By JUSTIN HAMPTON
SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
A
fter 9 on Wednesday nights in downtown L.A., a usually abandoned parking
lot catches fire. Soot-covered toolboxes, fire extinguishers, fireproof duvetin
blankets and metallic canisters of white gas are stacked on the asphalt.
And a colorful group of characters ranging from young professionals to street
performers and pink-haired ravers pull their hair back and reveal their identities
as pyrophiles, members of Los Angeles’s growing community of fire performers.
This informal practice group, called Fireplay,
has been meeting here for a year and a half, bringing together a crowd of
about 50 to trade information on upcoming performances, teach newcomers,
practice acrobatic moves and dance steps and occasionally “light up” their
equipment.
Some juggle burning torches. Others might dance
with “poi,” flaming rectangular wicks that hang at intervals along chains
or cables and swing across the body in incandescent streaks. Whatever the
tool or technique, the goal is the same: to channel fire’s compelling and
paradoxical nature into fun, spiritual fulfillment-and even rent-paying gigs
at raves, dance clubs and in films.
Once underground, pyrophile communities like
Fireplay now thrive in practically every continent and communicate with each
other through international online destinations such as Home of Poi. Dance
clubs and films such as “Charlie’s Angels,” “The Beach” and “Queen of the
Damned” have tapped the chic atavism of the fire phenomenon for background
flavor. A disparate group of acolytes ranging from ravers and Goths to Renaissance
Fair attendees has discovered common ground in an undertaking at once universal
and intensely tribal. And with the resurgent popularity comes a new desire
for legitimacy, as local pyrophiles seek to adjust laws and public perception
to support their ambitions.
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Reduced to its elements, a typical performance consists
of a provocatively dressed performer dancing with flaming props-poi, batons
or ornate finger extensions with wicks on the ends-until the fire goes out.
Maori tribesmen of the Polynesian Islands and New Zealand are credited with
developing the poi tradition, while fire-eating and breathing are centuries-old
circus tricks.
There’s no denying that the inherent danger
of manipulating fire accounts for some of its appeal, says James Taylor,
author of the circus sideshow periodical “Shocked and Amazed! On and Off
the Midway. “Fire fascinates people, because you’re like a rising phoenix
out of it.You’re going into what people fear, and you’re coming out of it
apparently unscathed, surviving the worst that nature can throw at you. Fire
plays with all of our primal fears at the base. [It’s like] ‘This is nothing
any normal and intelligent human should do, and here are people playing with
it like it’s where they live.’ It’s very hard to top that as an act.”
But invincibility is a hard-won illusion. Most
longtime fire dancers have been burned at least once in their careers, and
fire-breathers can suffer crippling “blowbacks” of the flame into their face
or throat, as well as kidney and liver failures brought about by ingesting
fuel.
E.J. “Tedward” LeCouteur, an L.A. fire aficionado,
has developed a cottage industry within this growing community by selling
poi chains, Kevlar wicks and other fire tools and toys through his online
company Bearclaw Manufacturing (www.bearclawmfg.com). All are designed to
be safer than equipment performers might make themselves.
Like many who now work with fire, Lecouteur
first made contact with serious fire performance at the Burning Man Arts
Festival in northwestern Nevada. He speaks fondly of a moment in the festival
where he displayed his 10-year experience as a Kendo instructor with a pair
of flaming swords for an awe-stricken crowd. Laid off from his job as a management
information systems specialist, LeCouteur turned to making fire apparatus.
At Fireplay, LeCouteur frequently safety-tests
his equipment, which includes a ignitable fire whip and a pair of Kevlar
wick-lined fiberglass bat-wings that extend from the performer’s back. He
also rehearses there with the fire performance troupe the Flamethrowers,
who perform at dance clubs and social functions throughout Los Angeles.
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But paying jobs are hard to come by. Venue
owners are jumpy, and permits costly. The Los Angeles Fire Department requires
“open flame acts” to submit a written permit proposal. Then typically, a
fire marshal will witness the act as well as a pre-performance run-through-with
the promoter paying the marshal $55 an hour for a four-hour minimum, says
Inspector Michael Riley of the LAFD’s Public Assemblage Unit. Since most
performers are lucky to net $150 for an entire night, many of them believe
that by setting professional standards, there is a better, more cost-effective
way of making everyone happy
LeCouteur has founded the North American Fire
Arts Association, a professional guild that seeks to establish a national
professional policy based on the safety rules and requirements professional
fire performers already follow. “The idea is that if our internal quality
guidelines are harsher than what the individual states would apply, then
guild membership and accreditation would account for more than state licensing
would in and of itself,” he asserts.
The plan has a ways to go. Local fire officials
have jurisdiction over open flame acts, says the state fire marshal’s office,
so any proposed guidelines would have to be approved locality by locality.
And defining what constitutes a safe fire performance
isn’t easy, says LeCouteur. He’s working to do that other Fire Arts Association
members, mainly senior members of the Burning Man Fire Conclave that fire-dances
around the festival’s “man” during the annual “Burn.” The aim, he says, is
“making sure that you’re not taking undue risks that could potentially endanger
somebody’s life. Some of them are obvious. Some of them are very subtle,
like you have to keep your fuel capped when you’re indoors. It might let
off a vapor cloud that could take any spark in 100 meters and transfer it
back to the source.”
L.A.’s fire professionals have already proved
themselves to Al Fellerman, who insures most national fire performers through
his brokerage firm Clowns of the U.S. In seven years of insuring fire performers,
he says they have yet to file a claim. “I don’t see any more danger with
these [fire performers] as with someone falling off of a high wire. They’re
really careful. So we have no qualms with them doing this.”
As artists, fire performers are
also pushing forward. Moving beyond the brief solo presentations of most
modern fire performances, troupes such as L.A.’s Midnight Sun, San Francisco’s
Seeds of Fire and Seattle’s Cirque du Flambe are integrating fire performance
with theater, dance and acrobatics. “Anybody can jump around and spin fire
and the audience will go, “Ooo, ahhh!’ But can you take it to the next step,
where it’s not the whole focus, but something you’re using as part of your
art?” asks Crimson Rose, leader of the Burning Man Festival’s Fire Conclave.
“It isn’t, ‘Here, let me spin around.’ It’s actually the whole dynamics,
where you’re building something to a height and you’re coming back down.
That’s really what I’m seeing happen with these groups.”
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