Forty feet of female energy
The Burning Man Festival is that phantasmagoria held annually in the Black Rock Desert 100 miles north of Reno, Nevada. The place is a scape of flats and playa, once the bottom of an ocean, then home of the Paiute nation, and now the setting for an experiment in artistic expression, fantastic attire, and self-reliance in a harsh desert environment. Something like 65,000 people arrive on the last Monday of every August, create an entire city, and then, eight days later, leave “without a trace.” That’s mandatory. Thirty years ago, Burning Man was a proving ground for the countercultural; now it’s more mainstream. Tickets cost around $400 and there’s an impromptu, unlit airstrip for private planes.
Beyond personal transformation, the festival is a source of artistic and technical innovation. Several years ago one of the creations was a 130-foot-long metal mollusk called The Mechabolic, designed to creep along eating trash, which was then turned into gas and electricity. The more traditional outpourings of Burning Man are often buildings and sculptures. One sculpture is particularly memorable—the spectacular 40-foot-tall woman by Marco Cochrane called Bliss Dance, a depiction of a nude woman dancing. The sculpture was created at Burning Man in 2010 and a year later found a home on Treasure Island, where it still resides. The piece weighs 7,000 pounds and is composed of triangulated geodesic struts with a skin of stainless steal mesh. At night, the dancer comes alive with 1000 LED lights in different colors. An iPhone app allows anyone to change and control the effects.
Info
Address Avenue of the Palms, San Francisco, CA, 94130 | Public Transport Bus: 108 (Treasure Island Rd Guard Station stop) | Tip Treasure Island Bar and Grill at 60 Clipper Cove is just a short walk away.
You’ll find Bliss Dance just off Treasure Island’s Avenue of the Palms, on the Great Lawn. She is at once graceful and erotic, and yet very private—altogether a stunning manifestation of feminine energy. “The piece is about the ultimate expression of humanity,” Cochrane has been quoted as saying. “A woman who is genuinely happy in her own space, when everything is okay, they’ll dance.”
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