Stadium lights dim :
Rhythmic drum beat begins with an eerie bass-line, percussion is synchronized to match choreography:
(From beneath the rock and sand covered desert-plain of a stage, three performers clad in dun colored karate gi's with billowing sleeves are launched upwards in individual bursts
of sand.
Grabbing rocks from the floor they begin an elaborate juggling act interspersed with martial art moves and eruptions of sand seemingly controlled by each performers movements).
Oboe, flute, and horns join background music:
From the rafters descend three more performers tumbling and spinning to the sand below wearing the bright white gi of their sect.
They mockingly circle the stone-jugglers.
With an intricate series of gestures and a mighty shout the _rocks_ being juggled by the initial performers explosively balloon into slightly- less-buoyant than air reflective floating globes.
Each of the _rocks_ was actually a compressed mylar balloon within a faux rock shell with a small radio activated canister containing compressed hydrogen at its center designed to make each balloon weigh less than an ounce when fully inflated.
The sleeves of the air jugglers are fairly rigid and slightly longer than arm length. They are also modified so that the performer can retract and release an inner membrane.
A hidden belt-mounted fog-maker fills the sleeves with smoke from tubes running along the inner arm and causes certain thrusting motions, coupled with a membrane release, to create visible vortex rings which keep these gradually descending mylar spheres aloft in a standard juggle pattern amid much smoke, colored light, directed laser reflections and acrobatics.
Stone jugglers exit unnoticed in the shadows:
Cymbal crash, violin, high-hat, and steel guitar join musical score.
Black lighting replaces colored lighting.
Blue-clad performers have emerged from through a dark curtain back-center-stage and begin to sinuously weave and flit in and around the air-jugglers whose white air-sect outfits now glow as though lit from within.
Without interrupting the languid flow of the air-juggle pattern, but with an overemphasized fluid movement, a stage-right water-juggler, from a container within his own modified sleeve, launches a cohesive stream of glowing blue water arcing between the slowly interweaving mylar spheres, only to be caught in the sleeve of his fellow water juggler.
(The water-jugglers sleeves are tapered inside to launch a nearly continuous stream of water more than fifteen feet and contain a chiral shape near the elbow bend which lets the energy from incoming liquid be dissipated as spin, holding the fluid suspended even while the performers arms are not held aloft.
A powerful light source within the sleeve illuminates each stream of fluid until it breaks contact with the launcher where it then takes on the light shade of the receiver)
In an incredible display of trajectory arcs of colored laser-like water are juggled over, under, and between the floating reflective spheres without any cessation of juggling or weaving by any of the performers.
(Now with a boom and a rumble the backstage curtain glows intense red and slowly fades back to near black.
From stage right and left, black-clad performers slowly wend their way on-stage twirling, spinning and juggling flaming batons, balls, and staffs.)
The flame jugglers harass and taunt the interplay of the air and water jugglers while the reflections of the flames completely change the appearance of the previously pleasing aerial ballet to one of ominous menace.
(The flame jugglers' costumes', and indeed all of the costumes, are fire retardant as is the flooring and entirety of the set. Extinguishers are abundant:
The orchestra builds towards a minor crescendo as a single flaming ball is sent high enough to intersect an air-borne stream of water.
The _water_ is in fact kerosene so that each water-jugglers' stream now alights causing liquid streams of fire to join the display.
Activating a switch changes the air-jugglers' belt-mounted fog-dispenser to a dispenser of hydrogen gas rendering the air-jugglers vortex rings flammable adding even more flame to the intricate inferno.
Contact of the first flaming vortex ring with encapsulated hydrogen mylar balloon culminates in an almost blinding and completely enormous chain-reaction pyrotechnic conflagration just as the orchestra is reaching a frenzied pitch.
Then a complete cessation of sound and light as every flame is simultaneously doused.
As the audiences eyes adjust to the near darkness a single juggler can be seen amid the wreckage and bodies juggling three simple stones in a simple pattern.
Curtain closes.