Dragon Dance Video from the Face & Body Art International Convention (FABAIC) 2008

Nearly a year ago I travelled over to Florida to be an instructor at FABAIC and part of the amazing experience I had over there involved taking part in Bodies Alive! This was a performance involving lots of body painting, dance, culture and much more.

I wrote about this soon after I got home: http://helen-at-cats-whiskers.blogspot.com/2008/06/body-painting-for-bodies-alive-at.html

The performance was filmed but soon after the film became lost and we thought we would never see it - however Christopher Agostino, whose idea the show was, has tracked it down and it is now available to see!!!

I was involved in the Dragon Dance team and we had to go onstage during the dance and transform our "peacock" into a dragon. (I'm the one painting the orange model on the left!) Here's the link to the video of the Dragon Dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hua8L_tQoto

Some other clips from the show can be found here:

UV Action Painting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_WFUeJWMNk
Jinny's Singing Faces:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm2UTHVmrCc
Metamorphosis Models:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxalpMqqMog

The singing faces were utterly fantastic and ridiculously funny. :)

I hope you enjoy.
Helen

http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

Body Painting for Bodies Alive! at FABAIC

Whilst I was at FABAIC in Orlando, Florida, I had the opportunity to take part in Bodies Alive! This was a collaboration between the 30 or so instructors at FABAIC with models, dancers and performers to perform a show originally conceived and brought to life by Christopher Agostino.

Christopher Agostino is the author of an excellent book called Transformations and investigates all forms of body art specifically the tribal and cultural aspect of it. He specialises in performance art and combines his face and body art with story telling. (http://www.agostinoarts.com/)

The Bodies Alive! show was performed for the Gala Diner of the FABAI convention on the Sunday night after only two days rehearsals! What I got to see of it though was amazing and I can't wait for it to come out on DVD!!

The images here show me painting my model, who was part of the Peacock / Dragon dance group. The idea was that they had a peacock painted on their back and just a stripe or yellow and green on their fronts. They went out on stage and did half of their routine and then we joined them on stage. They stood with their backs to the audience displaying the peacock design whilst we painted scales, claws and curls. Then when they all turned around as a team they had transformed into a Chinese Dragon. Here they all are in the painting room with 'Fire' who was performing in a different section of the show.

One of the other teams were painting the 'Nuba dancers' who were dancers from the Nao Dance Company. They were excellent and for many it was their first time being body painted! All of their designs were geometrical in black and white. They did a fantastic dance at the beginning of the show which had a distinctly tribal beat which then transformed into a rock song! Once that dance was over they ran backstage and we were ready with UV paints to decorate their white areas so that they could go back on later in the show under only black light and do another routine. Their black areas completely disappeared and the effect was fantastic. Like I say, roll on the release of the DVD!!


Finally, at the end of the show a model came on to represent "Art Gone Wild" which is the title of next years Face and Body Art International Convention. All of the artists involved in the production had added a design to her as the afternoon of painting had progressed and then Pat and Susie had brought it all together with some curls and swirls!

I managed to get a Cats Whiskers cat design onto her leg, which amused me!! It just happened that as I was painting a model orange it was the first design that came into my head. LOL!




All in all, it was an amazing experience to be part of. I really had fun and got to work with some amazingly talented and lovely people.

Helen
http://www.catswhiskers.biz/