night at the rock
photo by jaden rose, 2009.
last night’s gig at mission rock was fun and mellow. a small contingent of solar flare broke out our led tools and came to spin in support of a benefit for leukemia. we had a solid warm up jam at one of the nearly-empty dancefloors (always feel a little bad for djs playing to mostly empty space), then made our way to the crowded outdoor stage that juts out over the water to do our thing.
performing in such a tight space with a crowd that doesn’t realize you are supposed to be performing there is a little tricky. we had one guy get a little belligerent when we started opening up the space. i can understand the frustration of suddenly not having the dance space you want, i need room to do my thing, too, but he was being a jerk about it. fortunately, it resolved itself. i’ve had to deal with a few of these confrontations before, particularly at clubs where space is a premium. the worst is when i manage to completely coldcock somebody in the face or drink with an errant hoop. hard not to feel bad about it, even if it kind of baffles me how you can walk directly into my spinning, lit hoop and act surprised. what part of that didn’t you see coming?
anyway, the space on the deck mid-crowd turned out to be too small for what we all had in mind. karen and i tried to do the duet we worked on for conclave, but kept tagging chairs and being interrupted by drunks thinking this was the best time for a conversation. it disintegrated into a short jam, then we called it.
later, we moved upstairs as a group to hang out and spin sporadically in the larger space. i think this was my favorite part of the evening: led hooping with considerably more room to work with, in lower light conditions to louder music. plus, love to rock the ilaniowear soft machine pants. never get to wear any faux fur when i firespin, for obvious reasons. i must have spun off and on for a good hour (HooppaiN!) before downshifting to dancing. the last minute led tape job was a godsend- i sacrificed some glowiness to bring some serious control to my led, to counter the history of slippage in similar circumstances.
(check out the eventvibe photos by dirk wyse here. there are a number of solar flarista shots if you look around this gallery)
ultimately, what made the night really great was chilling and playing with my bay area ohana. look forward to doing it again at the love parade this weekend.
