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WE’RE LOVING GLOVING NOW

Today, we are checking out one of the coolest Beautiful Pairs phenomena happening right now: Gloving. It’s a new form of dance, performed with pairs of special lighted gloves. And it can blow your mind.

Gloving is a new genre of light arts, performance arts that use light effects to create moving imagery.

Fire spinners, light flow toys, poi (a type of lighted yo-yo), and glow sticks are also part of the light art movement, each with its own passionate clan of fans, although gloving far outnumbers them.

Developed in 2006 by an artist named Hermes, gloving was originally all about enhancing the trippy experience of ravers whose minds were under the influence of MDMA (Molly) at Electronic Dance Music (EDM) festivals, raves, and concerts. It began to catch on, like wildfire, at venues like Coachella, Burning Man, Camp Bisco, and Electric Zoo.

Glovers perform in the dark -- at night or when the house lights are down. They wear pairs of gloves outfitted with special micro-lights that create patterns and trails as they move their hands. Their fingers dance to the music, mesmerizing everyone who is grooving to the beat with a spectacular mini light show.

Moving your fingers around might sound like a simple thing, but glovers have elevated the performance with techniques like "popping" — quickly tensing then releasing muscles to create a "stop and glitch" look, and "liquid," a joint-by-joint motion that creates the illusion of flowing water.

Because this visual delight was inspired by and is beloved by MDMA trippers, the artform is a bit controversial. In fact some venues have banned gloving at their events as they try to distance themselves from the drug culture.

But glovers argue that you have to be straight and sober to be an awesome glover. And, with millions of gloving fans and a rapidly growing number of enthusiasts, the art of gloving has transcended its druggie heritage, just as jazz, rock, and other music genres have done.

Gloving has now been featured on The Voice, America's Best Dance Crew, and Shake it Up.

Brian Lim, master-glover, CEO, and founder of EmazingLights and iHeartRaves, has built a gloving and rave empire.

Now, just 27 years old, he sits on top of a more than $16 million (sales) business that he began 5 years ago when he created his first pair of gloving gloves and began selling handmade lighted gloves from the trunk of his car at a Baldwin Park In-n-Out Burger.

Now Lim operates out of a 15,000 square foot warehouse in Anaheim and has expanded to include four additional EmazingLights/iHeartRaves stores across California and Texas. His business serves a community of more than 20,000 performers.

Lim has developed awesome gloving competitions in which glovers from around the country and the world come together on a monthly basis to perform and compete for cash and prizes. The glovers who excel at execution, musicality, cleanliness, variety, and trick difficulty win.

Earlier this fall, the fourth annual International Gloving Championship took place at the Yost Theater in Santa Ana, about 30 miles southeast of Downtown LA. Over 150 competitors played with the minds of over 500 attendees.

Lim has also helped to develop the first professional gloving team, called the Light Theory, that performs at EDM events and festivals.

Inc. magazine recently included Lim and EmazingLights in its Inc. 500 list this year, at No. 189. So check out some EDM, kick back, and zone out with some Beautiful Pairs. Who knows what you might be inspired to do.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Pairs in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 11.16.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!