Fox&Badge FLASHBACK #4: 2018
2018 was our 3rd year, running 2 events, both in new, larger venues. It felt expansive, with a new edge of grandeur, ritual and depth.
🌹UNDERGROUND MASQUERADE🌹
Underground Masquerade was our 1st event at the beautiful Steel Yard, which would become our home for many years. I was so excited by its elegance, lighting and sound, and its centrality.
I even squandered some time trying to find a way for guests to arrive by Venetian boat, dreaming of an immersive torchlit procession to our event.
I was investing more and more time in the creative outlet of events. We ran multiple film shoots with Antony (intended for projection) at our home of friends lifting off masks, and writhing sensually on our bed. Antonio even staged a seductive masked chase seduction down our local canal.
The costume theme was Venetian, and everyone looked grand and stunning - with some beautiful, deeply creative outlier interpretations.
At one point we asked everyone on the large dancefloor to freeze like statues as I wove through them with a mobile steadycam.
We hadn’t yet mastered the lighting rigs, or how to fully decorate such vast cavernous spaces, yet there was an emerging style, and grace.
Our performance schedule was beginning to expand, with immersive action becoming much more extensive. A violinist and an opera singer accompanied the DJs.
Natalie Pereira took over the entire 3rd arch and created an incredible circus boudoir, suffused with its own continuous interactive performance. We had numerous fire performances, and lots of kinky acrobatics: cyr wheel, pole, multiple aerial and body hoops, and hand balance.
We deepened our exploration of creating new acts, working with Emma Symes on various explosive performances by the Pomba Girls, and Naomi Wood to craft a Dance of the Seven Masks.
Sinead danced a beautiful, different dance of death at both events that year.
5 days after the event, my dear Mum died, 2 years after my Dad, and whilst grief consumed me, new growth also began.
🌒SPIRITS OF THE NIGHT🌔
Spirits of the Night was our 1st real foray into the darkness, for Halloween at Electrowerkz. If June’s event burst with colour & ornament, November’s was monochromatic & austere, with a distressed aesthetic. I dreamed of hanging polythene sheets backlit with yearning bodies, gaping sucking mouths inhaling the fabric.
We ran a 2nd dancefloor, and began inviting DJs we loved outside our friendship circle.
The lighting rigs we brought in were transformative and magical, and a real step up.
We continued to invest vast amounts of time making our own decor, and ran 3 makers night at ours with tons of brilliant generous friends devoting their evenings to crafting packing-tape branches, or casting their bodies in cling film, or carving pumpkins.
We began to explore the spaces outside the venue, hosting performances on the cobbles of the street aside. The Pomba Girls flew into the building as a coven of wailing ghostly witches, before drawing our guests into their rituals. Venus Raven tied 3 maidens to the ceiling for sacrifice.
We ran our 1st dedicated playroom, centred around a slab for ritualistic offering of bodies to desire.
It’s painful to have to skim over all the wonderful moments of music and immersion.
We hosted epic afterparties in our flat, though we often didn’t get there til late. Our getouts were getting longer and longer, and hauling flight cases of lights down all the stairs at Electrowerkz til midday, head to toe in latex, was not one of my favourite memories, though I’m filled with gratitude to remember all the ways our friends dove in and helped out.
