BRATTLEBORO — The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center presents its 11th Annual Domino Toppling Extravaganza on Sunday, Sept. 30, at 5:30 p.m. Doors open at 5 p.m. for audience members to choose their vantage point and inspect the domino course before it all comes tumbling down.
Admission is on a first-come, first-served basis - free for kids 8 and under, $3 for BMAC members, $5 for everyone else. Audience members will have a chance to guess how many dominoes make up the course; whoever comes the closest will get to start the entire chain reaction.
BMAC's domino topplings began in 2008, when Mike and Steve Perrucci, brothers from Perkasie, Pennsylvania, traveled to Brattleboro to build and then topple a course created specifically for BMAC.
The Perruccis returned to Brattleboro each of the next four years, creating bigger and more amazing courses each time. In 2011 the brothers enlisted the help of other domino-toppling enthusiasts, who eventually took the helm after the Perruccis retired from domino duty.
Now in its 11th year, BMAC's annual topple is the longest-running event of its type in the world.
This year's course will be created by Nathan Heck, Lily Hevesh, Shane O'Brien, and Chris Wright, all of whom have participated in the BMAC event in previous years.
Hevesh, whose YouTube channel, Hevesh5, has more than two million subscribers, is quite possibly the best known domino artist in the world. She pursues her uncommon art full time, and her mesmerizing videos have been viewed more than 250 million times and counting.
The four topplers will arrive in Brattleboro on the Friday before the event; it will take them at least 24 hours of solid work to fill the floor of the museum's Wolf Kahn & Emily Mason Gallery with dominoes. The toppling itself will last about 5 minutes.
“This event has attracted quite a following,” BMAC Director Danny Lichtenfeld said in a news release. “Every year, the museum has been filled to capacity, with audience members squeezed around the perimeter of the museum's main gallery. It's loads of fun, but also nerve-racking, since one false move could trigger the entire chain reaction.”
For more information, call 802-257-0124 or visit www.brattleboromuseum.org.