Bizarre Fetish Ball

Photo from www.climb-acts.com

Maybe I'm old and jaded, my sensibilities dulled after having been involved in the fetish/BDSM scene for more than 12 years, but the song that ran through my mind at Saturday night's Bizarre Fetish Ball was, "Is that all there is?"

The performances were fun, but nothing extraordinary. The exception was Chain Goddess, aka Brandy Wirtz. Unable to walk in her ballet boots, two men had to carry her onto and off the stage. Ballet boots, for the unfamiliar, are high heels taken to their illogical extreme, in which the feet are kept in line with the calf, and the heels extend in parallel. The wearer must walk en pointe. Wirtz' shoes transformed her feet into alien, claw-like appendages. I half-expected her to flex her toes and make the heels snap shut like a lobster's claw.

Hovering above the dancefloor, suspended from thick metal chains, Wirtz did a remarkable aerial performance, doing the splits and other trapeze-like maneuvers with grace and strength. The ballet heels were integrated into the performance, locking onto the chains, an intriguing combination of vulnerability and strength. There's an old saying in Hollywood that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.

There's something in human nature drawn to physical performance, seeing human bodies try to transcend the limits of frail flesh. Some people see it in a football player scoring a touchdown, others in a ballerina doing Swan Lake. Brandy Wirtz has that.

Other than the performances, it just felt like a slightly bigger version of Sin City. In fact, if you've ever been to Sin City, you'll see more than a few familiar faces and bodies in the crowd.

Does Vancouver need another, bigger and significantly more expensive fetish night? If the hour-long line ups outside on Cordova Street, twice a month, are any indication, Sin City is doing just fine for attendance.

My concern is that, even though local kink and fetish merchants were selling their wares in the venue, that some of the money that went into this show might have left with the performers instead of going back into the local scene. If such an event is only once a year, then it should be too big a burden.