Burnal Equinox Festival in Second Life - March 28-30, 2014

"At a time far into our future, the earth has been devastated by a multitude of plagues. Harsh climate change, pollution, famine and war.
One of the last inhabitable areas left on the earth is the playa. Toxic fumes cover the ground and rise to 100 meters. The only safe living
environment is above the toxic levels because the playa winds help purify the air at this altitude. Passing through this toxic zone is possible but long term exposure can be fatal.
One redeeming factor of the toxin is that when it is captured, placed into a balloon and mixed with the correct proportion of playa dust, it takes
on the form of a very powerful lighter than air gas. A single 5 meter balloon can lift 1000’s of pounds into the air. The gaseous concoction has been fondly named Fairy Dust.
Modern manufacturing no longer exists. Everyday items are scavenged from the remains of abandoned buildings. Humans have had to learn to survive by creating with their own hands. They build platforms supported by balloons filled with Fairy Dust. These floating platforms are the hosts for a new civilization above the ground. The citizens of this floating city commute by building lighter than air vehicles. They are powered by whatever means can be found and lifted into the air by balloons filled with the Fairy Dust.

Every Spring the residents of this community celebrate a renewal of life. Balloons have been the savior of this city. Residents design and decorate their lifting balloons as part of the Equinox celebration. This tradition has been carried down from their ancestors from when the earth was plentiful. They celebrate this event in hopes that the earth will renew itself. They celebrate the clean air that still exists high in the clouds. They celebrate their existence on earth, as different as it might be from their ancestors, They are ALIVE!"

Guerilla Burlesque is delighted to be performing at the Burnal Equinox Festival on Sunday March 30th, 2014. We will make two appearances:

• At 6pm - Come and see Mr Timeless and The Pale Hypnotic, a massively popular collaboration with sound by Deepsky Timeless and vision by Guerilla Burlesque. It's a post-apocalyptic medicine show featuring all the beauty and drama of your dystopian dreams
• At 10pm - Guerilla Burlesque's very popular revue lights up the Burnal Equinox festival, with a celebration of the triumph and tragedy of the human race

Travel to the Burn2 Burnal Equinox Festival in Second Life
and you can join the facebook group for information about the other installations and events in this festival. 

2013 Retrospective

Merry Christmas everyone, my very best wishes to you, that you will find time for play and for love and especially for creativity (however you enjoy it) in these busy days. Spend time with people you adore, and please adore yourself, for without you, you have nothing. It's hard to do, believe me, no-one knows like I do, but if you think about what being loved should feel like, and do it for yourself, you cannot really lose, right?

2013 opened with the flurry of the Dance Queens awards. I wanted us to win. I wanted me to win. I wanted that recognition, from our peers and for the entire grid. I wanted to say "winner of the 2013 Dance Queens Award for ..." in our promo. I wanted my dancers to see what they have become.

It seems a little hollow, now, and not just because it got white-anted by bitterness. Guerilla Burlesque is a phenomenon, it fills the house at every show. It pleases audiences who see it, and it draws the best talent on the grid to be part of it. It inspires great loyalty in it's fans. There really aren't any awards that match that feeling of watching a dancer take a concept through to completion, or watching a team combine together like fine machinery. I am ever-lastingly proud of Guerilla Burlesque. I know I am not universally admired, and this troupe lost many dancers it would have been nice to keep; nevertheless, those who have stayed all display characteristics I find to be the best of human nature. They are diligent, warm-hearted, sensitive, open, smart, giving and immensely creative. It is an honour, truly, to breathe the air they breathe.

I wonder how many of you, who thought you would struggle to find a place as the team shifted and changed, think back through the year and see just how close we've all become. Guerilla Burlesque is a force of nature, baby, and I thank you if you are someone who's hung on for the full ride.

Losing the luxurious privilege of owning a whole sim was very hard, and I miss the unlimited potential. But Idle Rogue will always survive, in some form, and I am still, always, so grateful to Cait for giving me the playground of my dreams.

My inter-personal skills remain a bit of a worry, but I am working on it, and I know I have made some major progress this year. That said, there are times when the malice I draw baffles me. One person, and one person only, gets the unedited version of chry, and I will admit he finds it very hard going. The rest, including those malcontents who think I have or had something they deserve, are making shit up. It's more annoying than anything. I did a great job in difficult circumstances, and it won't be done as well now that I am not doing it any more. Other than that I am at ease. I try to give my best, in everything I do. But I am not everyone's cuppa tea, as we say in the antipodes.

It's no secret I spent way too much time in Guild Wars 2 this year. I love it, though Burn2 broke it's grip on me a little; it's also true to say that I once felt I was becoming part of the community there, and I no longer feel this way, which made playing the game more optional than it had been. I really only like World vs World, and my partner likes many other aspects of the game. That means, in a practical sense, that I just don't go there as much.

Let's not forget, after four very long and humbling years, I finally got a real job, and there's no doubt in my mind that just that fact has made a huge difference to my attitude to everything around me right now.

As the year draws to a close, I am busy, in both lives, and I don't have the time to dwell on things that are re-shaping right now. I am very very excited about Le Cirque de Nuit, a project that will take the next several weeks to pull together, but which I hope to turn into one of the most successful, cutting edge collaborations of 2014. I am also delighted and honoured by the calibre of the people who have lately expressed interested in projects we are working on. I am stimulated by the possibilities ahead of us all.

Chill the champers, babies, let's ring it in, I'm keen to get going on it :-)

Burned for life

I'd always wanted to have a camp at the virtual Burning Man Festival, certainly after I learned of the Metaharpers and their camp, but all the way along. The festival idea is not a new one for me, most people know Idle Rogue's live music stages are designed to emulate outdoor festival stages. I have a long history of outdoor concerts and bike runs in my real life, to me it's the Australian Way.

In real life there's a good chance I'd avoid the Burning Man Festival. I don't actually care much for the heat, and it sure looks hot out there. Interestingly, the virtual festival coincided with local heatwaves and fires, so I didn't really escape by going virtual; but I enjoy that juxtaposition of the two environments, it makes the immersion more savoury.

Make no mistake, it is expensive to go to Burn 2. The parcel we procured through the generous donations of Idle Rogue supporters cost 12000 linden dollars - $48USD. For that we got a 1024m² parcel with 468 prims for roughly six weeks. The event itself runs for a week, and it runs on the same principles as the rl festival. There are no tips or other income. So that $48 bucks is spent for love.

But oh, Burn! How I loved you!

chry goes feral

The Idle Rogue community has been in a kind of recess, for one reason and another. The downsize meant we had to fore go the housing and the new resident program. The community has been languishing anyway while I licked my wounds by falling in love with another game. It's my belief that successful venues consist of a nucleus around which a wider community are loosely gathered. Those things are still very much part of Idle Rogue, and we wouldn't be who we are without Chewie, Jess, Di and Shippy. But some faces are gone, the flavour has changed, and we are in a form of stasis.

For me, the Burn2 project was a return, of sorts, to Second Life. I have spent more time there over the past month than I have for a long time, indeed, since The Big Ruckus of 2012. And it was good! It was fun!

Shippy's glorious Observation Tower, our home away from home on the playa

I talked to strangers, and watched them fashion beautiful things purely for the enjoyment of passersby. I learned their stories, I listened to them wax about their Burn experiences, their philosophical ideals, the ethics they have developed and how those are shaped by the Burn and by Second Life. I saw passion, I saw real joy, I saw kindness and spiritual generosity. I watched people transformed by their engagement with this virtual environment. I heard people cry at the Temple Burn, I saw them entranced as the man burned.

And then there was my team, Guerilla Burlesque, who grabbed hold of my vision and ran like bandits with it. They made beautiful, thought-provoking performance art and gave it to everyone who was interested to come and watch. They, also, met and engaged strangers, made people welcome and gave them memories. They were generous with their time and thoughtful with their energy. They were endearing, curious and made me full with love and pride.

Dance like everyone is watching

All of it, every bit of it, was the enchanting human at humanity's best. My humble thanks go, in no particular order (well except for first and last, who are first and first), to Thea Dee, GMetal, Meegan Danitz, GarGraVarr Rau, February Jinx, Cool Plasma, Jess Cauld, Gloriana Maertens, Azabella Alamar, Zahra Ethaniel, Huntress Cattaneo, Jordan Reyne, Maeve Branner, BabyPea von Phoenix, Knowledge Tomorrow, Biebi, Aubreya Joszpe, Deb Heron, Chewie Quixote, Tukso Okey, Padula Bing, Pol Arida, Jenna Dirvall, Darkshore, Mulder Watts, Leroy Horton, Mercutio Evanier, Diawa Bellic, Buttermilk Panacek, Eifachfilm Vacirca, Trinity Hunghi, and most especially, forever and always, Shippy.

"Wolf" Act Part 3 - choreography

omg gah! Did you guys realise this act is due this Friday night? Where did our twenty days go?

I'll never be half the instinctive dancer he is

We are up to choreography - the bit I struggle with hardest. Some people, like my partner, have some kind of photographic memory for the dance animations, and can hotkey the shit out of any musical situation. I have tested Diawa Bellic countless times, and she is always able to find a sequence of dances that will fit the music I have played, within seconds of first hearing it.

 But I can do none of these things.

 Choreography, for me, means setting aside countless hours to test dances against the music. Yes, I listen to the song I am using over and over again through this process. Not many songs make it out the other side with as much favour as they went in.

It should come as no great surprise that I have no real life dance expertise. I am that person who doesn't dance until they're so drunk they should be prevented from dancing. I will dance at home though (which is a good thing, since it's many moons since I got that drunk, and really, a life without dance would be no life at all). I trained in ballet, as a young girl, but unsurprisingly lacked the discipline to do it properly and drifted out of it before I hit high school. I am not the woman who scampers joyfully to belly dance or burlesque classes.

But I know what looks right, and I know how to feel a beat and stick to it, and that's how I do my choreo.

The first stop is always A&M Mocap, and regular readers will know why that is. The first time I went to A&M, I was so besotted I was there for four hours. I am still there for hours, but I must admit it's not the joyous experience it was then. The animators at A&M Mocap have a great sense of theatrical dance, and I think it's important to see and recognise the difference. These dances, as beautiful, emotional and sensual as they are, are not for use in clubs - though A&M have plenty of dances which are - and to my mind, it's similarly true that club dances don't look good on stage.

the advent of mesh has added a new set of hazards for choosing a dance

I'm no  fan of Gor, but I think we professional dancers owe the girls who come to SL to play slaves and concubines a great debt; their active engagement with SL has ensured a legacy of sensual and performance-oriented dance. Some of my very earliest dances and poses come from the Gorean lifestyle.

So based on what we know about my dancing style, we know we need rhythm. The song has a good pace to it, it's looking for fast and big steps ... but I think the story calls for some dignity too. It's the story of the respect and love "wolf mother" inspires. So she won't be prancing, and she won't be rolling around on the floor. But you knew I would say that anyway, right?

Each time I do a new act, I purchase 4 new dances. A dance animation is usually around 26 seconds, and a song is roughly four minutes long. So I buy four new dances when it makes sense, and use between 2 and 4 that I already own.

You can't really say this too many times, so here's my PSA for the day: Do NOT buy trans/no copy animations. Yes, they can be as much as 200L cheaper. But you only have to lose your hud one time to realise your investment was pitifully inadequate. We know 4 new dances will cost 400L each. That's 1600L, for those playing at home. A Guerilla Burlesque dancer will earn 700-1000L in a Friday night show. My second PSA for the day - do not go into professional dancing thinking it will make money.

Suddenly it's midnight, and I have bought four dances - Thought You Knew, Spring Jive, The Arrival and Aziza, all from A&M. I'm sleepy, I have to stop now, but I'd wanted to have a look at Henmations and My-Animation too. I like Henmations dances very much. I am less impressed with My-Animation, but I love their AO stuff so much I will use any excuse to go by and see what's new. And sometimes it's a great dance :-D.

I caught a break, in that no-one else is ready for Sunday night rehearsal either. We'll reschedule to Wednesday, which wreaks havoc on my other jobs, but buys me a little more time to pull this act out of my head and onto the stage.

"Wolf" Act Part 2

Continuing my series on how I create and stage an act for Guerilla Burlesque, today's post will deal with the selection of costumes.

Despite yesterday's small hiccup (now deleted post), the act for "Wolf" is slowly building itself. I spent the day browsing marketplace, looking for wolves and trying on ideas.

The Lycan avatars are too muscular, the furries too cute. There are some nice looking mesh wolves, but the price range is 2000-5000L. A dancer could reasonably expect to earn 700-1000L from the Guerilla Burlesque show, so obviously that kind of cost is too much, especially since it's only half the costume. I want a transformation in the act, despite the fact that my long-term fans know I have done that before, notably in the Stripped act (transforming from a deer into a girl) and the Of Wolf And Man act (transforming back and forth from wolf to girl to wolf). From the latter, I still have the wolf avatar from Grendels Children, and it was to Grendels, finally, I returned.

Grendels sim, if you have not been, is a lovely explorable set of sims that house a vast collection of avatars and builds, mostly relating to animals and fantasy creatures. I had heard last year it was to close, or scale down from the four sims it once occupied. If this is so, it is a very great shame. I have such great memories of roaming it's wilds hunting baby dragons and exploring with Yop.

The wolf avatar is not too bad, a little old-fashioned by SL standards, but the price is fantastic, and the aesthetic shortcomings don't really make a difference. The first time people see the avatar, they're just excited to see it.I have never worn it without several people being pleased with it. So it will do the job quite well.

Now here's the thing. I know what I want. However, we know I have done versions of it before. That's not a great feeling ... but I console myself with the notion that it is a great song, and I believe audiences will enjoy even the most basic storytelling because the song is cool.

But you know I am not, in my heart satisfied. I like to make acts that make the audience believe in the medium. I don't need them to be elaborate or tricksy ... some of my favourite acts feature very simple sets. I just want that immersive feeling of being in a theatre, watching a show, and suspending disbelief just enough to go along for the ride. This is a story that can be told without too much stretching ... but the bar is so very high at Guerilla Burlesque now. So the brainstorm part of proceedings is far from over :-)

Oh, and I guess I've styled the girl part of the act. It took some doing, too. I can't really enjoy "off the rack"; even in my day-to-day, one of my favourite things is to combine different elements to create outfits that are so unique I can never remember them to wear them again. It's also, partly, that some creators make really beautiful clothes, but their shoes are way below the standard. Or other variations on that notion.

The outfit I have settled on is sourced as follows:

Hood: Thana by Cellar Door
Hair: Maria Naturals by emo-tions. I cain't quit you, Mirja Mills!
Skin: *League* Skin Amber Fair -Smoky
Eyes: Fashism Sunrise Eyes in Light Lagoon
Cloak, skirt gloves and pants: Fia by Jessie Auer
Boots: Far Polar by Miel

More on these choices once I have settled on the configuration of the act. I am pleased with how it's coming together though!

criticism is good for character

I have simply got to stop reading the Dance Queens blog on the way to posting. Watching the Cutie Awards unravel and be repeatedly dismissed by someone who isn't actually game to use their own name is doing my head in.

Come out, come out, whoever you are. I take criticism very well, really I do.

At the end of the awards show, I was chatting to Jariah Yuhara, of A&M Mocap Animations and I told her this story:

When I danced for Virtual Burlesque, Cellandra Zon came to see our show. I was most honoured, and I really wanted to know if she liked us. I couldn't help it, though ... I mean ... Cellandra Zon! At that point she was the only name I knew, the only "star" I was aware of, and she was at our show! I had to find out what she thought.

Let me tell you, Cellandra, whom I now consider a friend, though we are not close, was not at all impressed. She gave it to me straight too, and it was very very humbling. When she was done, she gave me a landmark for A&M Mocap Animations.

And after that, I was a dancer.

I just finished saying, on the dance queens blog, that I am getting a little weary of hearing that the awards were "a high school prom where, nothing is based on merit, talent and skill". But you guys knew that anyway :-)

I share my little story in hopes that you might understand what drives me, at least a little, to require a high standard from Guerilla Burlesque. I still feel they deliver, in a way almost no other show does.

I keep coming here meaning to start a series that details my creative process, and I promise, that post is coming. Just as soon as I stop watching the car wreck they made of my statuettes.

You are the music, while the music lasts ...

One of the great joys of my Second Life has been the discovery of "virtual" band, Deep Sky Traveler, and it is no secret that I am devoted to their cause. I try never to miss an event, I buy their albums, and where possible, I try to promote their efforts.

My association with them began when I heard FacelessAPe Mefusula perform his live show. For a time I had him booked to play regular shows at Idle Rogue, and I became aware that he was part of a band performing concerst in Second Life.The emphasis is applied becaue it was always my desire to showcase the "band" experience at Idle Rogue. I am still guilty of it lol. I will sign bands to perform without hearing them, so much do I desire to be a "live band" venue.

For many months, Deep Sky Traveler played a regular monthly gig at Idle Rogue. And, of course, as soon as I heard Bowie Bravin was doing solo shows, I booked him, because to me, Bowie Bravin is simply the finest vocalist working today. I am now managing his bookings inworld, and consider him to be a great friend, so that point is probably moot.

I feel the need to address the "track singer/not live" issue, because the bias is so entrenched in the live scene in Second Life. It is not, at least at this point, possible for complex music to be played live into SL. Music of the calibre of Deep Sky Traveler's would be difficult enough to stage live in a real venue, let alone to stream from three different locations into SL. The cost would be prohibitive, and the fact that the economy in Second Life is akin to that of a third-world country means the effort would not be worth the return. When you are ready to pay $100-200 in real money for tickets to a gig, you will see changes.

Until then, our musical choices are limited by time, distance and resources. At the moment you can listen to a range that goes from your grandad banging away on his guitar to a few of his friends, to the multi-layered tracks and loops used by some very fine musicians to augment their more or less live input to music they create.

Music is fundamental to my personal needs. I must have it. I go to hear djs, including those who mix "live" and those who simply have great playlists. I go to hear live musicians, whose quality varies wildly, and whose material may be original or covers. To me, Second Life blesses us with the many musical options we have, and I am delighted that I can hear fresh, well-made original music, no matter how it is presented.

I tell you all this because I plan to write an entry about their two recently-realeased albums, Into The Blackwater and The Sacred Science Of Souls, and wish to establish my obvious bias from the outset. I read enough sycophantic gushing from the fashion feeds to know it's perfectly acceptable to review a product when you are clearly going to be biased in its' favour, but let me clear: I ❤ Deep Sky Traveler. I would like to tell you about their recordings, and I feel privileged that we are able to communicate with the musicians who choose to engage with us using Second Life.

Beautiful Freaks performance - Crow Garden

chry-jun12.png
Originally uploaded by dkart

A few weeks ago, as we were preparing to re-open The Beautiful Freaks Burlesque Circus on the Viva La Glam sim, I logged on to receive a landmark from Ludo Sabetha. Ludo has a wonderful eye for beauty in all it's forms. Off I went to alpha.tribe, and of course, my muse awoke.

The costume is actually called "moth", but to me it spoke bird. The act is called "Crow Garden", and is set to "The Garden", by John Foxx. I used a poem from the much-maligned poet laureate, Ted Hughes (he was Sylvia Plath's husband)

A Childish Prank
Man's and woman's bodies lay without souls,

Dully gaping, foolishly staring, inert
On the flowers of Eden.
God pondered.

The problem was so great, it dragged him asleep.

Crow laughed.
He bit the Worm, God's only son,
Into two writhing halves.

He stuffed into man the tail half
With the wounded end hanging out.

He stuffed the head half headfirst into woman
And it crept in deeper and up
To peer out through her eyes
Calling it's tail-half to join up quickly, quickly
Because O it was painful.

Man awoke being dragged across the grass.
Woman awoke to see him coming.
Neither knew what had happened.

God went on sleeping.

Crow went on laughing.

I think the poem has a witty insight into male-female relationships. Without the sex organs, man and woman are soulless and dull. Crow "enlivens" them by creating an unquenchable yearning. It's delicious and dark, and, I think, works well for The Beautiful Freaks