magicstunts.co.za

It’s been almost a month since i’ve written anything on this blog, mostly because we haven’t had any fire dancing gigs. We haven’t been able to take any on because we’ve just been too busy running the West End Theatre. The theatre is finished with the last show for the year now so we’ll be focusing more on the fire dancing for a while over the festive season, There’s usually a big demand for fire performances at year end corporate functions and christmas parties.

Alan fire dancing with one staff

So anyway, focusing on the fire dancing means writing about it I suppose so let’s fill in a little background first. Last year (2008) Magic Stunts tried to host the first National Firedance competition. Ha! first of all we discovered that firedancers are a particularly uncompetitive bunch, although we still think we would have had enough competitors/performers to hold an actual competition, but we were relying heavily on venue infrastructure under someone else’s control and they turned out to not quite as honest as we thought, so Magic Stunts had to pull out before any of our fire dancing friends in the community got ripped off, as so many young models and dancers do every year.

Although the experience left a bit of a bitter taste, we made a lot of really nice friends along the way and discovered a lot of new (to us) performers, both amateur and proffesional, most of whom are still friends. The idea of a national championship has not altogether dissapeared but had to be put aside for a while due to us being so busy with other stuff

Really long poi type fire chains

What the competition did for us and a lot of other fire-dancing teams though was to kick business into a higher gear because of the increased exposure. Suddenly everybody wants a firedancer at their party and no more mediocre half hearted stuff is acceptable. This is great for fire dancing in general as everybody is stepping up a notch and challenging themselves, techniques are being shared, safety improved and new things developed. Exciting times for the fire dance community lie ahead, i’m sure.