I took a little break from making gadgets to go to this Fuerzabruta show in NYC. It’s standing room only in this very tall yet small black space and you get moved around as the contraptions and gadgets are moved around the area near you and above you. It’s basically like you are in the middle of someone elses crazy dream. There is an actor on a treadmill in front of you running as fast as he can with walls of paper boxes being hurled at him. There is wind generators, flying paper, treadmills and water. It was unique and interesting and I have to admit I was distracted by all the gadget to really absorb the art of the show except for the ladies of course.
So besides the guy running on a treadmill there are these women who are crawling sideways on a large silver curtain that surrounds the area. They were suspended by cables that were attached to a slider on rails. At first I thought they were pulling themselves along the guides but I noticed the wheeled sliders stop and go the other direction on their own. So they must be controlled by some motorizes system.
The most interesting part of the show is when a large clear surface hovers above you holding a few gallons of water. when I saw this on the site I assumed it was plexiglas. There are a few barely clothed women that are sliding around in the water overhead. But as the surface slowly drops toward your head you see the surface bending and flexing as the women slide around. It is actually made up of thin clear plastic sheets. It then drops close enough to touch and it feels like its only 1/4″ thick. You start to wonder how strong that plastic can be. A bit more water is poured and the women start to run and jump and fall and splash on the surface just above your head. Pretty cool. They are only inches from your face.
There is another part of the show where this very large vertical surface is brought to the center of the room. A man tied to a cable on one side and a woman on the other. The surface is rotated and pulled and bent in different directions causing the actors to fly off the surface and back again. That contraption was pretty amazing because its bottom was supported by a small tripod, it must have been bolted to the floor when I wan’t looking because it was too narrow to handle all those moment forces. There was also a cable that tied the top of the surface to the ceiling. It’s travel was limited to allow the surface to drop and bend but only so far. Probably a safety measure.
The only bad thing about the show is that the contraptions are sometimes controlled by a crew on the ground that pull and push things around. And since you are only 2 feet away from live action (the cool part) you see them too, and it can take away from the show. In fact at one point that large vertical surface thing was spinning so fast that one of the crewmen pulling on the ropes lifted way up in the air, lost his grip and fell to the ground. The gadgets are not hidden at all, so for a guy like me, that was distracting too. Of course the half naked women were also distracting but in a good way.
As I looked up at the clear plastic pool I thought, this would be cool to install above our bed. My wife even joked about how she’d like it too, but without the half-naked women.
If you want to see a unique show and have an interesting experience you should probably check it out. You’ll either enjoy watching the performance or watching the gadgets.
One recommendation I can give is that you should buy tickets ahead of time. I only spent $30 or so. If you try to buy just before the show it costs $70, I dont think its worht that much.
Plus it helps if you go there when you have a bit of energy because there is plenty of bass-thumping music to get you moving. I went on a weeknight and it was weird because the actors are just blowing up with energy and only 5 other people are shaking there butts. Maybe a Friday or Saturday night is more fun.
Oh yeah, there is a surprise at the end if you stand in the center.
P.S. Sorry there aren’t more pictures, I actually left the memory card at home. Thank god for internal memory, but only had 7 shots at 3MP. But you can see some videos on their nyc site. And the main site too.