so busy that I've barely had enough time to finish all the work I've made for myself, much less document it for others to read about. But there is a lot of great stuff to catch up on, so you can expect to be seeing it shortly—from new years in Bisbee to photoshoots to help promote the publishing of my SciFi novel (more on that later), a lot of good stuff is up ahead.

Happy 2010!

First Performances

Yesterday was kind of a whirlwind, and unexpected, but awesome nonetheless. Two of my first performances (not officially in a Flam Chen faculty, they're more like "appearances") in a row, first on silks, then on stilts at the Ensphere warehouse show.

And there's a video to prove it!

The silks bit was for the Rhythm Industry performance review—a sort of open house when all the cooperative groups and artists of the Rhythm Industry center show the latest that they've been working on. Because Flam Chen was at Angel Ball doing their showtime thing, only some of the beginner/intermediate students were available to show the latest. Kelsey and I volunteered to do a silks piece as representing Flam Chen.

It's a work in progress, and it's obvious that I've got a lot to work on (point your toes, keep your legs straight, etc.). I'd like to video myself now on silks to actually see where the strengths and weaknesses are. It'd be great for training. But I'd like to think that this, for all its imperfections, is not too bad for two or so months of training.

Video of me and Kelsey, thanks much to Clencovision, who was kind enough to put it on Youtube so quickly:



Kelsey did really great.

Forgive the cheesy swinging of the silk on my part. When properly executed, that will send the flyer into a tight spin while in the hipkey. It seemed to be an easy thing to do while I was hanging there, and kind of came out lackluster. Oh well—another thing to work on.

The other appearance on stilts was late last night (or really early this morning) at the Ensphere warehouse show. My first time being a shadow walker—I didn't have the arm stilts to go with it (you can only tie so much aluminum to your backpack while biking through town), so more like a psuedo-shadowwalker. But the effect wasn't lost on people. It was interesting seeing people's reactions—from shock, to flirtatious (no comment there, aside that the costume is skin-tight, white, and more or less androgynous), to fear. I actually chased one girl around a car while she tried to take a picture of me. Of course I hugged her and told her my name later on.

The costume is half the battle, but the other half is being the shadow walker. The costumes are really powerful, even though they're simple in their construction (it's like walking around with an elastic bedsheet on you), but actually performing as an otherworldly creature is actually what makes it all happen. People's reactions suddenly go to this pure, more neutral area where typical human body language identity is lost and anything can happen. Some find it elating and amazing, some find it ominous or frightening, and yet others don't know how to interpret it, and just get angry, as if this walking bedsheet is some sort of social threat.

I'll be scanning the intarwebs for picture-proof of this. There were multiple times I posed for cameras. They have to show up on Facebook sometime.

What it takes to join the circus

What does it take to join the circus?

A couple of things.

1. Dedication.

2. An insane amount of patience.

3. A disappearing ego (it appears onstage, then disappears offstage).

4. The belief that living in a warehouse or industrial sector and making your way completely with whatever amenities you are given or can provide yourself with is romantic.

5. Know-how of what it takes to make money, but a belief that money is only a means to an end.

6. Almost infinite love of art and love of craft.

7. Determination in the face of extreme adversity—even the kind that cannot be bought out, named, or convinced over coffee.

8. A willingness to, occasionally, starve for your passion.

9. Realizing that the romance is an illusion.

10. Believing that, no matter how hard it is, what you are doing now is always worth it because it is always true, and that you really quite wouldn't be as happy doing anything else.

Life of a month-old circus performer

It's been a month exactly since I moved to Tucson to join the pyrotechnic theatre troupe Flam Chen.

Since this blog is going to be repurposed from cataloguing my experiences at Arcosanti to cataloguing my experience as a legitimate "circus performer", it's fair to answer the question most people who know me personally lately.

So, what exactly are you doing in Flam Chen?

Not coming from a strong background in the performing arts specifically, most of my time with them is spent just training. The first thing you notice about yourself as you start to practice something like silk aerial, or even stilts, is that there is a distinct muscle buildup. Especially with aerial, there is nothing you can do if you can't hold yourself on the silks for more than ten seconds, and in any number if different positions. For me, while I am overall a healthy person, but not particularly athletic or strong, this gradual changing of the body has been noticeable—and exciting—for me.

My old training in Aikido kicked in, and in many ways that's what allows me to do any of this at all. The language of the body—understanding what it takes to move a certain way, with a certain amount of force or flexibility, is what one person needs most when approaching something like aerial—though it can be incredibly helpful even in the day-to-day activities of sitting and walking. It's been a long time since I studied Aikido, and I think it shows in how well I speak the language of the body, but aerial training is reminding me of its importance—and now, how it can tie into raw strength, which is a dimension that I've not experienced before. I've probably gained a little weight around the shoulders and in the arms since I got here, even in that short of a time. Probably only noticeable to me right now—but I hope that it becomes noticeable to others who knew me before I moved here. I became a lot healthier at Arcosanti. That trend is continuing here.

Being aware of this physical transition, I've made a point of it to eat well. Aside from my one daily vice, which is coffee, I eat fresh fruits and vegetables, usually sauteed or stir-fried (yes, I cook with fruits—it makes things more interesting), with a variety of different meats and carbs, but usually pastas or rice noodles. Lunches are usually a bagel sandwich with some fruit or yogurt, and because I'm not interested in spending the extra money on soda, I am drinking multiple cups of tea almost every day.

My weak points are my flexibility—I need to be more serious about yoga, and as soon as I'm sure I have the funds to support it, I'll continue my long-paused Aikido training.

I tend to work in cafés. Being a freelancer gives me a lot of flexibility, as long as I can make the ends meet. While I do plan to get my cappuccino machine shipped from the east coast to help save on the cost of coffee, which adds up real fast (I'm not the kind of person that feels justified in walking into a cafe without buying something), I tend to hang out outside the house I rent out of whenever I can. If just for the change of pace and scenery—I've found it difficult to work at home on most days. Sometimes the extra concentration is worth the extra dollars in beverage.

But the life of a month-old circus performer also carries with it the gradual initiations. I think I'm a special case, in a special situation. Flam Chen doesn't really have an audition process, nor much of a tiered structure of who is a performer and who is not. They instead have a pool of people that, from whatever walk of life or for whatever reason, got "sucked in" to the group and their activities. For most of the core members that make up the troupe, the rest is history beyond that. For me, the pattern seems to be similar, but with the fact that I somewhat already had my foot in the door. Being from Arcosanti was the crack, and then talking with the different members and sharing my skillset with them opened that crack further. After I realized that there was an opportunity in this picture, and after realizing it was the one chance in my life to do anything like it, I decided to see if I could pry the door open enough so that I could walk through. Indeed, it opened.

I think the fact that I moved myself from the East Coast to Tucson, from an outsider's perspective seemingly on a whim, may have had something to do with it. For me, it was just the practical reality of the situation—where else could I practice silks or firespinning? But again, from an outsider's perspective, it can be a powerful signal. Is it odd that someone would just decide to move because they were so excited about the group, with no promise of pay nor any real written agreement about what would happen? Is it a sign that others may do the same in the future, if the company has a way to ingest them and find a way to plug them into a potential hierarchy?

These are unanswerable questions. But for me, the steady training and gradual involvement in shows, usually as a stagehand or safety, are the small steps into a future I honestly cannot predict. I know that I am steadily approaching a cliffside—a point where I will have to make choice, so to speak, where I will have to open these wings and see where the wide horizon takes me. All the different elements that make up my life right now—Proteus Creative, Flam Chen, Tucson and its surprisingly broad networking scope, and even other elements that are gradually emerging—all of these are like puzzle pieces, and there is a number of different ways to arrange them. None of the pictures will be wrong—but only one, I think, will be best, and I can only put them together one way, once.

For the first time in my life I feel like I have so many options that there is no clear direction. I know that this is actually just an illusion. That the pieces of this life are gradually getting sewn together by an unseen power or by strange twists of fate that even I could not have guessed, even in my remotest dreams—if anything, the direction may be clearer than ever. It's just in a color I've never recognized before.

There is so much to be done, and a lot that needs to be learned. Somehow I feel like it's just the beginning.

All Souls 2009

Even though it's been a good week since the Procession, Flam Chen is pretty much looking ahead. Someone described it to me as Flam Chen's New Year—after the Procession, everything starts over, and is fresh again.

But the Procession itself went great. Not without its own hitches and problems. But that's the insider's perspective—for the outsider, who it's really about, it was pretty amazing.

Most of the photos I took are really not that great. So instead I'm just going to post a video that pretty much summarizes the whole event. Enjoy.

Bike Woes, Glamorous Week

This week has been a troublesome week, but with today, the Saturday before the All Souls Procession, everything should be back in full swing for me. During the early week I got sick. Determined to overcome it quickly my first full week in Tucson, I laid low and pumped myself full of garlic, echinacea, orange juice, green tea, and chicken noodle soup. By Wednesday I was back on my feet, though not fully healed. I had spent some good money on a new bike, my main mode of transportation, just the week before. Finally ready to get out of the house, I woke up in the morning, showered, and was ready to go.

Flat tire.

Apparently Tucson wreaks havoc on bike tires. It is the desert, after all. Burs, needles, all those sorts of things will make short work of any normal bike tire. After getting a ride to the bike shop and fixing the punctured front tire, I ride home and check the tires again that evening, only to discover that the back tire now has a bur of its own.

Patching the tire proves useless. Frustrated, still a little sick, and still looking for work, I decide to lay low again.

Finally, the cold is almost entirely gone, and I've learned a lot about bike tire protection. It took a good $140 of my bank account, but today I should be all set. A set of new tires, both back and front, that have a layer of kevlar and/or nylon on the inside. Then, an inner tube protector layer, and finally, a slime layer inside the tube that will fill in any hole that makes it past the first two layers. It was a little bit of money blown, but in my mind it's worth it. In these situations, you usually get what you pay for—and even though I may still be in a scary transition phase, investing in solid transportation is, in my mind, totally worth the investment. I need to be able to get around for networking, work, and personal sanity. I've found that I'm usually much more productive when working in a cafe or lounge, rather than at home. It forces me to focus.

So, finally settling in a little bit and having scoped out some more places around town (I'm posting this from Epic Cafe), and starting to get some web design work trickling in, I'm starting to feel a bit more confident. I realize though that I really am making my own way here. Of course, I knew that initially from the start. But the practical, tangible reality of that is much rougher, much more cut, than I've known so far.

But everything is working. There is very little I can complain about—in fact, I have a lot to be thankful for. And tomorrow will be a day of days.

Don't worry—I'll post pictures of the Procession. Even though I've been pretty much out of the Flam Chen loop this week, they've all been working non-stop. And with even seeing a few fruits of their labors now, I'll get to see the whole tree, in all its flaming glory, tomorrow evening.

Transition Week

I've fallen into a rhythm this week—anything that could be a rhythm. It's a transitional rhythm.

I've been back home at Maryland ("home") for about a week now. The familiarity of it all was palpable. I had grown up in these rooms. Many memories were tangible—old, leatherskinned journals containing secrets. IKEA lamplights that I had hung and left there for 5+ years. It's funny to think that orange tends to appear very often in my design-related projects. My entire room was painted like my designs—black, browns, oranges, and luminous, rice-paper lamp tans. All warm colors.

I've started reading The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. Appropriately, probably, since his intention is to form a phenomenology of the house. I'm keenly interested. I liked his quote that states that artists are phenomenologists by nature. It makes me want to read up on what phenomenology actually is. I know enough to have a feeling about it—I don't know enough to have a definition.

When I came back from Arcosanti I hit the ground running. This week was not a vacation, nor is the next coming week. Proteus Creative saw a partial launch right before I left (check out the site if you haven't, http://www.proteuscreative.com), just so something could be up there. I've been since working on the full version of the site, which is coming along nicely. The full version will probably be up by the end of this week. Of course I already want to redesign it. I'm frustrated by my lack of scripting skills—I don't want to be dependent on other people's plugins for jQuery anymore, which is why I will be learning Javascript and AJAX—so I can build my own intuitive web interfaces from the ground up.

But even with all that, I've learned that there is a rhythm to the day. Like music. There is the upswing in the morning. I look forward to the smell of coffee, the cool air, that top of the world feeling—the feeling where you're looking forward to everything that will happen in the day. Salvador Dali once said that he would wake up with a feeling of ecstasy in the mornings, jumping out of bed to see "what this amazing feat this character, Salvador Dali, will accomplish next!" I'm not quite that… egotistical? But I do see enjoying progress in my work. The fulfillment of art in its completion, is the completion of art itself.

But I need to work on the nights. Because I'm such a focused personality, I need time to relax. Usually this comes in the form of playing video games, which I've finally gotten sick of. Not because I don't like video games. But because they, really, don't relax me—they allow me to concentrate on something else. Something other than all the things I want to accomplish in a day, or a lifetime. But for the amount of relaxation they do give me is kind of a game of decreasing returns. I'll play for hours until I'm tired, then go to bed. Then wake up in the morning—but I won't feel refreshed.

So I've decided to take up reading. It's only been a few nights, but reading Gaston Bachelard has been a lot more fun—really—then playing games for even twice the amount of time. And I love philosophy. I always intend to read more of it, but never do. For me, philosophy really is the engine that drives art, science, culture, writing—everything. Philosophy is a powerhouse, if you understand it and can see how it can be applied in practical ways. I just lack the foundational knowledge, personally speaking, to fully grasp all of it in its full intent. So picking up the habit of reading (and doing so with intent!) is two goals at once. I want to make it my way of relaxing—the way I calm my brain, yet can still allow myself to remain focused on something that is not work.

Writing is similar. Journal writing, I mean. I'm starting to pick up that habit again, though it's stop and start. Same with yoga. Yoga in particular, and its offshoot field for me, Aikido, are both things I want to concentrate on more steadily once I get down to Tucson. They are more pieces in the puzzle I want to fit together in making the transition to Flam Chen.

I'm still very intent on it. This week has just been the thick of things. Realizing how much of a cliff I'm jumping off, yet considering the scenarios again and again, comparing my intentions, my expectations, the realities, the possibilities, what I can give, what I can get out of it—I always come back to the same conclusion. Which is why I haven't wavered.

Socrates said: "The mark of an educated man is the ability to entertain a possibility without accepting it."

I think education, if it were actually education, would account for a lot of the personal conflicts in the world. Misinterpretations and so forth—being willing to entertain possibilities without accepting them—realizing that you don't have to commit to them by entertaining them.

But that is part of the good, solid decision making process. And I've not done all this on a whim. I'm very sure of myself—yet completely open to what may come. I have goals, but not expectations. It's a fine balance, a delicate balance. But if you can achieve it, it is a wonderful feeling.

The night comes.

It's only Monday. I leave on the 26th.

I have reading to do.

The Weekend to End All Weekends

It's my last weekend at Arcosanti—or just "Arco", if you prefer. Some of the people have gone out to enjoy the Decompression party happening… somewhere out in the desert, as you'd expect.

I've not been thinking much about the fact that I'm leaving Arcosanti, after having been here for about half a year. I did that for about an hour yesterday. Everything has been much more practical. With the upcoming move to Tucson in late October, no more than two weeks after I get back to the chilly east coast, I've been in overdrive—fixing up the Proteus site, figuring out living situations, scrounging up as much money as possible, and in general trying to batten down the hatches before I jump off the cliff. In all reality, this whole move to Tucson and joining Flam Chen is a cliffjumping exercise. I've never moved before, much less had my own car or had my own apartment (I sort of have at Arco, but Arco isn't reality). I won't be having my own car, which makes things interesting. Thankfully, I'm staying with one of the Flam Chen members who has a spare room he needs to rent out. From there, I'll set up my business and settle in. Everything is pretty much bikable. I've already scoped out the neighborhood from the air of Google Earth—marked the best coffee shops, lounges, routes to and from the Flam Chen studio, and the organic grocery stores.

Speaking of biking, anyone have one they want to donate? ;)

The money situation is tight. I'm not interested in living paycheck to paycheck, though I will probably have to do that the next two months. It depends on how freelance takes off and if I can get serious clients. It's not so difficult to be impossible—it's just difficult to be just that, difficult. It's certainly workable—at least, I believe it to be.

Even if it doesn't work out, this is the one chance I have to play the wildcard. There's nothing lost to strive for the most potential, the most unique, and fall back to the original plan—go back to the east and make money, go to school there.

That's the justification at least. So this weekend is the transition from Arco to the east, and the preliminary transition from the east to back out west. And I should be in the town only a week or two before All Souls happens—one of Flam Chen's biggest events throughout the year.

Watch carefully. The blog posts over the course of the next three weeks should get very, very interesting.

Autumn welcomes wish lists

It's been a relaxing day. The feeling of autumn is here. The elevation of Arcosanti gives a seasonal difference—and nights can get quite cold. But this morning had that quiet, introverted, chilly mood about it. The temperature change seemed to change the architecture almost. What is usually oppressing concrete interiors seemed to reflect the cold starkness of the air. In that sense, they seemed welcoming—they held in the heat of the sun. In some ways I think the architecture of Arcosanti is more winter desert architecture than summer desert architecture.

The cool air reminded me of Baltimore, which was a welcome sensation. Suddenly I felt like I was back among brownstones, with that cool, soft, Atlantic air coming in from the eastern bays, mixed with just a little bit of exhaust, bakery smell, and cigarette smoke. The smell of a city in the morning. A real city—not what Arcosanti is, or rather tries to be. Here the air is crystal clean, but hard—rich in calcium and basalt dust, if there is such a thing. It's as hard as the water. Like breathing in minerals.

But some soothing beats took care of things and I got to work. I've still been recovering from Earthdance. The past two days I'd broken out in hives. I've never had them before—might have been an allergic reaction, but at least part of it was the stress, I think. I wanted to hit the ground running on the new Arcosanti site template, and I did—but people commented on how I looked. Less energetic than usual, etc. I felt fine—but apparently it showed more on my face than even I myself knew or felt.

Personal projects have been suffering. I've not been painting. I've been journaling more though, which has been very good, very necessary. Handwriting has always been a pinnacle language for me, ever since I started it about five years ago. Through the written word, it is as if I can understand everything. I do not need logic, as much as I am intellectual. The written word gives me the tool to affirm, to understand, to experience—it is my own language. Oftentimes it is a healthy mirror.

I will have to be ramping up my business soon though. I have been getting some connections with clients—it's been good to have at least some hits with the current Proteus Creative site. But it is only a transitional page. It looks like only a random freelancer's contact page, and really that's what it is—but now it's time to create the full site. So hopefully I will be able to lay low the next week and a half, until I leave Arcosanti, quietly working on that site during the late afternoon and evening times.

There's a reason for that though. I will have to be making money soon—real money, and real fast. Chiefly because I am moving.

Not into Baltimore though. I'll stay only a week or two on the east. A month later, if all goes well, I will actually be back in Arizona. Cross your fingers—in Tucson, of all places. Because I am planning on joining Flam Chen.

Crazy decision? Of course. Surprising? Probably not. Most of the plans are already laid out—I've talked with Paul and Nadia, the head honchos—had great conversations with them. I had actually made this decision, or was at least seriously considering it weeks ago, before Earthdance. No second thoughts so far.

I'll go into why I am choosing this some other time. But if you know me well enough, I would bet that it would make sense if you thought about it for awhile.

Think about it this way. There are only a few things you can do in your life at certain times. The "life wish list" may go something like this:

1. Go to art school, become a painter.
2. Write a novel.
3. Take a sojourn into the desert.
4. Fall in love.
5. Join the circus.
6. Run a successful business.
7. Take a risk and don't look back.

So far I have 1, 2, 3, 4 (sort of), working on 6, and 5 and 7 would be one and the same.

It's a wildcard. But has anything I've ever done been sensible, usual, or safe?

Thought so. ;)

Flam Chen in Mesa and Tucson

This past weekend saw a visit into Tucson. I wanted to get to know the city a bit—I really haven't seen the majority of cities out here in Arizona, and this was one in particular I wanted to see. But the added bonus was that Flam Chen was doing two shows in the area—first in Mesa on Friday, and then again in Tucson on Saturday. It was good to see some familiar faces I hadn't seen since July 21st.

Of course, I came back with pictures.

First, from their performance in Mesa at the Mesa Arts Center.

















Ruben spinning Poi with flares on stilts.











Then, Saturday show in the evening on "Bat Night"—a celebratory evening where Tucson residents watch 40,000 bats fly out from under the Cambridge Avenue Bridge. Sponsored by the Rillito River project, the night was organized to raise awareness about water usage. Flam Chen flew balloons at the different heights where the water table had receded from in depth over the course of 200 years of develop. The first balloon was flown at 25ft, where the water table used to exist naturally in Pima county. The last balloon, reflecting the modern day situation, flew at almost 200ft high.

Before the balloons are lifted to their appropriate "depths".



The Shadow Walkers freak out the crowd.













Balloons start to get raised.





The bats come out, and fly through the balloons.





Both these events were probably benefit concerts, so Flam Chen did them for free, essentially (at least as I understand it). For these ones they were mostly working on a skeleton crew. But even with that, and especially on Friday, they put on a good show.