Dan
Worldwide, --
Male, 33
Lead artist, feature act and fire coach for Cirque Du Soleil. Recently for the ZAiA production in Macau from 2010 to 2012. Currently freelancing while between Cirque contracts.
I'm a fire dancer / fire manipulation specialist. I use flaming props such as fire swords, fire ropes, fire staffs, with special effects and pyrotechnics in a combination of dance and martial arts style movements. Ask me anything, and check my website... www.sparkfiredance.com
Auditions for Cirque are very competitive. It's many people's dream to be on the stage with Cirque. Dancers, clowns, jugglers all come by the hundreds. People travel internationally to attend the casting calls with the hopes their skills will stand out. Obviously for most it doesn't end up with a position but I think, I hope, it's a very interesting and rewarding experience for them anyway. The casting scouts and agents themselves have great interpersonal skills. It's their job to encourage people to show their true selves and push their boundaries in an uncomfortable environment. They might ask you to play weird characters, dance with the intent of a particular emotion, improvise a routine to music you've never heard. There's a good documentary following some artists through the audition process to give you a better idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLouxprAHtQ Personally I'm speaking from secondhand knowledge as I bypassed the audition process. I had been contacted by cirque requesting technical advice during the development of a show that I ended up being cast to. I knew the fire artist on that show, had worked with him, and he had recommended they contact me for advice when they found themselves in a tricky situation with fire fuels. I had already submitted material to the casting department some time ago and due to my unique/rare skill-set I had been accepted onto the database as a potential candidate without an audition. When that fire artist decided to leave the show I was in a unique position, with just the right techniques, very similar props and movement, and the right level of experience. I got an email from them shortly afterwards requesting a phone conversation and took it onwards from there.
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Worst? hmm well, luckily none of my injuries have been what you'd call properly severely major. I'll just list a few. I've torn my hamstring rather badly, main muscle body and attachment, that took 12 months. But I got to try a very cool cutting edge technique to treat it called plasma injection prolotherapy. I fractured my left forearm, ulna, but it was a hairline fracture that went undiagnosed, couldn't figure out why what I thought was a ligament strain was so painful and ended up working through it only figuring it out later. Tore a very inconvenient ligament in my left wrist. Had to spend 20 minutes taping it up before every show. For 5 months. Burnt all the skin off the tops of my fingers dealing with someone else's f*ckup. Set my back on fire once, that one was totally my own fault :-) I've completely ruptured some of the triangular fibrocartilage complex in my right wrist. Still hurts to do handstands, which really sucks. But worst.... yeah worst would have to be a full back muscle spasm I had during a show. I pushed through it, finished the act, staggered offstage and couldn't walk for a week. Back injuries suck big time. For over a year I kept getting twinges, had to modify my training and conditioning a lot, and always had a fear in the back of my head when heading up to stage that it was going to happen again. That one took a very long time to get over. I think it was really a turning point and the end of my feelings of youth and invincibility. The rest, smacks, cuts, strains, burns, are all just part of the deal and not really worth mentioning. My discipline is actually rather lightweight. Talk to a teeterboard artist whose doing 12 shows a week about their knees and ankles. Ever seen an MRI of a shattered femur?
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It's real fire. I deal with real heat, real burns. Over the years I've learnt how to work with it very closely. I've found the limits by constantly pushing them. I've always wanted to bring the maximum possible fire to the stage with my props. To drag it over my skin, to hear the audience gasp. The pain is momentary, a challenge, and its something you learn to push through. It brings authenticity and intensity to the performance. It comes down to timing, muscle memory, costume material selection and pain tolerance. For me, it's worth it, for the amazement of the crowd, for doing the seeming impossible, for having the chance in my life, to do something no one else has done before, to try to be the best at something, for a brief moment, so fleeting in the scale of things, but to shine as brightly as I can. You can see some of my work here: vimeo.com/sparkfire
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On the Zaia show they were happy for the audience to take pictures to try to spread the word back into the difficult to penetrate mainland Chinese market. I think flash photography is obviously a safety hazard. As far as the rest I guess it's to help keep people coming to watch the shows rather than seeing it on youtube.
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'Ghost in the Shell' would be cool. A bit different for a change, neo-tech Japanese cyborg mech kinda thing. Could use some of the latest projection mapping, holographics and animatronics in the design.
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Scared? no. There's still stage nerves sometimes. New act, big show, tough crowd etc. But scared of what I do? No. I've worked with fire and my props for a very long time. I've never been afraid of the fire. Sometimes it demands respect, and sometimes you push to far and you have to deal with some pain, but it's much scarier to stand on stage without fire all around me.
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Varies greatly by discipline. Violinists, jugglers, acrobats, breakdancers, aerialists, trampolinists, singers, all have different requirements. Everyone comes to Cirque with a very high level of experience and have their own training backgrounds and lifestyles. Although there are combined training sessions for the group acts, which sometimes incorporate conditioning (i.e. ankle training for the teeterboard cast, shoulder training for the trapeze cast, generally run by the physio's) it's each artists responsibility to maintain his or herself to the levels demanded of them.
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