A festival story. The characters are imagined; the clothes are real.
The tent breathed. That's what a big top does at dusk, when the fields give back the day's heat and the canvas lifts and settles on its lines like something asleep. Red and white stripes. A king pole thirty feet tall. Sawdust that smelled of pine and powdered sugar. Outside, fireflies were rising out of the soybeans. Inside, Florian was testing electro-swing through the stacks, a scratchy 1930s clarinet riding a house kick that thumped through the bleacher boards under my palms.
I'd rosined my hands three times. My first solo was at a quarter to ten.
My father stood on the ladder at the king pole, snapback turned backward, a coil of sling over his shoulder. Gwen stood at the bottom with a tablet.
"Laci," she called. "Come down a minute."
He came down. She turned the screen toward him, and I watched his face do the thing it does when the truck engine makes a new sound.
"The tent company rates that pole for lights and banners," Gwen said. "Static loads. There's nothing in here for a body dropping."
My father scrolled. Then he handed the tablet back. "You're right."
"No numbers, no point." She said it gently, like a rule older than me. "She goes on the freestanding rig."
The festival's rig stood stage left: three steel legs splayed like a camera tripod, stamped and certified, every pin wearing its own little safety clip. An honest, beautiful machine.
Twenty feet. Our tent at home gives me thirty.
My finale was a triple star drop: three wraps, a breath, and you unspool toward the floor in three hard spins until the silk catches you with whatever height you've saved. I did the math in my head. My father did it on his face.
On twenty feet, the triple ended where the mat began.
✦
"Double star," my mother said. She'd come in from the ring curb with her headset around her neck and her lantern pants rolled to the knee, a white unicorn rearing down one leg in the work light. "You've done it a thousand times."
"In the practice tent. Never at the end of anything."
"Then tonight it's the end of something."
The clock above the bleachers said 8:09. Doors at 9:20. Seventy-one minutes.
I counted the music for Florian, and he wrote the new cue on the back of his hand. Gwen dragged a second mat under the rig and moved the rope line out to the edge of the fall zone. My father did what he has done in every town since before I could walk. He ran the fabric through his hands, both tails, end to end, feeling for a pull or a snag. He checked the swivel. He checked the rescue eight. He screwed each carabiner gate shut by hand and pressed it with his thumb to be sure. Then he grabbed the silks, lifted his boots off the mat and bounced his whole weight on them, twice, hard.
Then he held the fabric out to me.
"From tonight," he said, "you check your own."
My hands weren't steady. I did it anyway. Both tails, the swivel, the eight, the gates. I hung my weight and bounced. Gwen held out her clipboard, and under LB, in my father's square capitals, I wrote MB.
✦
We ran the new ending once. Climb, wraps, double drop. The silk caught me by the hips with room to spare, and I hung there upside down, laughing, my ponytail brushing the mat.
"Again?"
"Doors," said Gwen.
They poured in: farm kids on their fathers' shoulders, ravers in glitter and suspenders, a man in a bowler hat with a toddler in a matching bowler. A few fireflies drifted in with them and blinked in the canvas peak.
My father took his place at the base of the rig, where riggers stand, eyes on the hardware, not on the act. That's the rule. Somebody has to watch the point.
For twelve years he'd stood somewhere else. Under me. Base to my flyer in our family act since I was five and light as a sack of feed: toss, turn, his palms flat on my back. I have never once landed on anything but my father.
Tonight, there was only a mat.
Florian slid the clarinet into the kick. The tent went dark except for one violet light on the silks.
✦
I climbed.
The music swung, all brass and boom, and I went into the opening: a foot lock, a slow split, the tent turning upside down beneath me. A kid said whoa. Halfway up I set a hip key and let go with both hands, and the bleachers went still the way a field goes still when a hawk crosses it.
Then the breakdown came. Thirty-two bars of clarinet alone. My finale.
I climbed to the top of the rig, wrapped in and set my hips.
But my legs knew a different ending. Three summers of triples.
I counted the wraps with my fingertips. One. Two. Three.
One too many. A triple, on a rig built for a double.
Below me the clarinet climbed toward the swell I'd timed the drop to, and I could feel it coming like headlights on a dark road. My father's oldest rule, the one he says every time he hands me the silks: Wraps aren't right, you don't drop. The audience will wait.
So I made them wait.
Inverted, forearms pumped tight, I reached across and unwound one wrap. The swell came and went without me. The clarinet ran out. For four bars there was only the kick and a tent full of faces turned up at a girl hanging very still.
I counted again. One. Two.
I let go.
✦
The silk spun me twice, hard and bright, and caught me by the hips, well clear of the mat. The beat was already rolling. I'd dropped four bars late, and the only people in that tent who knew it were the four of us who had counted the cue.
Then the bleachers came apart. Whistles. Stamping. The toddler in the bowler hat bouncing on his father's knee.
I looked down for my father.
He was standing at the base of the rig, where riggers stand. But his arms were up. Both of them, elbows soft, palms open, reaching up for me from the base of the rig the way they have since I was five. Catching nothing. Catching me.
He saw me see. Slowly he lowered them and checked a carabiner that didn't need checking.
✦
At one in the morning, Florian slid from swing into house, a long warm groove, and the circus tent became a dance floor. The air had cooled to sixty-five, sweet with cut hay. My mother pulled my father off the rig and into the sawdust, the unicorn on her pant leg flaring as she spun.
Across the lane, the farm's white mare stood at the pasture fence with her head up, and the light pole behind her drew one silver line down the middle of her forehead.
Maybe just the light.
I struck my own silks for the first time, daisy-chained both tails, bagged them and wrote my initials on the tag.
Then my father held out his hand. He'd turned his snapback to the front, the white unicorn lifting its head among violet crystal above his eyes, and he danced me around the king pole, all elbows. On the turn, his palm landed flat in the middle of my back, right on the unicorn on my crop top. Right where it has always landed.
For once I wasn't falling.
Next town is Indiana. I'm already counting wraps.
The unicorns under the big top
Our Amethyst Unicorn has weathered a mountain lightning storm in Under One Hood and a Sahara sandstorm in The Wind Knocks First. This time it flew. Marika performs in the Amethyst Unicorn one-shoulder crop top ($40), a single strap over one shoulder and a white unicorn rearing through violet crystal across the back, fitted close so nothing catches on the silks. Laci rigs in the Amethyst Crystal Unicorn snapback hat ($40), turned backward on the ladder, with a white unicorn lifting its head among violet crystal shards across the crown and a dark dotted brim. Vilma calls cues in the Amethyst Unicorn men's lantern pants ($80), wide and easy, with the unicorn rearing down one leg when she spins.
- One-shoulder crop top: 80% poly / 20% spandex · listed fabric weight 230 g/m² · one-shoulder strap · skinny fit, XS–2XL.
- Snapback: 100% poly · all-over printed crown and flat brim · adjustable snap band at the back · one size fits most.
- Lantern pants: soft poly waffle, 95% poly / 5% spandex · listed fabric weight 300 g/m² · carrot fit with elastic waistband, drawstring and cuffed ankles · XS–4XL.
Every piece is made to order. For your own summer nights under canvas: women's tops · men's pants · snapback hats
What do you wear to an electro swing party?
Mix 1920s glamour with festival comfort. Electro swing crowds pair suspenders, bow ties, flat caps, fringe and pearls with glitter, crop tops and printed pants, so one vintage accent plus one bold print works. Choose shoes you can swing-dance in, and bring a light layer for a summer night that cools into the 60s.
- Swing meets rave: a bowler or newsboy cap, suspenders over a rave crop top, or lantern pants that flare when your partner spins you. Electro swing runs from vintage ballroom to house-music floor in one night, so dress for both.
- Ohio farm nights in July: humid afternoons, cooler nights in the 60s°F, and dew on the grass by midnight. Closed shoes, bug spray and a hooded layer cover you from the field to the tent.
- Circus tent manners: stay behind the rope line around an aerial rig, never touch the fabrics or hardware, and skip flash photos while performers are in the air.
- Family-friendly festivals: bring ear protection for small dancers, and agree on a meeting spot by something tall and easy to find.
For more farm-and-field summer nights, Pickathon fills Pendarvis Farm near Portland, Oregon, in late July and early August, with nights of 55–60°F; the Oregon Country Fair brings vaudeville, costumed parades and stilt-walkers to the woods near Veneta, Oregon, on the second weekend of July; and Electric Forest lights up Rothbury, Michigan, in late June, with humid nights of 55–65°F.
Frequently asked questions
How are aerial silks rigged safely?
Aerial silks hang from a point with a documented load rating, such as a structural beam or a certified freestanding rig, attached by a qualified rigger with load-rated hardware: a sling, steel locking carabiners, a swivel and a rescue-8 descender. Performers and riggers inspect the fabric and every connection before each use, and train over mats.
How high do aerial silks need to hang?
It depends on the act. Many studios and freestanding rigs offer roughly 18 to 21 feet of working height, enough for climbs and smaller drops, while circus tents and theaters often rig higher. Bigger drops use more fabric, so aerialists choose and rehearse their drops on the exact rig they'll perform on.
What is electro swing music?
Electro swing blends vintage swing and jazz from the 1920s to the 1940s, with their clarinets, brass and crackly big-band vocals, with modern house, hip hop and electronic beats. It took off in Europe in the 2000s, and its dance floors mix flapper fringe, suspenders and bowler hats with festival glitter.
Written by Magus & Lylyth Fawn, the Los Angeles artists behind Magus Fawn. Magus makes VR and digital visionary art and produces Psy EDM. Lylyth makes fractal digital art and runs design and customer care. We've been selling wearable art since 2020 on Etsy (4.7★ from 144 reviews as of October 2026) and here at magusfawn.com. Come say hi on Instagram @magusfawn.
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