In written comments to Sputnik, fire performer Sam Tobey, from the US, has shared how she found her dream vocation and to what extent her life has been fulfilling for the past three years.
She revealed that the obsession with fire performances actually started with something more conventional, namely hula hoop gymnastics:
“I started by taking hula hoop classes after school at UC Santa Barbara in 2015. My teacher, Katelyn Carano, got me a performance spot at a festival in San Diego, where I saw fire dance for the first time. It was a mesmerizing experience,” Sam, who is known on Instagram and YouTube under the suggestive nickname "flowmayhem," noted.
She went on to detail her first acquaintance with the rope dart, which is virtually a martial arts tool:
“I saw someone performing with the rope dart, and I was most drawn to it, because it was a weapon, but she was also dancing with it.”
Sam has been practicing for three years now, and “is still in love” with the experience that she considers meditation, combined with physical exercise and a creative way of self-expression. And, most importantly, she “is brimming with love” for her “community”, Sam noted below an Instagram video that shows her dancing with a rope dart at this year’s landmark Burning Man festival in Black Rock City.
In one of her posts she remarked that what she likes most about the rope dart is its applicability in dancing. Bright fire flashes and even colored smoke, foot and pendulum shots, and certainly energetic thrusts of the rope dart — these are Sam’s most versatile arsenal that she puts on to the sounds of enchanting music and graceful dance moves.
“You look powerful and graceful. This is SO cool,” one of her 25,000-strong army of Instagram followers remarked.
“You’re the one who inspired me to pick up a rope dart!” one of her subscribers exclaimed, with another one echoing her impressions:
“I think you just made me fall in love with rope dart.”
Sam currently focuses on tutorial videos to share her outstanding experience with amateurs and regularly updates her YouTube channel.