Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/174531
arts the Flight of Mind E ach time Robert Dean is in London, he makes his way to Kensington Gardens, walks past the Long Water, and fnds the 10-foot-tall Peter Pan. He climbs the bronze sculpture's tree-trunk pedestal, using its decorative fairies and squirrels and rabbits as footholds. When he's high enough, he proudly puckers his lips and kisses Peter Pan. Right on the rump. Tis is no smart-ass ass kiss. It's a thank-you. Because without Peter Pan, the performance-fying industry — lifting actors and the moon and even Jesus with ropes and harnesses — may have never left the ground. "Peter Pan," the 41-year-old Dean says, "drove the investment in technology to do better performer fying." It's a little after 11 a.m. and Dean sits in ZFX Flying Efects' Louisville ofce on Industry Road, among the storage businesses near his Old Louisville home. Dean never tells clients or new employees that he founded the company. "I don't want a title to gauge how people treat me," he says. When he was 18, in his hometown of Las Vegas (his father served in the Navy for 22 years and was stationed in Morocco, where the son was born), Dean was a janitor at Flying by Foy, the fying-efects business' original king. In '94 he broke away, started ZFX in his twocar garage, storing fying gear in his living room and testing ropes and harnesses in backyard trees. Fifteen months later, ZFX had a 88 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 10.13 1,000-square-foot warehouse, which would greatly expand, serving productions of Aladdin and Cirque du Soleil and, yes, Peter Pan. Dean says the cost of living in Vegas was ridiculous. On a long fight to the Netherlands (now home to ZFX's European ofce), he decided to relocate, picking Louisville for its central location and afordable living costs. He especially liked the fying Pegasus wire sculpture at the airport. (Dean's wife Emily is ZFX's production manager, and their two-year-old son is named Nevada.) ZFX is now a multimillion-dollar company with more than 50 employees working on more than 300 annual productions all over the world, and in town with the likes of Actors Teatre, Kentucky Opera, Southeast Christian and several high schools. Today, Dean's wearing a basil-green Utilikilt — a kilt with Carharttcomparable cloth. Te kilt is ZFX's symbol, representing openmindedness, and all of the employees have at least one. Dean owns 30. He wore one while doing ZFX work in fve-degree weather, shivering in front of Beijing's Forbidden City. He got the black polo shirt he's wearing while "fying" magic carpets at a 2012 festival in Saudi Arabia. Over the left breast: a large, jockey-ridden gold camel. In the warehouse, six hot-air balloon baskets, the Wizard of Oz's escape vehicle, sit atop a shelving unit that almost reaches the tallenough-to-ft-a-semi ceiling. Below that: a truss-mounted lifting