PEX Summer Festival, The Summer Dragon, and the Russian Roulette Variety Show!

Took a little break from painting this past month to focus on some other projects, including helping my husband create a 21+ foot long performance "Chinese" inspired dragon, which I am in the middle of working on as I type. (I'm the textile manager, design consultant, and slave labor.)

His psychedelic beast will debut tomorrow evening at the opening ceremony at PEX Summer Festival 2011.

I'll also be performing with The Russian Roulette Variety Show with The Penny Treats and Lux Arati, my bellydance and fire troupe. Here are some photos from our dress rehearsal, courtesy of the fabulous Will Connelly.

A shot of Lux Arati from the first dress rehearsal of Russian Roulette Variety Show.
Photo by Will Connelly.

Anyway, we are closing in on 24 hours away from our debut performance at PEX Summer Fest, and I've spent the past two weeks crafting costumes, rehearsing & practicing my butt off, helping Alex develop his dragon and a whole slew of other related crap. Lux Arati is also hosting 2 bellydance related workshops, one on how to craft your own bellydance bra, and the other an Intro to Bellydance class. I proposed the workshop idea - specifically the bellydance bra crafting one, because I have no qualifications to teach a dance class, but I sure can make costumes.

This is my third year (and the third year of) PEX Summer Fest, and I'm always blown away by the art, music, installations and performances - it's a shit ton of creative minds coming together to make a really amazing event. (Changed some of my friends lives - for real!)

I'll leave you with a stellar video of PEX Summer Festival from 2010 that my dear friend Bill Kennedy put together from camera stills. I'm in it, near the end, you'll see me crawling all over the HoneyTrap sculpture. Enjoy!