Dance Dance Immolation was an interactive performance piece by fire art group Interpretive Arson based out of the artist work space known as NIMBY in East Oakland. It is a modified version of Dance Dance Revolution where players are shot with fire if they perform poorly. Participants are not harmed since they wear a fire proximity suit with forced-air respirators. Numerous other safeguards are built into the system to ensure the players are not subject to direct flame exposure or inhalation of superheated air. The piece was premiered in 2005 and ran at various festivals and private events internationally. It was retired in 2013 at Burning Man, where all the components were gathered into a pile and a piano was dropped on it.
Members of Interpretive Arson began the project in 2005,[1] when they received a grant from BORG2, an offshoot of artists associated with the West Coast art festival Burning Man.[2] The game premiered at The Crucible's Fire Arts Festival in Oakland, California,[3] before the current version, a full two-player game, was completed and installed at Burning Man in 2005.[4] The game reappeared at Burning Man 2006 and 2007,[5][6] and occasionally in Interpretive Arson's warehouse in Oakland, until 2007.[7] In 2009 Dance Dance Immolation appeared at Smukfest in Denmark.[8]
In 2013, Dance Dance Immolation was taken back out to the Burning Man festival for its final run. It was, at the end of the week, destroyed by dropping a piano on it.[9]
In the 2007 video game Team Fortress 2, an achievement referencing this machine called "Dance Dance Immolation" can be unlocked by killing three taunting enemies.[11]
