STORYTELLING DEPT. SWEATING IT

On the hottest day in New York City in a decade, nearly a hundred people crowded into a hundred-andseventy-degree sauna in a converted brewery in Williamsburg for the first U.S. National Aufguss Competition.

- Leslie Jamison

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 loylyand 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." 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