'Tis the season for all kinds of offbeat, artsy shit to pop up all over the 305. That's what Art Basel is all about. And by far our favorite part of the week's adventures is the interactive, off-the-cuff stuff that local creatives come up with.
One such event is next Friday's Stilt-Circus Tall-Bike Marching Band tour of Wynwood. It'll be led by performer extraordinaire Mysterr, and in case you're interested -- she's recruiting.
See also: Art Basel Miami Beach 2013 Gallery Guide
Last year, Mysterr took the stage for a circus of sorts at Basel's Moksha Art Fair.
"Everyone showed up and lived out their roles. Even the anonymous Spanish gypsies were there," she says of last year's show.
"We marched across the art fair making beautiful music and intriguing people enough to follow us to the stage that awaited us with surreal lights and projections, where we each had our theatrical solos that included fire-hoop, stilt ball-room dancing, contortion belly-dancing, hand-balancing, a cat playing theremin and crazed rooster spitting feathers."
Weird? Yes. Awesome? Also yes.
Aside from her Basel antics, Mysterr (aka Camila Alvarez) bills herself a "one-woman circus with plenty of friendly circus friends up her sleeve." And seriously, we can think of plenty of times that a circus-for-hire could totally come in handy.
Recently, she's been performing around Los Angeles, and she's about to release a new album at Sweat Records on December 20.
The circus concept originally came to her in a dream, and she had the inspiration for this year's incarnation while in L.A.
"The dream returned to me this year while I was all the way in Los Angeles, except this time we were on the street and a few friends and I were up three-stories high," she says. "When I looked behind me I saw people on stilts and double-decker bikes that were closer to the ground than I was, and behind them were people on regular bikes, all in descending height. I know this dream had to have been influenced by my time with the incredibly unique Losangelopes bicycle circus. I immediately booked my flight back and began recruiting stilt-walkers, tall-bikers and making myself some really tall stilts."
And you can get in on the fun. For Basel this year, she needs the following for her "elevated marching band":
- tall bikes & unicycles
- stilt performers who can carry a beat
- strong men on stilts who can carry small girls on their shoulders or arms for blocks
But otherwise, almost anything goes. As she says, "The invitation is open for anyone in costume to bike or wobble around Wynwood with us at 5 p.m. on Friday, December 6."
How can you pass up an offer like that? Check out more details about the event on Facebook.
Follow Cultist on Facebook and Twitter @CultistMiami.
