Learning to swallow steel

I left off telling readers how I started in circus arts somewhere around the 'learning to eat fire' stage.  After learning a few disparate skills, I bought it all together doing a Dip of Small Companies/Community Theatre at VUT.  The particular incarnation I did was focussed on festival performing; I developed a lot of characters there and many good friends.

I was pleased to be going somewhere each day where I could focus on circus, and in particular, sword-swallowing.  It takes a lot of dedication ~ in the realm of 6 or 7 sessions of 3 or 4 swords a day; many sword-swallowers take years to learn and often rack up tens of thousands of swallows by the time they master it.  Then there is learning to do it at anytime, anywhere, with an audience heckling you and people and other performers distracting you ~ a completely new kettle of lobsters.

I first decided to try sword-swallowing after seeing The Enigma, a head-to-toe tattood swallower with Jim Rose Circus.  He jokingly told me the exercises to do to start killing off the gag reflexes, and on radio, Jim Rose outright told me that I'd never do it, being a woman (maybe he was ragging me, but it seriously pissed me off, and I was determined from then on).  I lost my lunch every time, and it would be another 10 years, when I started the circus sourse, before I would make any progress in the art.  I had, in that 10 years, done a lot of yoga, and that, combined with being 29, not 19, meant I knew my body far better, had an inner sense of calm (a lot of it is a mental skill), and progressed to the stage very quickly, initially starting as a duo with Bo Svoronos ~ 'Gunther and the Feral Beastie', progressing to cabaret, and then studying every street-performer in town to learn how to run a street show.

Today I mainly work on the street in the summer season, and at venues and festival gigs, parties, whatever I can get year round.  I also trained a small dog to work with me ~ Snicket ~ so I'd have company on the street, a gear-minder between shows, and an enthusiastic partner for burlesque shows.

Will post pics to accompany this when I get the chance.

Sword-swallowing piccies and extreme showreel shoots; Injuries.

Practicing at home

Hy-phen or no Hyphen?

Before I go any further...I want to settle this one...  The Americans don't hyphenate the word sword swallowing, so I haven't thus far in my blog, either.  But being a sometime grammatical pedant, I cannot go on without looking at the more correct version of the term.  So from here on it's sword-swallowing.  Phew.



Footage and Anecdotal musings

Here's a link to the showreel of some burlesque shows, and gigs with the band Psych Carni, during which I also played drums for the band and sang the odd tune (it was an odd tune, actually.  Our cover of 'Bela Lugosi's Dead', originally by bauhaus).


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkbjOH1djH0&list=PLE0224F7683D43171

This link is Psych Carni's myspace page, witth Bio and film-clips:

http://www.myspace.com/psychcarni


Supplementary footage for this and the some of the band's film-clips was shot in an abandoned warehouse in a Melbourne inner west suburb.  I remember swallowing dozens of swords for this shoot; very energy-sapping.  I think I bruised my lower oesaphageal sphincer that day due to so many bows with a sword down my throat.  Worse, though, was a casual camera moment at home, whence a friend took pics of 50+ sword-swallows, and I was left drinking tomato soup for a week due to the bruising in my throat from dozens of bows to get a decent pic.  'Soup for a week' is shorthand for me for overdoing it.  I have learnt in the ensuing years to pace myself and do a variety of poses, not the same thing over again or it can make your throat a little sore.  My throat has hardened and toned after nearly a decade now of swallowing swords...so I can cane it harder when need be, and know myself better, as to when to push it.  My throat actually callouses after 60 or so swords a week over the summer season, but gets a softer when, as of late, I'm not working so hard.

I had one nasty incident about 5 years ago, the story of which I will save for a future post.  I swallowed 10 swords over 10 street shows one night, 3 of which perforated my stomach wall.  It was unnoticable at the time, dramatic in the aftermath, and I was fine in the end.  For the most part, after years of practice, sword-swallowing is relatively safe unless you fall off a stage, someone in the audience or a performer on-stage pushes or knocks you, or you are distracted and just do it wrong.  But of course, when it's not safe, it's deadly.

Apply sword to throat...

Down, down, down...

Da-na...

and remove...

So there you go.  Sword-swallowing in pictures.  That's it for now.  Thanks for reading.

Chocolate and Sword Swallowing don't mix...

Ok, in order to satiate your curiosity about sword swallowing, I've popped back in to post something quick about the 'gentle art'...

Sword swallowing and chocolate, together, are a no-go-zone.  The stuff acts as sword glue and is a guaranteed way to take a layer of very delicate skin off the lining of your oesophagus.  It is very hard to remove a chocolate-covered sword from down your throat.  Removing the sword is supposed to be the easiest part of the process!

Chocolate with nuts is even worse.  It glues a layer of nut-sandpaper to your throat.  I am a bit of a choco-hound and I had to learn this early on in my performing career...don't sustain myself with chocolate between shows!

Incidentally, vodka is great for your throat while sword swallowing.  It disinfects your throat, especially if you know you've swallowed a germ and surgically implanted it down there, and has saved me a few times from getting quite ill.  I have been horridly sick with the flu a couple of times after getting a germ-laden sword.  One does disinfect the thing before swallowing it, but those little airborne nasties are quick little buggers...especially if someone who should be in bed sneezes at you from the audience.  So vodka is great for the throat, but not so good for the clarity of the brain...  Beer is bloody useless ~ all that gas has to go somewhere when the dipstick goes down, and that somewhere is inevitably up and out, and audibly so.  It is hard enough to smile at the audience with tears in your eyes after sword swallowing ~ even harder when you can't stop burping!

Forever Dangerous, Always Fun

My Mum has asked me for some time to write about my work as a sword swallower.  Seeing as the only autobiography of a sword swallower, Memoirs of a Sword Swallower, by Daniel Mannix is reputedly not written by a sword swallower at all, I thought I may as well...  I am a fan of D. Mannix's writing, but historically there are no references to him ever trying the art.  He does not appear over at SSAI (Sword Swallower's Association International)'s list of sword swallowers past and present, either.

I started on the road to circus arts at 14... I'd hung about the amazing French circus 'Archaos' for weeks when they visited, making friends with the performers, being wowed by Pascualito Voinet's 15ft fire-breathing skills.  I decided to start with fire.  Circus Oz put me in touch with Annie Davey, at that time the fire-effects person for Circus Oz.  She met me at the Black Cat in Brunswick and took me a few doors up to her warehouse, where she taught me the fundamentals of fire-eating and breathing (fire-spitting).  She was, and still is, a marvelously eccentric character.  By chance I ran into her sister, Maude Davey, just a fortnight ago, who had just finished a burlesque show for Moomba.  We reminisced about those days, after eventually working out who each other actually was!  Burlesque is, incidentally, a huge part of womens' circus biz nowdays.

The fire stuff served me well. I practised every day before going to school at Ardoch-Windsor in Prahran, and would pull it out onstage as part of the acts for the bands I played with.  Being underage at that time, and a barefoot drummer, I was frequently kicked out of the pubs after we'd played for being either barefoot or underage or both.  I taught a fewof the dramatically talented Ardoch kids to fire-spit during lunchbreaks from school in Alma park.  I recall Brooke nearly burning all of his long, luscious brown hair off once when the wind changed unexpectedly.

I did a fire act as a guest on Fairstar the Funship once, while traveling with my Grandmother as her companion, and spat fire in every place we docked for the 22 day trip.  My main memory of the act on the ship is that the parquetry ballroom floor was covered in a film of fuel afterwards, causing a line of tap-dancing septegenarians to fall on their arses...

To be continued...and at some point, I'll get around to talking about the sword swallowing!