Fox&Badge: BACCHANAL - Feast of Dionysus

His blood, the blood of the grape, lightens the burden of our mortal misery. Though himself a God, it is his blood we pour out to offer thanks to the Gods. And through him, we are blessed. (Euripides)

Fox&Badge invite you into the oldest party in the Western world - and the most misunderstood. Drawing from the ancient Greek rites of the god of wine, ecstasy, theatre and holy madness, we bow and honour Dionysus - the strangest of the Olympians: shape-shifting, neither fully human nor fully divine. The god who dissolves boundaries: between self and other, reason and rapture, the mortal and the divine.

He is the twice-born god: destroyed and remade, who extends that same invitation to everyone who follows him. He arrives from outside, refuses categorisation, and offers liberation - because he cannot be contained.

He is the god of theatre, of transformation, of the space between who you are and who you might become. From the ecstatic processions of his masked devotees, Greek drama was born. Tragedy and comedy alike grew from the rite. To wear the mask was not to disguise but to release the everyday self and allow something larger to speak. He is Lusios - the liberator, the loosener - and Bromios, the roarer. He carries the thyrsus: a fennel staff topped with a pine cone, a symbol of fertile, joyful, barely-contained power. His is the energy of the vine - slow-building, intoxicating, loosening the grip of the ego until something truer emerges.

At Fox&Badge, we know this energy. We have always been his devotees.

Plato named the experience of the gods theia mania - divine madness - not an affliction but a gift: the dissolution of the ego that cleanses, renews, and restores. Nietzsche saw it too: without the Dionysian, the Apollonian hardens into tyranny. Without ecstasy, something in us goes dark.

We give particular devotion to the Maenads - the female devotees of Dionysus: ordinary women, wives and mothers and weavers, called by the god into extraordinary liberation. They left the domestic behind. They ran barefoot into the mountains. In the grip of something larger than themselves, they possessed supernatural strength, suckled wild animals, caused milk and honey to spring from the earth in theophany. The presence of the wild god moved through them.

Come shed the defended self. Come let the music do what it does best: dissolve the boundary between you and the rest. Come wear the mask. Come be briefly and gloriously undone!

"Knowledge is not wisdom: not without awareness of our death, not without recalling just how brief our flare is." -The Bacchae.

Spaces to explore

• The Komos - largest dancefloor; all-female DJ lineup playing darker, driving beats, summoning the ancestral. The Komos was the epicentre of Dionysian release - the procession that became possession.
• The Theatron - our immersive performance stages, sewn through the dancefloor, and visited by an array of gods and deities, including aerialists soaring back to Olympos
• The Nysa - smaller dancefloor, playing deeper, more organic and sensual sounds, for non-stop dancing & frenzying.
• The Odeion - new indoor live music chamber; choral performance, solo sets, bands, jam sessions, and collective singing.
• The Temenos - sacred precinct of tantra, conscious touch, breathwork and embodiment ritual.
• The Antron - darker cave and space of dungeon, bondage, wax and shadow play
• The House of Rope & Ivy - the surrender to restraint and the unexpected freedoms of constriction at the hands of our expert shibari artists
• The Nymphaion - chamber of massage; a feast of flesh, a symphony of pressures, an invitation to both surrender and exchange, reciprocity and care.
• The Agora - central plaza hosting hourly events for singles and others to meet and conjoin.
• The Alsos - expansive soft chillout space; the sacred grove. Rest, intertwine, connect & flow.
• The Hestia - sanctuary of wellbeing angels; visit for care, compassion, conversation and warmth. Named for the goddess of the hearth - the still, warm centre without which no home, and no rite, holds together.
• The Baccheion - shrine of devotion, ritual offerings and contemplation. In ancient Greek religion, the bothros was the vessel through which libations were poured to the gods of the deep. Bring what you want to release.
• The Ergasterion - adornment station; gold, ivy, grapes and devotional markings by our artist priestesses. We must all (always) be dressed fit for the gods.
• The Stoa - bars everywhere serving their wines and hymns to our god Dionysus.
• The Thiasos - the wandering company itself. That’s you. All of you. We give you our deepest gratitude. ♥

Dress Code: Kinky Korinthians; Greek (not Roman) Glory!

Fully express and reveal yourself, exposing arms, shoulders, backs and thighs. Drape the body’s erotic flanks with erogenous folds of fluttering fabric. Revisit and reimagine the sartorial histories of the Chiton, Chlamys, Peplos, Exomis and Himation (which later became the Roman toga).

Let the materials whisper over you like wind, loose and liberated. Let the fluidity be matched by gender fluidity, ambiguity, exploration of your many facets. The Ancient Greeks invented the bra (Strophion); re-invent how you offer your sacred landscapes.

Choose pure whites, sheers, creams & paler tones - offset only by the colours of grapes - green & wine red. Deploy simplicity & minimalism, with an abundance of expression and enjoyment.

Perhaps explore the enigmatic Dionysian mask - not ornate Venetian, but minimalist white classical…

Merge nature & civilisation; creeper & weave, veil & vine, the wild and the tamed.

Bedrape yourself with grapes and embrace the ancient call of natural materials - ivy & leaf, leather and jute. Enwrap your torso, crotch and limbs with rope & ties, cinches and corsets. Summon the horn and hoof & fur of the Satyr, & the wild abandon of the Maenad

POSSIBLE ARCHETYPES TO INHABIT:

• Dionysus - androgynous, ivy-crowned, grape-hung, beautiful and quietly terrifying
• The Maenad - feral, ecstatic, wild-haired, fawn-skinned; ordinary woman become extraordinary force
• The Satyr - half-man, half-goat; mischievous, musical, incorrigibly lustful and alive
• The Bacchante - devotee in full ritual finery, thyrsus in hand, ready to run
• The Priest/ess - theatrical, masked, ceremonial, moving between worlds
• The Initiate - stripped back, suspended between selves, on the threshold of something irreversible
• The Symposiast - Grecian robes, gold, reclining at ease. ideas too large to contain

Be creative and inventive, not archival or historicist; explore, and enjoy <3

Please sail through our large & growing Pinterest board for lots of luscious inspiration:

https://uk.pinterest.com/foxandbadge/fb-202609-bacchanal/

GENERAL COSTUME GUIDANCE

Explore, augment, embellish - & shed ;) You don’t have to wear fetish or expose your flesh, though we all best revel in self expression; you do have to dress thoughtfully on theme.

Avoid slavish convention; add deviance & flair. Let go of gender stereotypes; allow fluid exchange between both masculine and feminine energy - & clothing.

Reinvent. Experiment. We love sexy, wild creativity. You are all artists - even if some in-waiting.

We especially love stuff you carefully and lovingly made yourself. No major expenditure is needed. Consider attending our event-specific Costume Workshop, ~3 weeks before the event, which is also a great opportunity to meet other attendees. Anna Kii from Figure of A will be running a costume making workshop in early September where we create shibari harnesses.

The unparalleled Prangsta Costumiers in Deptford will be offering all our guests a generous 15% discount when you whisper “Dionysus”.

This is a high-production, co-created arts & fetish event. It looks a little like a film set. Together we create incredible magic & mystery - so the banal & everyday are disruptive and unwelcome, and belong completely elsewhere. Absolutely NO daywear, streetwear, businesswear, officewear, banal-wear, or anything off-theme will be allowed. Absolutely NO T-shirts, shirts, jackets, slacks, sneakers - or anything ordinary you’d just wear down the street.

Our door team protect the event by denying entry to those who have not made a sincere effort.

We want you all to enter - but also need to safeguard the collective. Access is purely your responsibility.

Our intention is not to stress you, but to exalt you. To unleash your inner artist. If you are trying to figure out how to make this as easy and basic as possible, this is not the event for you; please simply come to one of our casual-wear meetups or workshops instead.

Any dress-code queries, please contact us via foxandbadge+dresscode@gmail.com & we’ll do our best to respond <3