How did it start?

Actually, by coincidence.
I used to train in gymnastics and in the Club I trained there were also a bunch of circus artists. I liked the idea of being able to create my own acts, design my own costumes and pick my own music for Cabaret shows or for events. At that point, I wasn't creating my own pieces yet as a dancer so this creative outlet seemed like a lot of freedom to me!

Photo: Anna Marie Slater

I performed in Venues such as Madame Jojo's, Volupte, Proud Cabaret Brighton, The Irish Center, Cirque du Soir, various corporate events, and I went on tour with the opera Aida.

The worst thing that happened

This is one of the most embarrassing moments of my entire performance career: I set my hair on fire on stage in front of 2000 people. To make this even worse it happened on my 25th birthday.

I felt so helpless.

Also, the only person I could see was the conductor, (in big theatres the lights are so bright that you often can't see the audience, you use certain markers, like the tech booth to orientate yourself, the conductor has a little lamp to read the music) and he was laughing like crazy. He didn't even try to keep his shit together. (I don't really blame him)

It wasn't really anyone's fault, since we only performed one day at each location and the size and depth of the stage always changed. This was my first tour so I didn't really know how to adapt to changing spaces yet so I moved too far back by accident and my fire poi hit some furniture on the stage and bounced from there straight onto my head.

Luckily I only lost some hair and didn't get burned.

Up to this day, I have some friends that call me when they have a bad day and ask me to tell this story to make them laugh. (LOL)

Why did I stop?

Well, the experience of setting my hair on fire didn't help, but mainly I just wasn't as passionate about it as I was for dancing and I realized the effort of keeping up this skill, alongside paying for insurance, keeping on having costumes made and the maintenance of the equipment wasn't really worth it for me!

I am grateful I had these experiences though. And at the very least you can brag about it!