What better way to celebrate the solstice and a 111 degree Tucson day than to go watch people play with fire? The Arizona State Museum had a multicultural summer solstice celebration event down at the UofA today. The grand finale was an outstanding performance by the Flam Chen troupe, who did a fire performance and stilt acrobatics danced to thundering Celtic pipes and drums. Very impressive. Very dark too -- all my shots are taken with the only available light, the flames on the torches.
If you look closely you can see the blue and green glow sticks hanging from the bagpipes of members of the Seven Pipers Scottish Society. The bagpipe and drum music really meshed nicely with the fire performance of Flam Chen. Quite an impressive finale to an otherwise long day! Happy Solstice!
Earlier in the afternoon, Danza Mexica Cuauhtemoc performed high energy Aztec song and dance. Here are a few members getting ready to perform.
great pictures of Flam Chen last night! i could not get anything half this good on my camera. thanks for adding so quickly.
ReplyDeleteThank-you for your photos! Flamenco Sonora performed that night and we enjoyed all of the other artists who participated in this celebration! Ole Tucson!
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anonymous -- thanks for the comment! That was a great show, very hard to capture anything that does justice to it on camera do to the all the motion going on and need for slow exposures without flash. In both my posted photos, the performers had paused long enough that I could take a looong hand held exposure with my G9 P&S: .6 sec exposure at a 200 iso setting to capture the motion of the flames and light up the dark areas just a bit.
ReplyDeletedani 'la cani' -- thanks! I really enjoyed all the performers as well, great event! I'm afraid I missed your performance while grabbing a bite to eat... Next time!
Wow! Wonderful photos of a fine event. I'm glad you got the chance to take them and share them with us. Mama and I got to see some fire dancers in September 2006, here in Portland, at a street art fair. So fascinating! I never would have thought of putting Celtic music with them, but I can certainly understand how well they'd go together.
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