Exotic entertainment will enter a whole new frontier of zero-gravity environment venues later this year when acclaimed multimedia artist and international showmaker Natasha Tsakos takes her acrobatic dance team into the wild blue yonder and beyond.
This thrilling Paraboles multimedia performance, produced in association with the MIT Space Exploration Initiative and Zero-G, will gather a brave group of professionals from Cirque du Soleil, National Geographic and NASA to stage the uplifting event. As the space economy blossoms, Tsakos is aiming to deliver culturally relevant content into the expanding realm of aerospace innovation.
“I’m a producer, director, designer, and performer and I create live multimedia theatrical shows,” Tsakos told Space.com. “I integrated technology early on in the 2000s with projection mapping and leveraging CGI with the performers on stage before it was common. From there I got to open the G-20 Summit and create shows for the Discovery Channel and Tribeca Film Festival and worked with Cirque du Soleil and opened the Super Bowl. So I’ve been on this string of extraordinary experiences and throughout, my moonshot was always to create shows for space.”
Watch On
Set aboard Zero-G’s specially modified Boeing 727-200 dubbed “G-Force One,” Paraboles will be presented and filmed along 25 gravity-defying parabolic arcs, with each segment promising 22 seconds of free-floating microgravity conditions. A trio of skilled performers and two cinematographers will work in multiple zero-G zones sometime this fall, recording the sublime poetry of motion in a transcendent environment unhindered by the earthly bounds of gravity.
Tsakos was unsure of what that notion might evolve into as a reality, as she was enticed by the pure poetry of space as most dreamers and artists have fallen prey to.
“So I enrolled in the New Space Economy course at MIT that allowed me to really create this bold, ambitious 100-year plan with no limits.” she told Space.com. “Where we’re envisioning our own international performance space station and the evolution of performing arts on the moon and Mars. Then we reverse engineered, and asked where do we start? We start aboard the Zero-G flights and we have to start training and developing new forms of theatrical art. I’ve always been interested in stretching the performing art form and going past the phase of experimentation.”
The result of this endeavor will be a cinematic art film, short documentary, and an immersive installation, which will premiere in 2026. Tsakos has engaged global audiences in the millions, from Miami to Montreux, with the goal of redefining live performances from high above Earth to the limits of imagination and possibility.
Fortified with NASA funding, Tsakos has undergone astronautical training, including the Lunar-G Impedance Study at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Neutral Buoyancy training at NASA Ames, MIT’s New Space Economy program, and NASA L’SPACE Academy in preparation for this spirited enterprise.
“All the pieces are in place, the team is ready. At Pixar I’ve storyboarded all of the experience because it doesn’t have language. I use movements, motion, music dynamics, and visuals to take you through this experience. Paraboles is a poetic, cinematic, dance theater, research-based experiment and it delves into the tension between holding on and letting go.”
Watch On
“It follows three characters holding onto their stories, beliefs, and memories. We’re leveraging the force of the hypergravity and microgravity as parts of the dramaturgy and the narrative to create this experience to be filmed aboard the Zero-G plane. Then all the beauty and the worldbuilding will happen in post-production.”
Paraboles was born two years ago and the group is scheduled to fly this fall with MIT’s Space Exploration Initiative with Zero-G as a sponsor, in conjunction with local Miami cultural partners including Live Arts Miami, Miami Nights Project, and O Cinema, which is where the piece will premiere. Creativity America is also onboard as a national creative partner.
On the educational and scientific fronts, they’ll have the beginning of a training curriculum for artists who want to work in that environment.
“We’re also pairing our performance with science. We have a bio-astronautic officer who oversees payloads for Virgin Galactic and SpaceX and even the ISS and she will be tracking our biometrics so we’ll have some actual published research.” Tsakos adds. “End of July or early August is when we’ll start a 50-day intensive training regimen that I’m super excited about. We’ll be training in wind tunnels at iFLY here in Miami and underwater at the MDC Aquatic Center, and then aerobatic aircraft at the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences in Melbourne.”
For more information on the Paraboles project visit their official site.