Performer plays with fire
Christian Mystic Carr spits and twirls fire. Photo by JonThePhotographer
By Tom Victoria
Christian Mystic Carr frolics with fire. The circus artist twirls and spits flames.
He also dances in the air. Christian defined his roles as a performer.
“I'm an aerial straps artist and a fire spinner fire performer as a multidisciplinary circus artist,” he said.
Christian, 23, an Austin, Texas, native, explained why he works with fire.
“I don’t perform with fire because it looks more impressive, but instead because of its unwieldy nature and the challenge of learning to tame something that is living, breathing and dangerous,” he said. “I play with fire because of the sacredness it brings to the experience.”
Christian said being a fire performer puts him in a metaphysical zone.
“Many philosophers, scientists and spiritual gurus talk about the Flow State,” he said. “A state in which your entire mind and soul is invested into the current moment. It’s a kind of magical moving meditation that has your brain firing on all cylinders and the distractions of the world falls away. This is what Flow Arts is all about and it is that state from which the best and most mesmerizing performances come from. As another flow artist, I can always see when a performer sinks into that magical place. The flow state can definitely be reached without fire, but something about the danger of fire and that it has a life and lifespan of its own allows you to get to that place much easier. In my opinion, without that perspective, the fire is just a gimmick.”
Christian cited the hardest part of being a fire performer.
“The amount of time it takes to become a professional and stand out,” he said. “Flow Arts in general is getting ever-increasingly more popular and it takes years of practice to get to a performance level, and then once you do, there is still loads of competition. To keep up, you need to be constantly innovating and improving.”
According to Christian, wind is more of a factor depending on what a performer is doing with fire.
“There are some fire disciplines that require you to think about the wind more than others,” he said. “Fire breathing, now that necessitates that you know exactly which way the wind is blowing and how hard. There is a lot more leeway with other fire props like fire poi, Dragonstaff, ropedart, etc.”
In fire poi, wicks consisting of a fire-resistant substance are ignited and spun. For Dragonstaff, wicks are on the ends of spokes on the staff.
Christian not only performs with fire and does aerial work.
“I’ve been spinning fire poi and breathing fire for around 5, 6 years now,” he said. ”Outside of fire, I majored in aerial straps at my circus school in London. I also have a street performance show where I juggle on a 7-foot unicycle. I pass juggling clubs, walk on stilts, spin contact staff and double staff, and basically any circus discipline I can fit into my schedule except silks (acrobatics done while hanging from fabric).”
Christian savors the sensation of being an aerialist.
“With aerial work, and straps specifically, it feels akin to flying,” he said. “Spinning and twisting through the air hitting different shapes and trying to keep it all looking picture-perfect is a never-ending challenge but enterally satisfying when done correctly. It is hard to describe how it feels to nail a trick you’ve been working on and dreaming of for years. I get so obsessed with straps I dream about new moves sometimes. I like finding and creating new sequences. I like the excitement of an upcoming performance, just the entire thing really.”
Christian works with aerial straps. Photo by Greta Zabulyte
Christian also enjoys the difficult skill of riding a unicycle taller than most people.
“I learned to ride a normal-sized one when I was like 11, so a tall one was a figurative and literal mountain to climb,” he said. “The added difficulty and risk associated with a tall unicycle makes it more exciting. The fact that the ground is not a few inches away means that if you mess up a trick you really mess up a trick and trying again takes time to get back on the horse.”
Christian is ready to perform before larger audiences.
“I'm a recent circus school graduate,” he said. “I wouldn't necessarily say I'm pre-professional, but I have yet to actually start doing big shows. I've done some little ones and I have a mentor. Over the next year, I already know that I'm going to get a whole bunch of contracts and start working, but I've yet to actually do it because I just graduated.”
Christian wasn’t required to attend circus school to become a performer.
“Not really,” he said. “You don't necessarily need any sort of piece of paper because circus really talks for itself. You can inherently see what you're capable of, but getting there in a quick way. Circus school helped me do that. I took myself as far as I could, self-training. I did two years in London, and then before that I did a year in Chicago. So three years in total.”
Before Christian became intrigued by the circus, he wanted to put out fires.
“I've always had a bit of adrenaline junkie in me, for sure,” he said. “But what's kind of funny is before I started spinning fire, because I was an adrenaline junkie, my goal was actually to be a smoke jumper. It's a firefighter who fights forest fires in the deep part of the forest. You parachute out of an airplane to get to those fires.”
Christian ended up manipulating fire instead.
“I became a fire spinner,” he said. “Personally, I like the element of fire and how you have to learn to work with it.”
Christian utilizes the full art of his craft.
“A lot of fire spinning can be quite gimmicky, and that's something I really strive to avoid to put it gently,” he said. “There's a lot of pretty people who just have no technical talent with a fire prop, but they just have the fire and it's just a gimmick. But I really want to use it with a show that's already cool and then adding the fire to make it the next level. But there's something sacred about it, too. There's something primal about playing and dancing and moving with it, which has always been an attracting force for sure.”
Christian has been simulating a dragon’s breath since he was a teen.
“This is not something I would ever recommend, but I personally taught myself everything,” he said. “I was 16 years old, teaching myself how to breathe fire mostly off of YouTube, which, again, I would not recommend, but I was always called and wanting to learn it. I definitely made lots of mistakes and have a few scars to prove it. But over time, just got really good. Since then, I've worked with a world class fire-breathing coach.”
Christian said the longer one works with fire, the more comfortable it becomes.
“At first, the fire is intimidating and I hit myself a lot,” he said. “But over time, the flames become like an old friend and you develop a relationship with them.”
Christian eventually learned which liquid was best to use breathing fire.
“Generally, we use lamp oil,” he said. “Lamp oil is the cleanest. But I started with kerosene, which you don't really want to use, and it smells terrible. Since I was always doing it, I always smelled like kerosene. So that became my first fire spinner name, Kerosene.”
Christian also likes defying gravity.
“I definitely never thought I'd be an aerialist. That was not on the to do list, but I'm really glad I've done it now because I'm not stuck to the ground. I have all these ground-based skills, but also having an aerial skill, high-level one, too. I'm getting to be Cirque du Soleil level. I'm getting ready for that.”
“My major in London was aerial straps,” he said. “It's one of the most painful circus disciplines there is. I just absolutely fell in love with it. I got into the school in London as a juggler and they tried to force me to do juggling and I was like, no, I'm not going to do that. Actually, I broke my hand right a week before I moved to London and started circus school. For the first two months, I was in a cast. In that time, that's when you get to try out all the disciplines. I had never actually done straps before and my hand was finally healed. I had to choose a discipline within a week. I was like, straps looks cool, let's do it. And so glad I did. I absolutely fell in love with it.”
Christian also juggles. Photo submitted
Although Christian was good at juggling, he preferred the more strenuous work of straps.
“That's why I didn't want to do juggling is just because I've always been strong and athletic and juggling was just not fulfilling in some ways,” he said.
Some skills requires less focus than others for Christian.
“Surprisingly, I find juggling to generally require less focus unless I am trying something new and difficult,” he said. “It is similar to driving a car. With juggling, I can be conversational and even be looking other people in the eye instead of directly at the clubs. Poi, for me, because I train it much more, is much more complicated and requires more focus.”
Christian spends much of the day honing his skill set.
“I've become a workaholic,” he said. “From like 11 to 6 every day. I can't do straps for that long. That's a mixture of everything.”
Christian switched his career goals due to his love of travel.
“I was traveling in a van at 17 or 18,” he said. “I lived in the van for a year and I was doing traveling before then as well. I was trying to street perform. I had some juggling balls. I'd been traveling for a while and I was like, how can I make money and continue to travel? I fell upon street performing and after trying it, I was just really bad. I just really sucked. So I went to circus school in Chicago. I wasn't planning on going to school after it or anything. My one goal was to come up with a street show act. So I did that. I created a really nice one.”
While in the Windy City, Christian drew upon his creativity.
“On Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, I had two acts,” he said. “Sometimes, I did them as one act but that was an extremely trick-heavy show that couldn’t be repeated all day. One of my acts was based around unicycle riding. I dance and do round-off back handsprings and/or back tucks to gather an audience. In the unicycle heavy one, I would begin by jumping rope on a normal-sized unicycle and conclude by juggling clubs on a 7-foot unicycle.”
Christian’s other performance created tension for the audience.
“In my other act, I begin in the same way but would have a table about three feet up and handstand canes that are about another two feet,” he said. “At some point during the show, I’d breathe fire while standing on the canes. At the end of the show, I would attach my juggling knives to the bottom of the canes and do a handstand above them. In the finale, I drop from handstanding above the knives to holding what is called a croc. But from the audience’s perspective, it looks as though I am going to be impaled.”
Later came the fire-breathing, fire poi and aerial work among other acts.
When Christian first saw a circus, he didn’t know that was his destiny.
“I saw Barnum and Bailey's when I was young back when they had animals,” he said. “I had been riding a unicycle since I was 12. I taught myself to juggle when I was young, but I didn't really think much of it. I just did it.”
Christian is the Eternal Trickster. Photo submitted
Christian was impressed by the circus, but didn’t make the connection yet.
“I don't know if it really occurred to me back then, but it was super cool,” he said. “I’m getting very close to being able to work with any of the big circuses if I choose. The next eight months is dedicated to getting as good as I possibly can.”
Christian’s path eventually diverged from the traditional.
“I actually graduated high school super early,” he said. “I skipped two years just because I had a really high SAT score. I graduated at 16, and I got this job out in Taos, New Mexico. It's a really funny story, actually. I told my parents I'm going to go work as a carpenter in New Mexico in the middle of the desert. It was for an airstream hotel, but it was also a festival grounds. So there was this big old bus on the back property, and they're like, well, if you work here, you can stay in the bus. So I was living in this bus in the middle of the desert, working at a hotel that was also a festival grounds.”
Christian ended up situated in just the right place.
“Every weekend there would be a concert or festival,” he said. “A few thousand people would camp around me. Since I was there every weekend seeing all the shows, fire performers would come up and perform with the artists. They would come and meet me because everyone eventually ended up on my bus because it was the party bus. I became friends with them, and they showed me some stuff. And so I just was like, wow, you just travel from festival to festival doing this? That's the thing. That's what I want to do.”
Christian is headed to the entertainment capital of the world.
“I'm moving to Vegas, because that's the circus hub of the world, apparently,” he said. “That and Montreal, Canada. So I'm going to go kind of get my professional start over there. I got tired of London. Definitely very tired of London.”
“Over the next year, I am working to really define my artistic ability.”
Christian became weary of the gloomy climate and the unsavory element across the pond.
“The weather is a big one for sure,” he said. “Just seasonal depression all year round. But honestly, also just the culture. Specifically its alcohol and drug culture that is rampant over there. I didn't want to be around it anymore. Americans think they can drink, but they haven't seen anything.”
Not everything was bad in London for Christian, though.
“I got into the rave underground scene and that was really cool,” he said. “I got my circus start actually doing parkour. I got to live in a house boat in London, two different vans, explore most of Europe and see what the U.K. squat life is all about.”
Christian also did urban exploring.
“The trespassing is a little bit less illegal there, so I did a lot of urban exploring and climbing cranes and doing all that parkour stuff over there,” he said.
In England, it’s not a crime to enter an unused building the first time. Only when caught going into the same property without authorization does a person face possible charges.
Christian previously did urbex in the Windy City.
“When I lived in Chicago, I did a lot of that, from abandoned schools to big old abandoned mansions,” he said. “That was super cool, too. I used to do kind of photo shoots with my friends in these places and have some fire-spinning videos on the stage of the school. Illinois actually has a lot of abandoned places, too.”
Photo submitted
Christian also is interested in one of the offshoots of parkour which incorporates gymnastics and martial arts among other disciplines.
“I'd like to do more tricking at this point,” he said. “I always did parkour because I just liked getting from one place to another. But tricking is really cool. I can flip, but I don't twist sideways so much, unfortunately.”
Christian already has been to disparate parts of the globe, from training in London to visiting Asia.
“I just got back from Thailand a couple of months ago,” he said. “I'm 23 years old, but I've done a lot of stuff in that time.”
Last summer became a tour of the Old World.
“I got a van and I traveled all across Europe, driving from Czech Republic, Croatia, Germany, Italy, France, all over, everywhere,” he said. “I did nine festivals, mostly performed at a couple, but mostly just went to go to them.”
Christian also has been to Mexico and Sri Lanka.
“I've seen so many different types of cultures,” he said. “I absolutely fell in love with Thailand. There's a circus community out there that I'm connected with. I love it. If the circus competitions don't get in the way date-wise, I live in Thailand from November to February every year now.”
Among Christian’s goals are to improve his craft.
“Over the next year, I am working to really define my artistic ability and work towards circus competitions,” he said. “There's a few big competitions I have my eye on that I would like to compete in to help me get noticed, but it'll also just be an excuse to keep pushing the limits of my artistic ability.”
“I’ve always wanted to create stories that have a positive influence.”
Christian wants to starts his own troupe.
“Long-term, I would like to get a group together of my own,” he said. “I've always wanted to create stories that have a positive influence and part of that would be through doing social circus. I would like to do circus to make money and then funnel that into poorer, Third World countries. I would like to be able to travel to Africa and Kenya and all these places and actually rebuild the infrastructure in those places.”
Along with his circus work, Christian sells apparel and crystals.
“I also create art and upcycle clothes and sell crystals and things like that,” he said. “I also go and set up a vending booth with the clothes and crystals that I have. I have a website for that, fairytalecirque.com.”
Christian’s crystals are tied to his metaphysical mindset.
“I do not classify myself as any one thing,” he said. “I think that science and spirituality really are two sides of the same coin. There's things that science hasn't been able to figure out yet. I was going to school to become a reverend in metaphysical science, which is nondenominational. But the goal with that was I wanted to do missionary stuff for the social circus in Third World countries. That was kind of the idea. It was all combined.”
Christian is focused on healing.
“I want to learn massage,” he said. “I want to learn these physical healing modalities, but I also want to heal people emotionally and spiritually and in these other ways as well. There's just things that psychiatrists really can't necessarily do alone. There's somatic experiences. There's the feeling of touch and communication, and just things that you may never be able to reach someone if you're just talking to them. That's what sacred ceremonies have always been about is reaching the subconscious and working at a deeper level.”
Christian explained a metaphysical mindset mitigates a shallow perspective of life.
“There are many untapped tools for self-realization, growth and spiritual development,” he said. “Individually, we could all be doing more to better the world around us. It is easy to get entranced by superficial things: drugs, parties, money, sex and fame. Doing the easy thing is attractive but doing the hard thing is necessary.”
Christian is plant-powered.
“I've been vegetarian for six years now,” he said. “At the moment, I'm pescatarian (seafood-inclusive) because I wanted to add some more to my diet. For a few years, I was even vegan as well. Part of it is I go to the gym a lot. I'm getting bigger and stronger, and I kind of like to show people that it's possible to do that on a plant-based diet.”
Christian lists himself as an Eternal Trickster.
“That's always been a reminder to not let society define you or even be concerned with doing something different than it,” he said. “In Native American culture, there's obviously the sacred clown, which is also known as the heyoka, and its role is literally to just make fun of life. Everything. There's nothing that's too sacred for that clown to make fun of. If there's something in life that you can't make fun of, there's probably something wrong with that thing. There's some reason you can't touch it. That just seems kind of part of the role that I play, like the court jester would always say things and make fun of the king in ways that nobody else could, and that would let him know what the people really thought of him.”
Christian also is the Clumsy Acrobat.
“I can do flips,” he said. “I can do cool things, but I've always been a bit clumsy. I like the way I think. I like the way I'm creative, but also I'm just forgetful. I have the object permanence of a 2-year-old. The second it's out of my eyesight, I'll forget about it. I find that while I am naturally clumsy I can also be graceful while doing circus, a dichotomy I know.”
Christian stays motivated by wanting to make a difference.
“What keeps me going at the end of the day, what pushes me beyond myself has always been that I really feel that this is the medium in which I'll be able to help others and create change in the world,” he said. “That's always been one big internal motivator and has kept me going when I may have otherwise stopped, but also just discipline. I try to be disciplined, even on days where I don't want to do anything. I just push through it anyway and just a desire to get as good as I can personally be.”
Christian dispensed advice to aspiring fire performers.
“There's plenty of online courses and I know that it takes a lot of time, but it's worth it,” he said. “People try to teach themselves fire flow stuff, but it's really a systematic thing that you need a course for or someone to teach, which I'm also starting a Patreon as well. So if you want to learn with me, you can come learn with me.”
Christian is glad to live the circus life.
“I like the path that circus takes you on,” he said. “The highs and the lows of training, from beginner to experienced. The days you have to push through the soreness because you trained too hard yesterday, and the days that trick that you had perfectly just won’t work right. After spending ages practicing by yourself or with a close group of friends, suddenly it’s time to test yourself and share your art with a large audience, which brings its own set of challenges. Its a psychological experience as well as a physical one, and, yes, it requires athleticism and skill, which are fun to acquire, and some ephemeral third thing: charisma and showmanship. I love that circus gives me the opportunity to inspire others and create some positivity in the world.”
Christian’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheClumsyAcrobat
Christian’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theclumsyacrobat/
Christian’s website: https://fairytalecirque.com/
Photo by @willows.photo.factory