I pretty much know now that I would hate Burning Man. Aside from the grit and lack of clean bathrooms and heat stroke, I am just not that free. And I'm super judgmental, which is exactly what BM (and this event last night) is not. And here's my description.
There was bad art galore, some of it being live-painted. And not the good kind of live painting but the kind where you bring your already painted painting to the show and then make small, strategic dabs of paint on it in order to enhance its value and not eff it up so someone will still want to buy it. That stuff is being done in the main hall where the music is being performed. Some of this painting is "good" and some of it looks like the result of a "Pinot and Paint" party where you and your friends try to recreate a Roger Dean painting.
Act 1
Not bad. Crazy mashup of pulsing music and geometric black and white graphic visuals projected on the entire stage. Sword dancer performing.
Australian artist in leather hat mines trippy (i.e. non-Western) music to a pounding beat. The visual artist paired with him has made computer artwork of Hindu deities that appear to break into components and turn inward, "swallowing" themselves. I found this pretty offensive. Some dancers.
Man in fedora with pheasant feather accent creates pounding beats. Somehow, he finds an extra-low setting for the bass and it feels like my internal organs are being tossed about my abdominal cavity. I think this is my favorite of the three. Some of the dancers, wear leather pants with white graffiti and studs, and have small leather tops that show off their tattoos. The pants have no bottoms, and the bottoms in the holes have no muscle tone. So when they occasionally shake their butts, the cheeks just flap.
I knew I was officially done when a guy brought a gigantic vase on stage and put it on a stand. Then he made an arrangement of fern fronds in the vase, to the beat of the music. I paid real money to watch a guy dramatically recreate a fern using parts that had been a fern, on stage. That was both my favorite and least favorite thing.
Then aerial acrobats appeared, and dangled from the ceiling, and I was really hoping I could get my host to agree it was time to leave... and we did.
The venue holds 500 and it was at capacity as we left, around 1:30+ am. We didn't get to see the act we'd gone to see. I have to say that the event was well organized, felt safe, people were pretty well-behaved, it had clean bathrooms and other than some seriously sour aromas (cumin armpit and people smoking cigarettes that smelled like a burning combination of beedis, fish sauce and that smell when you floss your teeth), it was pleasant.
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