In 2012 my house burnt down.

One night as I was laying down to sleep in a house I had recently rented in Richmond, VA, I heard the breaker trip. When I went downstairs to flip it back on, I smelled smoke. In a matter of minutes, my bedroom that I had almost been asleep in was engulfed in smoke and flames. I had barely enough time to grab my cat, dog, purse and phone before the house was overcome.

It was a freak accident caused by squirrels that had nested within the walls of the home- one day they chewed the wrong wire, which caused it to spark and nearly kill me in the process. The fire chief that showed up on site that night said that if I had been asleep, I probably wouldn’t have made it out alive.

As you can imagine, this was a traumatic experience for me and as a result, I developed an understandable fear of fire. Just a faint smell of smoke would send me into a panic. I dealt with this for years.

After having attended a couple dozen festivals, I had seen hundreds of fire dancers performing and was dazzled by their bravery as they not only manipulated the flames on their props, they also danced with them and made them look beautiful.

I decided that I was going to take up fire dancing as a way to combat my fear of fire. There was one prop in particular that had completely blown my mind when I saw it - a leviwand.

Leviwand is short for levitation wand- it was a prop created from a traditional magician’s dancing cane and utilized a string to make the prop appear as if it’s levitating. A dear friend of mine named Ryan danced with this prop at a festival we went to in 2017 and when I saw him spin his leviwand for the first time, I was so dazzled by the uniqueness of the prop as well as the element of magic that comes with it that I knew that this was the one for me.

In 2018 I bought my first leviwand, and the rest is history.

Since then, I’ve been an active member of the flow community in the Bay Area. When we can’t spin fire, we spin LEDs. I’ve performed in the fire conclave performance that encircles the Man on burn night at Burning Man. I’ve been hired to perform at shows and events. After a few years of only spinning leviwand, I added triads and fans to my prop repertoire. But leviwand will always be my favorite.

And I’m happy to report that I’ve conquered my fear of fire.