Even though drones are commonly used to capture and record breathtaking sceneries from above, they themselves have full potential to become astonishing works of art.

In the recent project Sky Magic Live at Mt. Fuji: Drone Ballet Show held at the foot of Mt. Fuji, creative director Tsuyoshi Takashiro released 20 drones equipped with 16,500 LED lights into the night, filling the dark sky with brightly lit drones.

The Sky Magic drones were developed by Japanese tech company MicroAid, and they took to the skies in sync to shamisen music played by the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-kai. The flashing drones danced to the sounds of the traditional Japanese instruments, displaying a performance of traditional-meets-modern unlike any other.

With Mt. Fuji as the backdrop, the highly calculated performance is almost surreal. It even looks as though the drones were filmed separately and were later mounted onto footage of Mt. Fuji, but you can rest assured that they were not. In fact, the machines and the visual and audio aspects were all controlled concurrently, allowing for the incredibly synchronized movement and effects.

Creative director Takashiro, a famous filmmaker and writer, took on the project so that he could “bring new magic to the skies” using the Sky Magic drones.

Magic it is indeed, and we wonder what other fantastic ideas he has up his sleeve.