Prepared for the Playa?

Need a costume? See our video below for samples and then contact GlitterGirl to get your one of a kind original as unique as you are. The gates open in less than a month and the man burns in 34 days at the writing of this post. We miss our the incredibly awesome event that...

FireDrums: The Evolution of a Festival, Part II

Author's Note: This article offers subjective memoirs from 2008 onward. Read GlitterGirl's recap of the early years of FireDrums here. With Sky's vision and Vatra's production experience, the event continued to show steady growth through a variety of avenues. With the community kitchen in place in 2007 on a limited basis, it expanded more in...

FireDrums: The Evolution of a Festival, Part I

It's Saturday night at what has been one of my favorite festivals, FireDrums. It is (consistently from my perspective) the peak of the experience where the community assembles en masse after days of connection, learning, sharing, soaking in knowledge and forging friendships... when people come together and share that energy in the circle with the fire. Barriers are...

FireDrums: What are Instructors Upset About?

After publishing the article, "FireDrums: Disclose Your Financials?", people have asked, "Why do people care what the instructors are being paid?" If I could draw an analogy, I'd say I suppose I don't need to care that there is <racism, sexism, discrimination, slave labor, homophobia, <insert some other problem here>> in the world. Of course,...

FireDrums: “Disclose your financials?”

There's been a request by the fire dancing community that attends Fire Drums, the first fire festival in the US (if not the world), for the company owners at the Fire Arts Institute (formerly known as Axis Mundi Collective) to release their financials in response to some community outcries about instructors not getting paid. Fire...