Luminara: Fire Dancing, Fire Belly Dancing, Blue Angels and my Bling Wheelchair

Hey, we just got back from the Luminara Festival which takes place once a year. I am beat so I have these few photos, and will give you the full story tomorrow, okay?

First, while I napped, Linda and Cheryl worked together to Bling my wheelchair into an Electric Parade, taking it apart to put glow rope everywhere.
So then I was up and we were off, Cheryl with glow-sticks on her cane and me with my bling chair (very, very popular with the kids who wanted their parents to get them one).

Luminara is a family friendly, almost accessible event once a year where Victoria does not act like it has a stick up its ass. It is the collective “alternative” for goths, geeks (I was told that “I had the wheelchair from the future!” by one nerd), drug users, Ren girls (in big Ren dresses), pagans, as well as anyone who wants to wear a costume. It is in Beacon Hill Park were across the many ponds are scattered displays, like this Torii on the duck pond.
There are also fixed light displays, like these drummers. The festival starts to finish at 11:00 ish but we didn’t get back until midnight (then I had a seizure, yada, yada).

There are also groups which combine costumes or moving events, like the BLUE ANGELS, who are these girls dressed in blue, (lots of Blue) which are lead by drummers which turn it into a giant rave. Because crowds, many of them high, follow them. One guy stopped in front of my chair and just kept saying, “The COLOURS! I mean, you have THE COLOURS!” until his friend pulled him away to follow the drummers.

We continued on because earlier in the day at the Moss street market, thanks to the influence of Neil, we talked to some people selling Poi, including Nick Woosley of Playpoi. Well, not a lot of people get into giving advice on how to do fire poi to a girl in a wheelchair in less than five minutes (use kevlar and wear cotton!). He told us he was performing at 10:40 at the Cricket Ground and there we went, stopping to take a picture of the Native Haida Village, with long boat and long house display.
Then stopping to take a picture of a Japanese drum with the reflection in the water (lots more pictures tomorrow!)
Well, Nick and the Poi fire Dancers were pretty darn impressive, like this guy who lit up this wooden staff, started twirling…
Then he throws it into the air….
And catches it going into a double wraparound of his back, his head down, doing spins and wrap arounds on his back with little balls of fire flying off from the speed. It was pretty impressive.

However, that part was followd by the...um, to be blunt, EROTIC fire dancing. First this is a married couple came out, with dance music, fired wooden staves and then started to dance.
And then WHILE dancing they got..um…close…and starting using each OTHER’s body for wrap-arounds (spinning their staff around their partners back and then back into their opposite hand). It was HOT, like erotic hot. And I said, “We could do this at home!”

And Cheryl said, “I don’t think your building manager Fran would be too happy.” Sorry, but fire IS erotic, and a married couple doing an erotic dance WITH fire, I was…um…aroused. And then SHE came.

Remember how I dated “danger girl.”

Well out come this girl with all the raw sexuality of danger girl, barefoot, a couple scraps of clothes on her with a steel hoop at 7 to 8 fire balls on it, and then she starts doing a hula thing with it going around her hips as she belly dances around the field.

“I got to get her number.” I say in a husky voice, eyes transfixed.

Cheryl sort of smacks me upside up the head. “You’re married!”

I look at the girl rotating her hips on the field, a ring of fire rotating in time to music and make a little moaning mewling noise.
So yeah, it was a pretty good night. Tell you the whole story and hopefully a Fire Poi and Fire dancing video tommorow? Have a good one!