- a San Francisco firedancing troupe -
We are a San Francisco-based fire performance troupe, specializing in using fire for storytelling. Formed in the summer of 2001, Mythic Fire has four members, with one currently on hiatus. At the moment, we focus on small, stripped-down shows which highlight the intimacy and personal warmth of fire. Larger “story” performances, costume elements, and so forth are in the works.
Over the summer of 2001, the four of us came together in practice sessions, honing our skills and developing our art as firedancers. We discovered that we were pretty comfortable playing and dancing together, and decided to form a troupe to perform in front of others — to share the spirit and energy of our fire and our performance with more people.
Our first public gig — before we’d even settled on a name! — was on July 11th, 2001, at Psycho-Synthesis, and we continued performing there until the club left Jezebel’s Joint at the end of August. We made our debut as “Mythic Fire” on July 22nd at Mechanical Fire Circus, and have been building a presence at local goth-industrial, Pagan, and other subculture events as time has progressed. This Web site went live on August 11th, featuring our logo, designed by Mike Moss.
Through 2002, we largely focused on teaching and fostering community, as exemplified by our Whirlygig practice sessions.
When we decided to form this troupe, we had a variety of shared ideas about what we wanted it to be and what we wanted to do with fire performance. The first, and still the most important, was:
Have fun.
That’s the real reason why we started playing with fire, why we continue, and why we formed a group that goes out and plays with fire in front of other people. Because it’s fun. Fire is fun, and dancing is fun, and performing is fun. If the fun ever goes away, we’ll stop doing this.
But we also wanted to tell stories. We wanted to share the fire, and all the things it means, with as many people as we could. And one of the things fire has always symbolized is knowledge, lore, the passing on of the wisdom of accumulated generations along with the spark of life — all the things that our parents and ancestors have given us, and which we’ll pass on to our children some day.
That’s why we call ourselves “Mythic Fire” — because of the myths and lore that we try to pass on with our stories.