NEW YORK - It was Valentine’s Day at the House of Yes, an old ice warehouse turned event space in Brooklyn: The three-story space was swathed in red satin and velvet, and red aerialists’ silks hung from the circus truss that spanned the ceiling. Kae Burke, 23, who runs House of Yes with her high school friend Anya Sapozhnikova, twined her way up and down the silks, while Marcie Grambeau, a 23-year-old New York University student played “Tainted Love” on her violin. Rhiannon Erbach-Gruber, 30, was singing from a perch halfway to the ceiling.

Forty guests lured there by a Facebook page had paid $40 for an evening of dim sum and spectacle devised by Tara McManus, 27, a costume designer and event producer. Servers and performers received a small fee, but many had worked for pizza and the chance to be a part of the run-up to the event, creating costumes and decorations. “This is why I moved to New York,” said Ms. Grambeau .

Armed with glitter and grit, glue guns and sewing machines, impresarios like Ms. Burke and Ms. McManus have been redecorating the landscape of the city’s afterdark underground, tweaking and honing the warehouse parties that have moved around Brooklyn for more than a decade into evermore- refined environments.

Theirs is a tight-knit community of makers and performers, who share resources - from bolts of fabric and guest lists to manpower - and some ideologies, the most urgent of which is a do-it-yourself mentality that defines a good time not as passive entertainment but as a participatory event. With roots that reach back to ‘60s “happenings,” it’s an ever-cresting notion of participatory culture that has been nurtured at festivals like Burning Man and careers through New York City’s many quasipolitical or creative tribes, from street theater to burlesque.

For those raised on the New York clubs of the ‘70s, ‘80s or even ‘90s, this is a startlingly healthy night life scene, in which decor trumps the use of drugs.

A few kilometers away from the House of Yes extravaganza, another pageant was unfurling. Larisa Fuchs, 31, had transformed a loft into “The Vault of Golden Vapors,” a theme party with vintage Chinese jazz and Asian burlesque and an opium-den decor. Early in the evening, Laura Lee Gulledge, a body painter, observed over her shoulder that “glitter is the herpes of the craft world,” as she blew red glitter on the arm of Naomi Ruth, 30, a poet who had moved into the space two weeks earlier (rent: $800 a month).
“Doing things is more fun than just watching, and people are more creative than they think they are,” said Dan Glass, 43, a freelance writer and fire-effects maker who has deployed his jaw-dropping fire sprinkler, fire whip and fire rope both at Burning Man and at Ms. Fuchs’s Halloween party .

“It starts with something easy ? costumes ? and builds from there,” Mr. Glass continued. “Not only do people have more fun, but the overall effect, as time goes on, is people feel more of a sense of community and more of a sense of responsibility for their community.”

If everyone was an artist in the ‘90s, this is shaping up to be the era of the events producer.

“I love that everyone comes with this attitude of ‘I’ll bring tools,’ ” said Ms. Erbach-Gruber . “I just love the effort.”


By PENELOPE GREEN

MICHAEL FALCO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A do-it-yourself mentality has taken over the underground party scene in Brooklyn.