About
Flam Chen is a pyrotechnic theater troupe based in Tucson, Arizona.
With a repertoire spanning over a dozen years and 1,500 professional performances worldwide, Flam Chen has innovated a new form of extreme theater, utilizing aspects of circus, martial arts, dance, ritual, aerial acrobatics, stilt-walking, installation art and physical theater to create unique panoramas of spectacle and narrative unlike anything you have ever seen.
Performers spin Balinese fire chains, combat with fire staffs and flaming swords, dance with fire fingers and fire fans, eat and breathe flames, light costume pieces, sculptures and very often the set itself ablaze during the course of an evening. Other performances have included aerial antics lifted high in the air from helium balloons, flying trapeze, zip lines, rappels, bungee, or a grand entrance from a 250 ft crane. Dazzling characters mesmerize and amaze audiences alike-designed and fabricated “in-house” using the vast talents and skills of the troupe and its talented creative community.
Collaboration has brought Flam Chen together with some of the most innovative artists and musicians in the country (many of them based in the Southwest), including gypsy/folk sensation, Molehill Orkestrah, industrial/noise legend Not Breathing, African drum ensemble, Dambe Project, electronic whiz-kid BARK BARK BARK, San Francisco-based stilting troupe The Carpetbag Brigade, and the internationally acclaimed VERBOBALA Spoken Video, to name a few of our close collaborators. Over the last 2 years, Flam Chen have been the exclusive flyers for Scream Awards and flown and created performance for such luminaries as director Tim Burton and Spiderman/Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee.
With their combined technologies, creative engineering and effects, Flam Chen creates a sense of immersion, wrapping the audience in hypnotic visions from any of the dozen original shows in the troupe’s repertoire, along with custom-made performances for public projects and private commissions.
At a Flam Chen show, you may be invited to witness a luna moth come to life in RITES OV SPRING, merging images inspired by bug life in Microcosmos and the Bacchanal of Fellini’s Satyricon, mingled with the choreographic influence of Martha Graham.
Other audiences may find themselves ensnared by the macabre web of MS. SPYDER’S COMBUSTIBLE TEA PARTY, the otherworldly aura of the KOKAPI and their magical handlers in RADIANCE or witness to the MONKEY KING and his delightfully sublime antics.
FLAM CHEN has wowed audiences worldwide and has enriched the cultural memory of many international communities, performing at large events, such as Electric Daisy Carnival and Nocturnal Wonderland on the West Coast, NYC Fringe in New York, High Sierra Music Festival in Quincy, CA, Philly Fringe, Tsunami On The Square, in Prescott, AZ, The International Arts Festival of MACAO, China, Just for Laughs and Theatre de Rue,in Quebec, Canada and other numerous site-specific installations and projects across the continent and overseas.
FLAM CHEN hosts and produces international performance artists at events in Tucson, AZ and collaborates in many projects throughout the year.
The group’s educational outreach through Tucson Circus Arts has brought Flam Chen to Nanaimo, British Columbia for a residency with Crimson Coast Dance Society; Monterrey, Mexico for the Monterrey Cultural Forum alongside Carpetbag Brigade, and the alternative living community, Arcosanti.
Flam Chen performs benefits for many communities, multitudes of charitable organizations and are co-founders of the annual All Souls Procession which draws upwards of 20,000-30,000 participants region wide and performers and creatives from all over the world. Our non-profit affiliate, Many Mouths One Stomach (MMOS) is becoming a vanguard of cultural activity in the Southwest Region and beyond, organizing community events made in participation with the public through Festal Culture, wherein the creative act becomes a mode of living.
FLAM CHEN has earned awards such as Tucson Weekly’s Best Performing Artist Award for three years, a NY FRINGE Excellence Award for “Rites Ov Spring”, and Congressional Recognition for its role in community outreach. The troupe also has been raved about in The New York Post, New York Times, Philadelphia Tribune, Dance Spirit, and Details, among other publications, as well as a featured chapter in the book Freaks and Fire: The Underground Reinvention of Circus, by J.Dee Hill.
“An adventure from the get-go…this gig is pure fun and fantasy…casting an atmosphere of wonderment.”
— City Paper, Philadelphia
“… like Cirque du Soleil , if they had fire instead of money”
— Derek Powazek, Boing Boing, San Francisco
“Moments of delicate poignancy, erotic charge and pure visual beauty.”
— The Tucson Weekly
“Flam Chen presents fiery spectacles that burn through genres and incinerate categories…”
— Millennium Magazine
images: Emily Jones and Jan Schwarz