Members of Prairie Sol – Fire Dance Productions perform in the Festival Campground during the 42nd annual Winnipeg Folk Festival.

Every year since 2006, campers at the Winnipeg Folk Festival daring enough to make a pilgrimage to Pope’s Hill in the middle of the night have been treated to a spectacle of fire dancing and wild drumming. A tradition started by a troupe called the Fire Pyxies, the annual rite continues through the work of committed individuals who hone their craft throughout the year, some of whom are professional performers in the circus art discipline of fire dance. With the introduction of the Festival Campground Art and Animation Program, performers in the fire dance production have been subject to the program’s rules that classify them as animators, not performers. Recent discussion on social media regarding the future of the annual fire dance production at Pope’s Hill inspired this comment.

Animations in the campground are instalments that get put in place and remain throughout the weekend. The fire dance production is a performance for which many hours (and dollars) go into planning, rehearsal, and production. We are considered a second class performance though in spite of the work we put in and the dangers associated with the art. Ian Mikita and myself have been involved with co-ordinating and performing in this production longer than anyone else. I’ve seen fire dancing start as a small group of people or even sometimes just individuals showing up at Pope’s Hill when the time was right and just put on an improvised dance with little to no safety or supervision.

Since that time, it has grown (largely at the request of the Festival due to safety considerations) into a choreographed act put on by often unmanageably large groups of people (just try organizing 30-40 people to rehearse on one night, never mind the mandatory 10 we have at times required of our members).

For a time we were treated as performers and all was well, and then came along the Festival Campground Art and Animation project. This project was a great idea as it inspired and encouraged people to create fun instalments in the campground. Unfortunately our performance was grouped into this category. For a time we were still treated fairly but then the axe fell and it was decided that 10 passes would become the maximum any one group could obtain for an animation project. This forced larger animations (and performance groups) to have its members either outright pay for a ticket, or volunteer on various Festival volunteer crews for the hours required of all volunteers in order to be able to attend the festival to be a part of said animation/performance. (By the way, though it’s neither here nor there, I worked on two separate volunteer crews this year, putting in a total of 62 hours, not including performing in the fire show). Further, animators would no longer be receiving volunteer passes (let’s not even mention the denial of early access to setup some of the larger, more cumbersome animations). This, as we all know, is the time the Castle Boys decided to withdraw from the festival (see the Festival’s blog, June 26, 2014, “We welcomed everyone who did not get into the program, including the Castle Boys, to still attend without official entry into the program. The Castle Boys decided not to attend as a group as they have historically, which we understand is disappointing for their many fans”).

These limitations became a point of frustration for many, but it was largely understood that the program had grown too big and the Festival also felt that it could encourage more campers to get creative if they didn’t feel like they needed to be accepted into the animation program. A statement from the Festival blog dated April 3, 2014 reads “Campers: you don’t have to be part of the official Art and Animation Program to be creative! We love to see campers take it upon themselves to decorate their sites or make theme camps. The more art, the merrier!”

Take a moment to read that statement and really let it sink in. That single statement frustrates me to no end when it comes to our dedication to putting on a high caliber performance fit for an entertainment mecca that should be the Winnipeg Folk Festival campground. “You don’t have to be part of the official art and animation program.” Clearly in our case, that’s a falsehood because the Festival has specifically laid out the ground rules for our ability to perform with fire in the campground (which, technically it isn’t, but I won’t even touch on that issue, suffice it to say that tents are flammable and people are stupid). If the Festival truly wanted campers to take it upon themselves to be as creative as, for example, putting on a fire dance production without being part of the official program, then there would be a risk of having unsanctioned, improvised, freestyle fire performances at any given time. While a small part of me would enjoy this just to see many fire artists I’ve never met come forward and play, I know that given the numbers of potential performers out there, this isn’t possible without a drastic overhaul on security at the Hill, and nobody wants that either. So then we’re left to play by the Festival’s rules.

Moving forward, we have a couple of choices for working within the bounds of the Festival’s Art and Animation program. We can carry on allowing the fire dance production to be treated as a second rate performance (no performer passes, needing to put in regular volunteer hours on top of our performance and rehearsal times), while feeling unmotivated to truly give our all to a campground that deserves our best. Or we can as a collective, respectfully decline to continue performing at all until better guidelines are written to make a more appropriate distinction between animators and performers. The fire dance industry, generally speaking, has experienced problems with undercutting from its earliest emergence as a performance spectacle at festivals and events. It is, however, a serious performance, just like any other form of performance art. Fire dancers are constantly being asked to perform without reward, and if they refuse or ask for compensation, event organizers will take whomever will give a free show. It’s time to take a stand. If we want high quality, safe entertainment to continue in the campground, we need to address the problems with the entertainment we already have, or we’re going to lose it all.