Berlin in the 1920s. London in the swinging ’60s. Los Angeles in 2008?
Believe it: seductive and wild nights are right here in L.A., if you know where to look.
Bi-monthly “happenings” at downtown bar, The Edison, have been drawing ever-increasing crowds to see performance art troupe Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque dance, sing, and parade about in all their costume finery since the crew began its residency in April.
Those in the know are even becoming regulars every other Wednesday; dressing up to the nines (be sure to check the photo gallery) to become part of the show.
As evidenced by their large-scale performances at this year’s Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, Lucent Dossier can be a fairly large ensemble, so seeing them up close and personal in the Edison is a unique experience: the chic, post-industrial Edison bar makes a strange brew with Lucent Dossier’s sensual, fantastical performers – some of whom hang from the rafters inside the bar and mingle with the patrons. Lucent’s upscale-Burning Man vibe is not as sophisticated as the Edison’s regular crowd, and that’s part of the magic. Sharing a cocktail with fire dancers, aerial silk performers, belly dancers, contortionists, burlesque girls and daring “actors” puts a whole new spin on downtown bar culture.
tiffa (née tiffany ann snead) was not just a fashion designer, she invented an entire aesthetic style. she was not just one of the founding members of a notorious performance troupe, she helped to create an entire subculture. she wasn’t just a visionary artist, she was a force of nature whose ripple effects inspired, and will continue to inspire, her closest friends and countless, thousands, of people who are likely not even aware that this is the woman responsible for their inspiration.
i barely knew tiffa, and i can easily say that she affected the course of my life.
in the spring of 2004 i ran into an unusual-looking group of folks walking around venice beach. later i would describe the way this posse appeared at the time as superheroes in street clothes–from a street on a different planet. having previously worked with the dresden dolls in boston before moving out to LA, i had only one idea of what this gang could be. i went up to them and asked, “what are you guys? are you a band?”
two months later i found myself at a seminal event in the los angeles underground. it was a fashion show for onda designs at a downtown warehouse. the fashions were tiffa’s, though i had no idea who she was at the time, and the people i met that night, and would meet in the years after who had been involved with the production of that night, would become some of my dearest friends and colleagues. the name of the party was “VITAL.”
in the scrapbook i have from that year, full of flyers and other mementos, i still have a flyer for VITAL, and underneath it, in a bout of prescience that completely astonished me when i rediscovered it looking through the scrapbook a few months ago, i had written the words:
“THIS CHANGED EVERYTHING.”
so i had known even then.
i had known immediately.
seven months after VITAL i became the production manager for an LA-based circus troupe called lucent dossier, which was just two months old at the time. five months after that i was working with lucent and the do lab on redbull’s ascension event, getting a hands-on, crash-course education in culture marketing from the experts in the field. (that event was also the first time i actually worked with el circo, 1 year after meeting them on venice beach.)
the night that 2005 became 2006 i was at the new year’s eve party put on by madison house and anon salon where i watched the dresden dolls and el circo perform on the same stage.
a year and a half later i was developing the marketing strategy for the do lab’s lightning in a bottle music festival, on which el circo were very significant collaborators. and now, six months after that, i’m writing this post on my marketing website, getting so nostalgically lost in the mystical, cyclical serendipity of all these events, that it actually made me manage to forget for a moment why i sat down to write this post in the first place.
by the time i’d become involved in this whole circus, tiffa had moved on to a new design label, ernte fashion systems, moved to bali where the production was based, and become a significant couture force from paris to tokyo.
i know this because many of my friends who have themselves become designers and gone on to start fashion labels are her friends, her artistic progeny, and have been inspired by the path she blazed and the creative visions she wrought.
in a 2005 SF-Bay Guardian article on the effect that the various groups within the burningman community have had on san francisco nightlife, and west coast underground dance culture in general, the writer paid particular attention to the legacy of el circo:
El Circo has fused a musical style and a fashion sense that are major departures from the old rave scene.
El Circo [is credited] with creating the postapocalyptic fashions that many now associate with Burning Man. Most of the original El Circo fashions, which convey both tribalism and a sense of whimsy, were designed by member Tiffa Novoa, who has since hit it big with her Onda Designs.
….That fashion sense has carried over onto the streets and into the clubs of San Francisco, giving an open and otherworldly feel to many parties.
….It can also be a personally transformative experience. “At first, this was all costuming, but now it’s who I am,” says Matty Dowlen, who manages El Circo’s operations and looks like a cross between a carny, a hippie, and a trapper.
…. “A lot of the women in El Circo were some of the most beautiful in the world, and [Novoa] dressed them up to look even more beautiful,” [Electronic musician Random] Rab says, noting that it changed how the denizens of El Circo conceived of themselves. “One day everyone was all hippied out, and then they were all tribal and tattooed.”
…. El Circo strives to cultivate a new kind of culture and communal ethos.
she was one hell of a powerful being. powerful enough to create a vision of the world that was so mesmerizing it enchanted a whole subculture and even managed to redefine people’s sense of self.
my love goes out to all my friends who are mourning her loss. she will be greatly missed. what she has created will continue to inspire countless others to pursue their creative dreams. it is bigger than life–or death.
this changed everything.
update:
“Tiffa Novoa, whose legendary creative and artistic impact will be forever felt, will be honored in a public memorial next week. All who knew her or were impacted by her life are invited to come and share space and memory. If you have a piece of her clothing, please feel encouraged to wear it. Also, in order to relieve her family and close friends of the necessary finances of this event, there is a suggested donation of $10. After the reception there will be a potluck gathering at a near-by park in the Oakland Hills.”
Memorial Service:
Monday, Oct. 29th
1:00 to 2:30pm
Chapel of the Chimes
4499 Piedmont Ave
Oakland, CA 94611
(510)654-0123
after months of work on street scene 2007, the festival kicked off last night with muse headlining. these photos were taken from what the industry refers to, technically, as the “poser decks.” (i’m 100% serious; should you happen to ever find yourself there, you now know what you will have become). it’s a pretty epic view though, and kind of endemic of a marketer’s perspective in a sense. this is pretty much the view you have to maintain throughout the whole process of marketing a festival, so it’s a pretty fitting vantage point from which to finally see it come to fruition.
among the many highlight moments was getting to see panic! at the disco perform i write sins not tragedies live, which is a song that still manages to elicit excitement every time i hear the track’s opening pizzicato notes since its music video not only features lucent dossier, but it’s also the reason behind how lucent ended up going on tour with panic! in 06–the precursor to their “nothing rhymes with circus” tour.
oh, and i’d like to give a little shoutout othe folks at imeem, for running our battle of the bands contest–which is actually always one of my favorite parts of a music festival promotion strategy. the winning band was monte battalion, but there were so many genuinely talented musicians and bands that participated in the contest, it was actually really hard to chose. imeem should be really proud of the caliber of the creative community they’ve got.
as much as i love movies about teenagers i love movies about superheroes. i haven’t figured out exactly what the connection is between the two, but there’s definitely something similar about characters that experience everything in extreme.
last night i watched blood and chocolate and realized something that i’d already noticed happening in casino royale: the application of parkour into the “superhero’s” arsenal of moves. the weird thing about this is that parkour (also known as free running) is not something that was created using any kind of special effects–well, at least not the digital kind of special effects, anyway. it’s a totally real philosophy of movement that hollywood is starting to use to define a larger-than-life character. in blood and chocolate it was particularly appropriate, since the characters are werewolves, though in casino royale it’s definitely done on a much more intense scale. either way, it verges so close to magic that it’s hard to believe it’s something that evolved and can exist entirely outside of an action sequence choreography.
in fact, what’s really interesting is that after movies like the matrix and crouching tiger/hidden dragon and hero all acclimated us to this kind of movement being a wholly fabricated, cgi, bungee-harnessed, soundstage fairy tale, it’s now getting applied back into movies in a way that presents it as completely within the scope of biological human achievement as it is in real life. stunning not for man’s rule over pixels, but for the sense of his mastery over the laws of physics and physicality themselves.
it’s a peculiar cycle of life imitating art imitating life. the original superhero access to the realm beyond the physically-possible was through kung fu. and undoubtedly there’s an influence of the martial arts movie legacy in the genetic structure of parkour–after all, the artform is based on martial arts. so in the same way that fashion trends influence fashion trends, do movement trends influence movement trends? just how far can we stretch the canvas of our physical bodies once given the creative inspiration of a new possibility? and mind-over-matter stylie, could the unprecedented access to witnessing exponential evolutions in motion actually take us to places we could not have gone before?
i’d be lying if i said we at the Do don’t look to the godfather of nouveau cirque as an example of where we’re aiming to get to. (lucent dossier’s most recent show, debuted at coachella this year, is the “water show,” in fact, complete with water-spewing costumes that actually involve plumbing!)
“Today in Las Vegas, you can see Céline Dion or Prince, David Copperfield or Penn & Teller, Blue Man Group or The Producers. But no single creative organization has come to dominate the Strip like Cirque du Soleil….
…They battle over spectacle, and in the Vegas theatrical world that means gigantic, multimillion dollar theaters packed with astonishing technology. The war for tourist dollars is waged behind the scenery….
…Those shows map to classic archetypes. ‘Start with Mystere. It’s essentially the circus,’ says Erik Walstead, the technical director of Cirque’s Kà. ‘O is basically the ballet. Zumanity is cabaret, the smallest of the shows. I view Kà as opera, and Love is our tribute show.’ ”
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** special bonus track **
my ride from burningman 05:
designed by keith greco (dude with the dredz) for the vegas premiere after-party for Kà, to shuttle performers accross the party. aptly named: the Kà2.
