Apogaea

Template:Infobox burn event Apogaea (meaning "far from Earth") is an annual collaborative outdoor arts and music festival, held in late spring (scheduled for June 9-12, 2011) as a Colorado regional counterpart for the Burning Man event. Held in the mountains of Colorado, Apogaea ("Apo") establishes a temporary autonomous zone where radical self-expression, inclusiveness, and self-reliance are the hallmarks of its participants.

Like the Burning Man event, Apogaea includes art installations, performance art, DJ-music, live music, camps, and theme camps. Apogaea has a Creative Grants program that provides financial assistance for artists wanting to create visual art, performances or events, workshops, art vehicles, or theme camps for Apogaea; this grant cycle generally begins in January. In past years, nearly 50% of Apogaea's operating budget was given out as creative grants. In 2009 a second grant cycle (the "Bonus Round") was added to allow projects that didn't need as much time or money to complete to receive grants.

Theme camps at Apogaea have included the cowboy-themed Dome on the Range, the hillbilly-themed Smokin' Bones BBQ and Blues, the cat-themed Purrfectly Pink Pussie Palace, the Green Screen Project, Hula Hideaway, and The Lair of the TWRG. Like many Burning Man-inspired events, fire art plays a large part, and includes performance art, such as fire dancing, as well as stationary art that incorporates propane or wood fires. Apogaea has generally had a central "effigy" that burns on the Saturday night of the event. However, all fire at Apogaea is subject to local or regional fire bans in dry or dangerous conditions; Apogaea 2006 was under such a ban and had limited propane fire art and no effigy burn. Effigies at Apogaea have included:

2004: no effigy
2005: Buddha
2006: Phoenix (not burned due to fire ban)
2007: Phoenix
2008: Squid
2009: Volcano
2010: Communigy (integrating pieces created by individual community members)

Apogaea is organized and run by an unpaid Board of Directors and a wider circle of volunteer leads ("Apogaea Ignition") in areas such as Art, Safety, Operations, Communications, Administration, Outreach, and Volunteers.

Since 2008, Apogaea has run from Thursday noon to dusk Sunday. Ticket prices in 2009 were $25 for scholarship tickets, $50 for pre-sale tickets (online and at ticket outlets in Colorado), and $60 at the gate. Ticket prices in 2011 were increased to $80 online or at various vendors, with no gate sales.

Apogaea is an all-ages event, though minors must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian, and those under 21 are given a different color wristband. Past attendees have organized kid-friendly camping areas with planned activities for children.

There are generally no free tickets given out (e.g., for volunteers, artists, or musicians), because of the philosophy that everyone attending is expected to contribute something to the event--whether it's their volunteer work, their participation, their camp, art, costumes, performance, or creativity--and Apogaea is not in a position to judge or value the merits of one person's contribution, creativity, or time over another's.

Apogaea is generally held in early June, in an attempt to hold the event late enough in the spring that it's not freezing at night that high in the mountains, yet early enough to avoid dry-season fire bans or restrictions. For the year 2011, Apogaea is scheduled for June 9-12.

Apogaea has a perfect track record in terms of fire safety. Any participant wishing to use fire in art, camp, or performance pieces is subject to fire-safety restrictions and is assisted and monitored by a team of volunteers trained in fire safety.

History

From 2001 to 2003, a summer festival known as Geodesika took place in the mountains of Colorado. This was not an official Burning Man-sanctioned festival, but nevertheless held to Burning Man's philosophy and tenets, and many attendees were also Burning Man attendees. After disagreement between Geodesika's founder and other festival organizers about how the festival should be run, the latter created a group to start a new, official Burning Man regional festival, named Apogaea.

The first order of business for the new festival was to find a place to hold it. Isolation from populated areas, proximity to the Front Range of Colorado, suitability for camping for hundreds of people, cost, terrain, and altitude/nighttime temperatures were considerations in finding a place to hold Apogaea.

Another Colorado festival, Dreamtime, had private land near Paonia, Colorado, on which they'd been holding a festival, and offered the land to Apogaea. It was decided to run a joint festival in 2004, "Apogaea in Dreamtime." While successful, differences in philosophies led the organizers of both festivals to agree that a joint festival would not work in the long term.

Apogaea then found a landowner with space near Lake George, Colorado, who had hosted other festivals. The forested space, known as the Happy Ass Ranch, was the location for Apogaea for six consecutive years from 2005 to 2010. A steady annual increase in attendance presented certain challenges for the festival in terms of size and space limitations of its former home at Happy Ass Ranch. The approximately 1,100 participants in 2010, while successfully accommodated on the site, presented parking and camping challenges for the organizers of the event. Consequently, Apogaea will take place in 2011 on a larger site a few miles south of Bailey, Colorado.

External links

• Official site
• Flickr Pool
• Westword feature article