On the hottest day in New York City in a decade, nearly a hundred people crowded into a hundred-and-seventy-degree sauna in a converted brewery in Williamsburg for the first U.S. National Aufguss Competition. An Aufguss—from the German word for “infusion”—is a ritual sauna ceremony that lasts for twelve to fifteen minutes. A sauna master fills the room with carefully curated scents by dropping snowballs containing essential oils onto hot rocks—the Finnish word for the resulting plume of steam is loyly—and waves a towel to distribute heat through the room. Alonzo Solórzano, the twenty-nine-year-old director of Aufguss at Bathhouse, where the competition took place, likes to say, “My job is to make the room very, very hot. And I like my job.”
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The ritual dates back thousands of years, but it has recently seen a surge in popularity; an Aufguss World Championship has been held every September for the past decade. (The United States will participate in this year’s championship, in Verona, Italy.) Competitors are graded on five categories, ranging from Professionalism (“Eye contact, connection with audience, fitness condition”) to Increase and Distribution of the Heat. Towel-waving involves an intricate flow of flips, curls, and twirls, each with its own name: helicopter, dirty copter, pizza, super8. The nationals showcased a specialty called Theatre Aufguss, in which the contestant performs a dramatic narrative. As a regular put it, “It’s Kabuki in the heat.”
In a big brick-walled central chamber of Bathhouse which still smelled of hops, the crowd was chattering: a sauna master had run head first into a door and given himself a bloody nose. It was the second day of competition, and the final three Aufguss competitors were the most (yes) hotly anticipated: Alexi and Joli Irvine (known as the Vegas Sisters); Travis Talmadge (a Bathhouse founder), who would be performing a piece about the C.I.A. testing psychedelics on civilians; and Solórzano, who would do a “dusty Western” in which he played a cowboy trying to escape his own violent habits. (Solórzano likes to wear a cowboy hat even when he’s not playing a cowboy, usually with a gold cross and a Speedo.) “A lot of Theatre Aufguss is campy,” he said later. “But being that viscerally involved in the heat—literally breathing the story into your body with the scents—it all brings you more deeply into it.”
Before the ceremony began, a Malaysian judge led an opening chant. He counted down from three, and everyone cried, “Aufguss!” He counted back up to three, and everyone cried, “Family!” The Vegas Sisters, in rhinestone-covered bodysuits, went first, playing out a mythic story of sororal affection and rivalry, their snowballs alternating between “hot” scents (blood orange, cinnamon) and “cold” ones (pine, peppermint, eucalyptus). Their synchronized towel-waving was topped only by their synchronized double-towel-waving: a towel in each hand, a whirling maelstrom of terry cloth. Afterward, a spectator said, “Very Vegas, all the way.” Her companion replied, “I liked it best when they weren’t getting along. Their hostile dancing was incredible.”
Next came Solórzano, who performed in a leather jacket, throwing his first snowball from a cocktail shaker—a blend of cedar, benzoin, and cardamom which conjured the smell of whiskey. To a soundtrack of ragtime and death-metal bluegrass, he waved his towel with muscular grace, using it to represent (variously) lightning in a prairie thunderstorm, his dead lover’s body, and a bar tray that he used to deflect bullets. Between vigorous towel-waving sequences, he narrated his moral dilemma, of whether or not to take vengeance on his former best friend, an outlaw who’d killed his girl: “If he wants forgiveness, my iron will rule!” As the temperature surged to two hundred degrees, Solórzano slammed a snowball scented with black pepper and juniper tar onto the rocks, filling the room with a gunpowdery musk, and waved furiously, darting up and down the sauna stairs, tossing his towel in an elegant plume of white. The crowd went wild.
At the climax, Solórzano’s character shot his rival, and the dying man’s recorded voice filled the room, croaking out a victorious confession: “You slayed me—as I wanted you to.” Later, Solórzano said that, though he knew the judges liked happy endings, he “didn’t want a story that gets tied up with a pretty bow. That’s not what a cowboy tragedy is.”
The nationals ended with a ceremony by a rooftop pool, where a Norwegian judge, Lasse Erikson, gave a passionate speech about “sweat culture and storytelling.” He said, “In my home country, we have 5.5 million people, and four million go to sauna. In Finland, they have 5.5 million people, and 5.5 million go to sauna!” The winner of the solo competition was Solórzano, the crowd favorite. With his Speedo, cross, and cowboy hat, he will be off to represent the U.S.A. in Verona next month. ♦
