 "Photo: Photo courtesy of ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE CINEMA")
They tell everyone it’s kind of like air guitar, with fewer rules and more orgasms.
And by “it,” I mean air sex.
The Air Sex World Championships started when Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League saw a viral video of several Japanese boys miming sex because they had no girlfriends.
“We like to collect wacky Japanese videos and assemble them into compilations,” said coordinator Henri Mazza. “[League] saw it and decided it was too good to put in a video compilation — we had to do something with it. The first one was just a one-off where we said, ‘Hey, let’s have people come up and do this.’ We’ve been doing air guitar for a while so we had that kind of outreach and said, ‘Make it like air guitar, except sexy.’”
Originally, the championships were a monthly event only for Austinites, but last year’s championships — held at the beginning of Fantastic Fest — was such a hit that this summer, the show’s organizers took the tour to 15 different cities and invited the top performers from each city to participate in the first nationwide championship event this Saturday.
“We had people use background music and gave them a couple minutes to perform the sex and then invited people to just go crazy,” Mazza said. “It was a big hit, a lot of fun. Disturbing at times, but that just added to the fun. All of that built up to the first annual championships at opening night of Fantastic Fest at the Paramount. Of course, the ushers freaked and we were told we could never do it at the Paramount again. So this year we paired up with the Highball.”
hile most of the online videos of the acts are intended to be funny, Mazza said there were some surprisingly intimate moments, especially during the earlier competitions.
“People would come out and you’d be like ‘Whoa, I just had an actual glimpse into your love life,’” he said. “And that’s frightening. Now, it’s more of a humorous, over-the-top kind of sex thing. The performances that have been erotic have been fine, but they don’t get the audience as much. It’s not a strip club; we want to see a story. That is very difficult to do with any sort of true eroticism with no partner on stage.”
While something as overt as air sex has inevitably generated some heat, especially in comments on the online videos, most of the reactions to the event have been positive, and it’s only likely to grow in popularity.
“The people that are coming to the show know what they’re coming to. On the video comments, we’ve seen backlash, you know, ‘Get a life you guys, you’re perverted.’ But whatever, it’s the Internet, and that’s what it’s for — random hating. Once you’re in the venue, if you stick around it’s because you’re curious. The crowd has a great time.”
WHAT: Air Sex World Championships
WHEN: Friday, 10:30 p.m.
WHERE: The Highball, 1142 S. Lamar Blvd.
TICKETS: $8
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