A burning passion

Robbie Lewis will be the first to tell you her hobby is pretty dangerous. When you play with fire, you’re going to get burned — and she has the singed hairs to prove it.

“It has a rush about it,” Lewis said. “Fire has that same essence of getting your adrenaline up and it’s like, ‘Wow, did I really just do that?’”

As long as the burns aren’t severe, she and other members of the Luminarts fire performance troupe are pretty blasé about the possibility of losing a few hairs to the flames.

“You don’t even know until you’re done spinning [fire], and you smell burned hair,”Luminarts co-founder Paige Marmolejo said.“I’ve never seriously burned myself.”

Since they’re so calm about stepping onto the stage with a hula hoop, staff or other prop set ablaze, Marmolejo said many times their audience assumes there’s a trick or illusion.

“‘Is that real fire?’ is a common question that I get a lot. People just can’t believe that you would really be playing around with real fire,” Marmolejo said. “People ask that a lot with fire eating, too. They’re like, ‘what’s the trick to it?’ And I’m like, ‘It’s not necessarily a trick. I’m actually extinguishing the flame with my mouth.’”

Lewis, a Chelsea resident, and Marmolejo, a Southside resident, are the founders of the Luminarts troupe, which came together inOctober 2015. They came to fire arts first through hula hooping.

“When you start hula hooping, that’s when you learn that people who have been doing it, they also dabble in fire hooping and then you learn other props like poi [balls set on the end of ropes],” Lewis said. “It just opens a whole other world of flow, and being able to move and having a prop as your dance partner. And when you add fire, it just illuminates the experience.”

There’s more than one way to play with fire.Hoops and poi are the most common, but members of the Luminarts troupe can also breathe or eat fire, as well as perform with a staff, fire fans or unusually named props like a dragon staff or puppy hammer.

Marmolejo, who was in a fire troupe inEl Paso, Texas, before moving to Birmingham, said the general rule is to practice with just the prop until you would feel comfortable performing with your eyes closed. Then, you light it on fire.

Sometimes, the first couple attempts with a new prop end in burns or hair caught on fire. As seems to be typical for fire performers, Lewis described those instances as “small fires, youknow, manageable.”

The Luminarts troupe was born out of the monthly Community FireJam, held at Avondale Brewing downtown for novice and experienced fire performers to practice their skills and learn from each other. It also became the place where Luminarts found its first troupe members.

“We would try different ways of bringing community together and some of those efforts would dwindle, so we were always looking for something new,” Lewis said of the FireJams, which began in August 2015. 

 She recalled the first time she set a hoop onfire, when not only the heat but the noise of the flames surprised her.

Lewis said performing with fire has added “fun and warmth and danger” to her life. It’s a balance of being comfortable enough to take the risk, but not so comfortable that they get injured through carelessness.

When Lewis or other troupe members perform, they tend to draw a little attention – and a crowd.

“[It] creates that element of wow for the audience, which is really fun,” Lewis said.