Performance - Thursday, July 10th
Bonfire Madigan play baroque-folk punk grounded on frontwoman Madigan Shive's soaring lullaby vocals and virtuoso cello skills. Shive, a master of tone and mood, crafts songs with raw, emotional melodies and powerful, unexpected dynamics. - New York Press
Paul Da Plumber's Fire Lotus Photo by Margot Duane
Fun is the universal language. My work focuses on interactive sculptures. I have worked in general contracting work, fabrication, and high-end construction for the last twenty years and have built many commissioned public art projects in the context of my own work, on collaborations, and as part of San Francisco’s Bike Rodeo.
Circolo: Serchmaa & Kristina with Scarlett & Axelrod
photo by: Juan Carlos
Performance - Saturday, July 12th
A debut collaboration between belly dance contortion fire duet Serchmaa Byamba & Kristina Cañizares and aerial hoop artists Scarlett & Axelrod. Serchmaa is one of the most celebrated Mongolian contortionists in the United States and a teacher at San Francisco Circus Center. Kristina, director of The Nekyia, is a darling of belly dance, burlesque, and fire performance and a Crucible instructor. Scarlett & Axelrod are a pair of sizzling hot, highly accomplished aerial performers whose hoop duet leaves audiences breathless. These four performers weave together their talent and artistry into an unprecedented display of physical beauty.
Serchmaa Byamba in European Young Circus Artists Festival, Weisbaden Germany in 1992.
Performance - Friday, July 11th & Saturday, July 12th
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Copper Lantern Fire Theater has entertained audiences throughout North America and overseas with a stylized fusion of acrobatic fire performance, custom flame effects, and live chamber and electronic music. Founded in 2004, Copper Lantern is a 15-strong company of performers, musicians and crew who lovingly combine their diverse training in circus and movements arts to bring innovative productions to the stage.
Copper Lantern has performed at many prestigious venues, such as the Crucible’s Fire Arts Festival, GenArt’s multimedia arts festival, “Ignite!,” and numerous other incendiary events. Members of the company have appeared individually at venues such as Burning Man Decompression, The Fire Arts Expo, the Fire Garden, the Harbor Nights Festival in Hamilton, Bermuda; Huis Ten Bosch Amusement Park in Kyushu, Japan; and for diverse private and corporate events.
Five friends, eight fire cannons, 20 million BTU's of burners, half-ton human powered machines, and a gaggle of propane tanks. Art that glows, fire plumes that light up city blocks, explosions you can feel in your chest. Fire effects and art intertwining to invoke primal reactions in our viewers. Go ahead, press that button. I'm going to stand back a little.
The Department of Spontaneous Combustion is a West-Oakland based fire art collective, specializing in metal sculpting, propane effects, odd hand-built peddle-powered devices, and the delicate balance between real and perceived danger. Actively involved in the local Bay Area and Arcata artist communities, DSC is excited to be participating in their fourth Crucible FAF. Individual artists include: Don Cain, Bohdi Baber, Scott Cocking, Scott Simpson, and Graham Linn.
Dan's degree in landscape architecture from Rutgers University is the basis for his fascination with large-scale work. He has and is a self-taught jack-of-all-trades, and has created a large body of work including The One Tree, The Faces of the Man as well as a line of sculptures produced for the consumer market.
Karen studied at Rhode Island School of Design and Massachusetts College of Art and has produced several public art installations in and around the Boston area. She is passionate about the human form as a means of expression. Her work includes painting and mixed-media sculpture, as well as photography and literary "vignettes."
Together their focus is on the spiritual aspects of humanity and the environment. The work they produce together harmoniously combines each of their unique skill sets, along with the energy, friction and inspiration two creative minds produce when working together.
Danya Parkinson and Joey Bard comprise Pyrokinetics, a collaborative fire-loving duo who infused the Crude Awakening figures with their unique flame effects. Other installations include the Pendulum of Fire, The Pendulup™ and Balaena Delubrum.
The video below shows a live performance of Vance Cearley's Fire Sculpture "Exxothermia". Most recently seen during the Fire Arts Festival at the Crucible in Oakland. Fabricated metal "seeds", travel through a block of solid ice. Controlled gusts of fire shoot through a hole in the ice and heat up the seeds, which then slowly melt through the ice. Great performance piece.
False Profit Labs produces science-inspired art. This type of artwork exploits scientific concepts to build dynamic, interactive and often fire-producing art pieces. We turn the sciences of physics, chemistry, biology, electronics into art. We are art engineers, who fabricate, machine, weld, and construct sculptural, larger-than-life art installations designed to create impactful experiences for spectators and participants. We share this artwork with our community, our city, and travel with it to events around the world.
Performance - Thursday, July 10th
A San Francisco Bay Area troupe of fire performers, dancers, and artists. We're equally dedicated to providing you with an exciting performance, and a safe one. We perform with fire poi, double poi, staff, fingers, fans, batons, snakes, hula hoops, fire jump rope, fire breathing, LED lights, and stiltwalking.
Performance - Wednesday, July 9th & Friday, July 11th
Flamenco Fury is newly founded by dancer Juan Del Valle whose career has brought him to China, Europe, Central and South America, and throughout the United States. He is joined by singer Roberto Zamora whose cante flamenco is renowned for its purity of style and guitarist Jorge Liceaga who is acclaimed for his innovative and original compositions. Fanny Ara is an exciting young dancer whose first production "A Traves de Sus Ojos" will premier at the Mountain View Center For The Performing Arts on July 26th. Talented new percussionist Ruben Vernier adds rhythmic complexity to the group.
Matisse Enzer loves the whole process of designing and building things. Matisse has been a game designer, political organizer, union carpenter, architectural student and apprentice, building contractor, software engineer and consultant, and long time member of the Art Police. Matisse lives in San Francisco, California and Black Rock City, Nevada.
Modeled after "County Fair" style shooting galleries the Flamethrower Shooting Gallery provides a new twist on a long-standing American tradition and pokes gentle fun at the American fascination with firearms and personal power, along with the Burning Man fascination with fire and "radical self expression" by allowing and encouraging participants to literaly play with fire and shoot things.
fLo-Ology House Dance Collective is the west coast’s premier house dance crew, building our house dance community from clubs to shows, to practices, to workshops.
Performance - Wednesday, July 9th & Thursday, July 10th
Flyaway Productions performs apparatus-based dances that expose the range and power of female physicality. Founded in 1996 by Jo Kreiter, the company's performances integrate risk, spectacle and social potency. The company performs in both traditional and site-specific venues, including rooftops, fire escapes, industrial cranes, on steel poles, spinning fences, on an active construction site and recently on a live billboard. Flyaway has performed at the 2008 For the Record Festival presented by ODC Theater, at RPI in upstate New York, the Boston Dance Umbrella's International Aerial Festival, San Francisco's Skydancers' Festival, the Aerial Dance Festival in Colorado, Sushi Performance Space in San Diego, and locally at Brava Theater Center, Theater Artaud and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Flyaway offers apparatus-based dance training for both youth and adults. Additionally, the company hosts the 10 Women Campaign, a celebration of 10 women biennially whose work in business, media, activism and politics mirrors our own goals. Tonight's performance is danced by Alayna Stroud, Kate Law, Janine Fondelier and Jo Kreiter.
"I am manifesting physical space that supports the experience of relearning language. Whether it be a way of seeing or associating, I want to provide you with the opportunity of returning to a point in life where you do not remember the effects of our culture in the shaping of how we “normally see.” For me, this point is primordial and timeless – a place of
metaphysical observance and clarity of our own cosmological birth."
Scott Gasparian is an Artist, Teacher, and Inventor. He is the creator of such devices as The ChakraTron, the HypKnowTrons, the Phoenix Chainsaw Chopper, and other works made from mostly RePurposed materials. His experience teaching includes high school level science, electronics, computers, machine shop, physics, video production, and K-5 machine sewing. Previous employment includes positions at the Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, ETH Zurich, and Lick-Wilmerding H.S. He is also a USHGA certified Tandem Paragliding Instructor and has served on the USHGA Board of Directors. He is currently developing the Make: Mobile for educational outreach and available for art and embedded system design commissions.
"I've many things built as a metal artist and professional welder and fabricator over the years. The link below will take you to see mainly the larger sculptural artwork I've done, but I've most certainly built an endless variety of more conventional functional and structural items such as ornamental security fences and window grates, stainless steel hand rails, gates, medieval style doors, artistic tables, a lumber rack for my work truck, signs for restaurants and design firms, and even detail work on a massive 1920 steam tractor." - Ryon Gesink
Justin Gray has over nine years of experience in metal fabrication and has run a successful fabrication business for the last four years. He has worked with many mediums and fabrication in commissioned sculpture, furniture and home installations all of which contribute to his more recent explorations in the world of fire sculpture. His sculptures attempt to merge the realm of functionality with his unique artistic sensibilities to create bold pieces, which range from being the centerpiece of their environments to more subtle accents of industrial beauty.
Performance - Wednesday, July 9th
Behold GOOFERMAN, kings of klown-fi: hybridized, breakbeat- and drum & bass-infected hippity-hopped groove-embossed rockin' funkstuff, delivered via superstyled klowns and circus freaks. Think Oingo Boingo, Crystal Method, Janes Addiction, Prince, Soul Coughing, and Prince stuffed into a mini Big Top. Now quit thinking and wiggle. Jolligood.
From his shop in Oakland which is complete with on-site foundry, Grant casts and fabricates bronze, often surrealist-inspired sculpture. He also continues to evolve his line of hand-crafted functional art. Commissioned by designers and collectors, Grant's metalwork is the highlight of a growing number of unique homes and businesses.
Performance - Friday, July 11th
Shawn Hallman (aka Iron Monkey) is one of the world's top B-boys and urban dancers, with a style that incorporates tops, footwork, and blazing power. Iron Monkey has won or placed highly in international battles inculding B-Boy Master Pro-Am and Red Bull Lords of the Floor. This past summer, he was chosen as a Beat Rider.
"My inspiration for this project came while on the roof of a house I built outside of Tucson, Arizona, bordering the Saguaro National Monument. As I was atop this roof awaiting the annual monsoon rains, they arrived, in the form of an enormous thunderbolt that struck down upon a nearby Saguaro cactus. The cactus erupted into flames and the result was an enormous firestorm." - Rigger
Kinetic Steam Works is a Bay Area industrial arts collective. Our mission is simple: steam power, kinetic & industrial art, and education creatively connected!
We came together in 2005 to explore the artifacts of clockwork modernity. To this end, we restore and repurpose steam engines and steam machinery. We also work with other artists and arts groups to help them incorporate steam and steam power into their artwork.
The Lil' Ju Ju Mobile Pinball Museum put smiles on many faces at last year's Fire Arts Festival. "All the machines are free and this is the only piece at the FAF where you don't get burned!" one passerby was heard to exclaim. Many people are totally blown away when they step into our modified 1947 Spartan Manor travel trailer and experience the magic that is the heartbeat of Lucky Ju Ju.
Loco Bloco is a youth development organization whose mission is to promote Bay Area youth's healthy transition into adulthood by engaging them in the creation and performance of music, dance and theater traditions reflecting the cultural diversity of the Americas. Loco Bloco encourages its youth to use multicultural art forms as a tool for their own empowerment and as a catalyst to help them overcome discrimination and bring about change in their communities.
Loco Bloco's performances are an explosion of rhythm, movement and color. Filling the air and space with funky booming beats, high-energy dancers in multi-colored costumes and towering stilters, Los Locos fill the streets and flood onto stages at festivals throughout the Bay Area, lifting everyone's spirits.
Performance - Friday, July 11th
Robin Coomer and Sam Bass. One woman, one man, one voice, one cello, multiple layered 'loops' hand tooled and shaped into lovely, cascading, provocative orchestral compositions with an immediate soul-rocking palpability.
Performance - Saturday, July 12th
"Since becoming George Clinton's guitar player, Eric McFadden has turned into one of San Francisco's phantom treasures, a rarely glimpsed dark angel of blurred guitar strings, swinging dreadlocks, and flashing teeth; but rest assured, McFadden's talents continue to mature even as his countenance remains frozen in time". — Silke Tudor, San Francisco Weekly
Performance - Thursday, July 10th
Nocturnal Sunshine is a visionary dance troupe that has been performing for awe-struck audiences since 2000. We draw upon the diverse backgrounds of our members to blend spectacular fire art, dance, stilting and glow tools. Our shows include theatrics, original costumes and unique fire tools to create an innovative and spectacular performance style.
Performance - Friday, July 11th
The Nekyia is a cosmopolitan cabaret experience featuring the finest in dance, cirque, fire, and DJ beats. Their sexy, elegant performances immerse audiences in the sights and sounds of the global dancefloor, from belly dance burlesque to fire samba to acro jazz. Fierce, untamed showgrrrls who own the stage, The Nekyia's bevy of beauties are drawn from the Bay Area's best. Directed by Kristina Cañizares, with music from DJ Drumspyder.
Jeremiah Brown is awed by mankinds technological developments and sees music, art and joy in electrical and mechanical apparatus. For the past 11 years he has worked for a variety of utility organizations building and testing high voltage generation and distribution equipment. He now hopes to convey the beauty that he feels when surrounded by this equipment through sculpture, performance art, high voltage discharge displays and fire.
Scott "Sparky" Bartlett Jewell is bored with special effects movies.
He wants his art to have "motivation" and story too. Over the past
decade, as an electro-mechanical artist and photographer, Sparky has
brought his wide range of skills to bear on a number of projects -
both solo and collaborative. He has worked with The Flaming Lotus
Girls, SimNuke, Barry Schwartz, and Kiki Pettit Jewell. He has
traditionally worked with technical materials - sculpting metal,
plastic, and flame - often times using found materials in novel ways.
Now he is incorporating electrical plasma as a form, an illuminant, a
timbre, even an actor in a narrative. Some of Sparky's work is
sublime - photographs of a forgotten nymph statue, or the low
resonances of the pyrotubes in Thought; some of his work is larger
than life - Electra of the Flaming Lotus Girls Seven Sisters. In all
cases, his goal is to strike an emotional chord in his audience.
Sparky pays his bills by working as a hardware engineer at a software
company.
John Behrens was the technical director of Dr. Megavolt since 2001 and produced commercial performances for : Oracle and Allergan as well as television performances for England's Channel 4, France's Canal Plus and Germany's ZDF. With Dr. Austin Richards, John also produced a performance for the TV show Ripley's Believe it or Not on the TNT network. He has also produced the performances of Dr. Megavolt for the Fire Arts Festival for the Crucible in Oakland since 2004. During his time with Dr. Megavolt he has designed tricks, gags, and performances as well as creating Mistress Megavolt who was performed by Jessica Hobbs.
John has since formed the High Voltage performance group Omega Recoil as a departure from Dr. Megavolt. The new group is creating completely new performances incorporating extremely high voltage, science, art and social commentary.
Performance - Friday, July 11th
Phoenix Rising is a professional performing arts troupe dedicated to exploring the cutting edge of sacred theater, specializing in the fusion of choreographed partner fire dancing, fan dancing, feather dancing, traditional dance, stilt walking, and spontaneous, interpretive movement.
Performance - Thursday, July 10th
The Prescott Circus Theatre is an exciting and innovative after school program for Oakland youth. Students receive free training and performing opportunities doing juggling, acrobatics, improvisation, balancing, unicycling, stilting, hip hop dance, hambone body percussion, and clowning.
Performance - Wednesday, July 9th PYRONAUTS are the international all-star, super-hero troupe that performs in Burning Man's Fire Conclave around the Man just prior to ignitiohonoredn. Pyronauts were founded by Vatra in 2005 and with the prime position on the front and center, 6:00 side of the Man in '05, '06, and '07.
There are 77 Pyronauts originating from 19 U.S. states and 23 countries worldwide and every Pyronaut is at the top of their art form. Some Pyronauts perform with Cirque du Soleil and others have won the HomeOfPoi.com "Circles of Light" international video competition. Pyronauts also feature one of the world's top Sword Swallowers and top Hula Hoopers who hold 2 world records each!
Pierre Riche is an artist based in San Francisco, CA. He has been sculpting with welded metals since 1992. His work ranges from large estate sculpture to eccentric indoor furniture. He has also created art installations for restaurants and businesses.
Riche attended the Art Institute of Chicago and the Arts Students League in NYC. Some of this paintings and sculptures are in collections with famous artists such as Picaso, Kline, Johns, Warhol, Motherwell, and others.
Some of Riche's work has gotten larger over the years and he is now creating multi-disciplined artwork incorporating light, sound, water, dance, video and fire.
Performance - Friday, July 11th
Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra is a performance and marching percussion band, whose instruments are composed exclusively of recycled and reclaimed materials, focused on anarchist and anti-authoritarian struggles and mutual support for groups making radical social change.
We make percussion on tuned cans, hubcaps and barrels, drums, pieces of sheet metal, and homemade oddities. We are a bone-shaking recycled orchestra – a sonic force of fiery resistance! We appear invited and uninvited at protests and celebrations, furors and fracases, anywhere there's a need to make a ruckus.
El Diablo, by Jack Schroll, is a flame effects device that uses a jet engine from a military aircraft to produce colored flames that illuminate the night sky.
Nate Smith has used fire as an art medium for over a decade in
performances and in his photography. He is the creator of the captivating
Fire Vortex and the massive 2BLEVE and Crude Awakening Fireballs at the
Burning Man Festival in 2006 and 2007.
This 30 foot metal tree with a wood and metal house perched within its branches will ONLY be accessible through our Fire Arts Patron Pavilion. Upgrade your ticket by making a $50 donation and you will be able to climb around and enjoy this spectacular structure with a unique view of the festival.
Performance - Thursday, July 10th
Solar Flare is Burning Man Conclave performance group that also performs off the playa at events and large festivals like the Whole Earth Festival in Davis, California. While the larger Conclave group resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Davis/Sacramento Area and even Australia, a select group of nine performers from the Bay Area have been refining their best material for the Fire Arts Festival and other local events. This performance will be crowned by the original "Fire Mandala" and specially choreographed to The Genie's music. The Genie is an avant-garde guitarist, performer, and musical pioneer best known to audiences for his "Scratch Guitar" shows, a unique performance involving live looping, slide guitar, and beatboxing.
Therm is a collection of artists, technicians, engineers, inventors, metal-workers, and performers dedicated to exploring fire as an artistic medium. Therm creates sculptural forms as instruments that manipulate and shape the flame. Performances are a dynamic and exciting display of color, light, heat, sound and shape. Fire dances, spins, booms, spits, whispers, and charms the audience. Therm's environments provide accent for other performance groups or create a unique atmosphere for parties and events.
Our work has been displayed in various venues along the west coast. Therm has performed in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Diego. Shows have ranged from explosive displays in the desert to quiet performances in art galleries.
Performance - All Four Nights!
Soaring high above the Crucible's Fire Arts Festival for four nights, the dynamic "Fire Volant" will perform an incendiary flying trapeze act that is sure to ignite the crowd.
Fire Volant embodies the fusion of fire and air, creating a contemporary tango in the sky that blends powerful athleticism with ethereal grace. Choreography and music elevate the production to a stratospheric level of artistry that also includes outrageous tricks.
Fire Volant Artist Bios:
Janene Davis
As the creative force behind Fire Volant, Janene Davis is in her element when she's sailing through the air. A former nationally prominent equestrian, Janene has taught and performed flying trapeze in dozens of countries for over 15 years. Janene's lofty accomplishments include the founding of an aerial arts performance company—Les Aerielles—that provides entertainment for a wide range of Bay Area clubs and events. Known also for her dramatic solo and double static trapeze acts, Janene is a gifted, versatile and visionary aerialist.
Chris Johnston
Before becoming a flyer, Chris Johnston spent eight years head over heels as a member of the Canadian National Tumbling team that competed all over North America, Australia, France and Poland. Crowned the Canadian National Power Tumbling Champion in 1997, Chris is now throwing somersaults and twists a bit higher off the ground—30 feet higher, to be exact. Chris trained in circus arts with Club Med for two years before joining the staff at Trapeze Arts.
Jake Kimball
Jake Kimball has been an instructor, flyer and catcher at Trapeze Arts for over four years. Although Jake frequently catches and flies in trapeze shows, this is his first time flying with fire. Mechanical engineer by day, Jake is "thrilled to be soaring towards the sky alongside the flames." When he's not engineering things, catching flyers or flying himself, Jake spends his free time riding and working on motorcycles, which he plans to begin racing later this year.
Hans Winold
In trapeze—as in life—timing is everything. And no one understands the intricacy of timing better than flying trapeze catcher Hans Winold. First introduced to trapeze as a teenager, Hans has spent nearly half of his life catching flyers—not all of whom have flown with the greatest of ease since Hans enjoys working with beginners as much as he does professionals. Starting with a trapeze troupe in Indiana, Hans has traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe teaching trapeze. Hans's great sense of timing comes in handy during his other job—bass player with several Bay Area bands and performance companies.
Performance - Saturday, July 12th
Vulcan Crew is a six person fire troupe based in the San Francisco Bay Area. We combine dedication, technical skills and flow to create various solo, couple and group routines. We have performed at multiple venues, parties, and events that include the Supper Club, Latitude of Rohnert Park, 1015 Folsom, Whole Earth Festival, the Burning Man Fire Conclave, Mighty, Jellys, and San Francisco Decompression.
