Compression! Art and Fire

Our Story

Controlled Burn, Inc. is an all-inclusive, 100% volunteer driven organization that formed in the year 2000 to bring fire dancing to the greater Truckee Meadows region. Members initially travelled to San Francisco to learn the art and bring it back to our community. Now in its 12th year, Controlled Burn has a reputation for big choreography, big fire, accessibility and setting the standard for safe, public fire performance. Recognized as a federally tax-exempt educational 501(c)3 and 509(a)2 charitable organization, Controlled Burn performs throughout the community at both paid and non-paid performances including arts events and many, many charity events. For the past four years, Controlled Burn has produced Compression! Art and Fire, a unique, innovative, fiery festival.

July 28, 2012 marks the 5th anniversary of Compression! Art and Fire, a completely unique and amazing festival that takes place in downtown Reno as part of the 17th annual Artown Celebration. 

Our event will run from 3p.m. to 11 p.m. The festival day begins with interactive playshops and progresses into the performance aspect of the event, culminating in a live musical performance and dance party.

Demonstrations include local artists and performers including Asha World Dancers with live music by eNVision Performing Arts and Black Rock City All-Stars and friends. Performances will be held throughout the event and will include fire and non-fire performance artists from the Western states. Titillating visual displays of many of the different ways humans interact with fire will occur during this event.   

Since the dawn of time, humankind has been fascinated by fire in all its guises and Controlled Burn wants to share that amazing and varied fire-inspired artistic expression! It's generally restricted to a certain nearby desert during seven days of the year in the Fall, but we hope to give you a tiny piece in an urban environment.

Our festival allows community members to experience fire arts in a safe and controlled environment. It is designed to serve the community at-large and specifically at-risk youth and people of varying physical ability, age and ethnic diversity. This year, we hope to expand our closure of Virginia Street to add EVEN MORE art vehicles...and we aren't sure what all yet, stay tuned, we will update as details become available.

Our event is 100% volunteer worked, performed, and maintained, a true rarity today! It's a way for us to give back to our community for them supporting us all year long.  

With ever-decreasing grant funding and ever-increasing costs to produce an event like this, it has become necessary for us to use non-traditional ways to fund this amazing event. Our event is free and open to the public, with premium seating available for a nominal fee.

Here is a breakdown of Compression's BASIC budget:

The Impact

We are looking for YOUR help to make the 5th year of Compression the most amazing yet! Since this is our 5th, we want it to be bigger, have more performers from more areas of our region, and more art for you all to see. In addition to the faithful performers like VULCAN CREW who have been with us since the beginning, we want to bring two larger groups of fire performers, one from the BAY AREA and one from OREGON! We also want to expand the fire art garden to feature even more artists than last year.

Additionally, this funding will allow us to close a LARGER portion of Virginia Street, to Second Street to be able to expand your pre-playa experience to include more art vehicles. Not going to the playa this year? Then Compression is the perfect place to experience the same sort of vibe without the dust!

With less in grant funding and continuing economic trials in the state of Nevada, this is our chance to "blow off a little steam" and make an amazing party for our community!

All funds raised will be expended specifically for Compression.

Not reaching this funding goal means less of everything and a very real chance this could be the last Fire Festival.

What We Need & What You Get

What we need is working capitol. It takes a lot to make an event like Compression happen, and none of it is cheap and a lot of it has to happen before the event.

See the sponsorship levels to the side to understand the different levels and what you will receive for supporting Compression. Of course, we also hope anyone supporting us will come out and celebrate with us the day of the festival!

Other Ways You Can Help

The most important way you can help is by SHARING THIS CAMPAIGN with friends, family, and others that might be interested.

Have extra firewood hanging around? Many of our fire artists have live-fuel pieces, many of which are artistic and beautiful burn barrels. We need to feed these flames for folks to enjoy them so if you have extra wood you didn't use this year, please let us know, we'd be happy to take it off your hands and ensure it meets a fiery and combustive end!

If you'd like to volunteer for the event, we always need more people the day of, so please contact donna (at) controlledburnreno (dot) com. She's the amazing volunteer coordinator. We need setup and teardown crew, cleanup, safety rangers, seat monitors and roaming staff to make sure the event stays safe.