Cirque de Flambe

When people ask Kara Chambers why she dances with fire, she has a ready answer:

"Because it's awesome."

Chambers is one-half of Exuro, a two-woman fire performance team based in Winston-Salem. Over the past year and a half, she and her teammate, Annie Birkel, have been amazing audiences with their shows, a sort of pyrotechnic blend of belly dance and performance art.

In their act, they spin and dance, creating streams of fire in the air. "It's like Hawaiian dances that use fire," Birkel said.

They use torches, fire fans (large metal fans with wicks on the ends), poi (spinning chains with Kevlar wicks on the ends), and even a fire hula hoop that Chambers said is her favorite part of the act. Their performance includes fire tricks they have learned, and they incorporate dance and yoga poses. They often end their act with a bit of fire-eating.

Chambers came to fire dancing after belly dancing with several troupes in Winston-Salem.

"I've always been interested in performance art," she said. "Upon going to different festivals, I saw fire performers and immediately knew it was edgy and different and it was something I wanted to be part of."

Birkel saw her first fire performers several years ago at Transformus, a festival held each year near Asheville that includes fire dancing, music, art, and the traditional burning of a three-story wooden effigy. "It's like Burning Man, only on the East Coast," she said. She met the man who later became her husband at the festival, and they started running the festival a few years ago.

And what is Birkel's fascination with fire? "It's my passion," she said. "I'm also a chef by trade, which also involves a lot of fire, and I've been cooking since I was about 4, so I've always loved it. The first time I saw it (fire dancing), I knew it was for me."

For Chambers, fire dancing helped her blend her tomboy background with an artistic outlet.

"When I was younger I did a lot of male sports," she said, "and I was always the girl hanging out with all the guys, the tough chick. When I started dancing, that brought out my femininity. And then bringing fire into that, I was able to be tough and strong and use these tools while still being elegant and graceful and beautiful and expressing that part of myself, too."

They learned the art of fire dancing separately, then joined forces when they were introduced to each other by a mutual friend. Birkel had just been hired for her first professional gig, and needed a partner to help out with the show.

"I showed her some dance moves and how to be interactive with the crowd from my dance performance background," Chambers said, "and she started teaching me some fire poi-ing, and we just bonded with our skill exchange."

They took their team name Exuro. "It's Latin for ‘to set on fire,'" Birkel said. "And it's catchy."

Birkel took the stage name Cypris, from a blue butterfly, but she admits that she rarely remembers to use her stage name. Kara's stage name is Kara*. "It's my bling," she said of the asterisk.

They now perform at festivals, parties and events such as the First Friday Gallery Hop in the Downtown Arts District, and they have made friends with fellow fire performers in the surrounding area.

When people watch, Chambers said, "shock would be the first reaction."

"People are mesmerized, they want to know how you do it, where we started it from."

And occasionally they want to know if they can perform with fire, too. What they recommend depends on who's asking, but they want people to understand that what they do takes a lot of practice.

"There are definitely some people who have approached me that I would not recommend it to," Birkel said. "Basically because they are not responsible people.

"It's just a lot harder than it looks, and there's a lot of things that can go wrong. It takes time, dedication and just overall practice to get fire spinning to where it's as safe as possible."

In addition to extensive practice, they have a support group helping them keep their shows safe.

"We always make sure we have one or two ‘safeties' on hand," Chambers said. "That's someone who's obviously sober who knows our routines and can be there if something were to happen, and they can also watch the crowd to make sure children or people aren't running into the space that could cause an accident."

They have also performed their act for the fire marshal, and make sure they have the proper permits before putting on a show.

And they get a special kind of insurance for their shows. "We have to get clown insurance," Birkel said. "It's the only type of insurance that covers all kind of performers, from ventriloquists to magicians to fire performers."

They do get burned occasionally -- Birkel showed a few small marks on her wrist that she calls "kiss burns" -- but, she said, "it's not really any kind of serious burn, it's nothing worse than what I get in the kitchen."

Chambers said her mother "was a little taken aback" when she first heard about the fire performances, "because she knows that when I go for something, I go full-force. But she's into it now, she's a very good promoter for us."

The fire provides an extra spectacle for the crowd, and for the performers as well.

"I've been skydiving, and done a lot of adventurous stuff," Birkel said. "Fire is different. You've got the adrenaline rush, but it's meditative at the same time. You're just doing motions and when you practice it enough, you're not even thinking about those motions. I get lost in it when I do it.

"And it's a great workout, too."

Light it up

Watch video of the Exuro fire dancers in action on their Web site at www.exuro.org.