Phoenix Blue

Last night, I noticed two men walking past one of the outer parking lots at Olin. It looked like they were just out on a nightly walk through the area -- lots of people walk near campus -- and I had to wonder what they thought.

You see, in that parking lot, there were Oliners dancing with fire.

Last night was the first Burn of the year. One of Olin's most distinctive groups is OFAC, Olin Fire Arts Club. The shortest possible description is that they dance with fire. In more detail, OFAC members have various apparatus that can be lit on fire in certain locations, and they swing and spin these apparatus around in the air in time to music.

OFAC Burns are astonishing, captivating, and nothing short of beautiful.

When the performers spin fire -- whether the fire is on spheres at the end of chains or on a hula hoop or on the ends of a stick or a pole -- you see the bright, flaring yellow of the gold, and it's like the fire itself is dancing. The idea is not the shapes the apparatus make but rather the shapes the fire makes. It is not the fire on its own or the people on their own; it's truly people dancing with fire. Partners, giving weight, circling together as I would in a contra dance balance and swing.

My favorite part, though, is the blue.


When the spinning is fast enough, there is not just yellow. There is also blue. It's not surprise that there would be blue in a flame, but usually it is flickering faint thing deep in the center. There's some of that in Burns. With the apparatus that don't led themselves to being spun as quickly, the blue is a glimpse and then it's gone. However, there are other apparatus that really bring out the blue, that, in fact, let the blue dominate over the yellow.

The apparatus with which this is most obvious looks a lot like the one with spheres on the end of chains, but it isn't just spheres on the end that light. A much longer length of the apparatus lights on fire, so when swung, the streak of light is much wider. This apparatus can be spun really quickly, and the blue that results isn't really a shade I can describe. The color of the iTunes logo is almost but not quite right, and I have some pictures of the sky in Cambridge that get close, but it isn't exact.

The blue isn't alone, though. It's not like the yellow completely goes away. It streaks through the blue, and it appears not the familiar yellow, but gold. The blue with the gold is how I imagine a dragon's coloring might be, and the shape is twisting and weaving, a long dragon through the sky.

There are a lot of shades of blue at Olin. One of the school colors is blue, and while officially it seems to be a navy shade, there are shades in huge variation floating around, all the way to very pale blues.

This one, though, I think, despite anything official, is the true Olin blue. It's the blue of Burns, and OFAC is distinctly Olin -- that's why they perform at every Candidates' Weekend. More than that, though, it's the blue of flame.

Olin's mascot is the phoenix, because of Olin's constant recreation of itself, and what is a phoenix if not flame?