12/18/15

This IS my circus. Those ARE my monkeys.




An outsider told me he has seen "fire dancing" at Gasworks asked if that's the correct term and is that the same thing as what I do.. My response below:



Fire dancing is indeed the correct term, not to be confused with fire performing though.. the majority of people spinning fire at Gasworks are hobbyists or amateur performers without a lot of theater or professional dance experience. They just like playing with fire and embrace the rather quasi hippie concept of flow arts which is actually a very real and cool thing and it's a great community of people! However the difference between them and me is that I have a degree in theater, have taken years of dance classes, gymnastics, cheerleading/ choreography, have an extensive resume of staged shows, have actually been in 3 different circuses opposed to embracing it as a trend and style of dress yet work a full time day job, and I actually carry an open flame permit issued by the fire marshal, and insurance coverage to safely & legally perform with fire in public venues... 

It is my career. I am the circus. Those are my monkeys. 



Above is me performing in 1999 in San Francisco at the Maritime Hall with a band called Galaxxy Chamber who opened for Genitorturers and below is me on stage at the Historic Everett Theatre in 2010 playing the lead female role of the Demoness in the heavy metal now called fantasy rock opera, Aeterno Elementum by Arakus Productions. I had a literal absolute nervous breakdown just before this show opened because we were unable to have the smoke detectors deactivated in order to do a fully lit entire run through dress rehearsal with an inexperienced cast of 40-50 people backstage to an otherwise empty house and it was so unbelievably terrifying I went into a full on disassociative fugue like a trauma victim leaving only my well developed mistress of all that is beastly and primal character to defend me while I grappled the situation. In retrospect I still can't believe I did it but I was head over heels in love and the crisis of conscious was utterly and irrefutably mine alone, the show must go on....


There is a massively fundamental difference between performing indoors, on stage, and in public opposed to outdoors behind a large designated perimeter line. That is a matter of safety. When you are outdoors your only public concern is keeping any would be unaware smokers from wandering near the fumes of your fuel cans because the vapors could ignite and catch any open containers on fire including small 1 gallon cans which could potentially explode sending shards of aluminum shrapnel into the badly burned wounds but other than that *minor* concern the responsibility of the performer and their safety technician lies only to themselves and each other. Basically there's no need for a signed waiver because it's blatantly obvious each fire dancer accepts that they are voluntarily risking their own life and can hold no one other than themselves accountable for any and all possible bodily harm that occurs to them due to the choice of playing with fire. Remember mama told you to never play with fire because fire burns ya, right? It does and it will if you continue to do it it's just a matter of time. Anyone who claims to be so good at it that they are above the level of being burned is the true mark of an amateur and also a danger because within that air of arrogance is precisely where the accidents occur. When you think you're so good that you can get away with cutting corners or breaking an occasional rule since nothing bad has ever happened before you now presume nothing is ever going to. Danger Ranger!! If it's outdoors at Spinurn you suffer a great deal of embarrassment and perhaps a loss of clothing and even a hefty ambulance/hospital bill. You'll live and thanks in part to your friends and in the case of your clothes being synthetic material you're lucky it's exceptionally well ventilated outdoors. 


Now let's talk about the scenario of performing in a packed nightclub with a sprinkler system or a full theater with deactivated smoke detectors or no fire systems in place and some possible scenarios including a catastrophe that occurred the consequences of which we are all still to this day paying for those of us who pursue this career (if you can call less than $10 grand a year a career) and those who own the property whom you are now required to get written permission from before doing fire indoors. 

To be continued... soon!

11/25/15

Lynnwood Public Menorah Lighting Celebration

Just got the official flyer and location details for my next gig:



Now to pick the music I will dance to.. Hmm :)

11/23/15

The Day My (selfie super) Powers Arrived

Who's a Super Hero? Shh.... Me!

Asraiya as Marvel comics character Polaris from X Men, complete with hair bleached and dyed green, on set with Cosmic Reach Media for shooting the music video for Kirby Krackle's song "The Day My Powers Arrived" seen below. Photo credit: Garrett Gibbons.


I'd been fighting the urge to be disappointed in the final edit of this video since most of my footage didn't make the final cut but then I realized that's more or less what the songs about so... 
I LOVE IT!!!

More of Kirby Krackle and his unique genre he calls "nerd rock" can be found at http://kirbykracklemusic.com/
On set shenanigans.. I started a selfie bombing trend which became the theme of the whole day and did actually make the final cut of the video so I should probably be proud, lol! 
Me selfie bombing director, Garrett Gibson.. No one was spared not even the 2nd cameraman! More of these on Instagram.

11/14/15

New(ish) Fire Dancing Video that's kinda HOT!

Hot sexy Seattle fire performing artist video

Found this edited video I must have been working on until too exhausted to think straight and then promptly forgot about... so after a year or so "break" from it I rediscovered it and must say, it's not bad! Need to fix the audio at the end there with the SGL sound bleeding in but still not a bad piece of work if I may say so myself. There's room for improvement but hey there's also room for new shows to be recorded so... C'est la vie! Cheers ~


Credits: clips are from Club Heaven filmed by Stan Blacker, crap if I can't remember who filmed the set at Starving Artists on Parade but I'll come back to it.. and Just Sage with his GoPro at Volunteer Park (I was reciting Shakespeare with a very bard-like/caliban accent aka slaughtering it), and Super Geel League show at King Cat Theater.

~ Asraiya xo 

photo by Scott Foster

Light your heart on Fire!


11/9/15

Special solo performance act @ Seacompression 2015

Asraiya plans to do a never been done before act for this year's Seacompression!


I'm going to attempt to do something special since I don't have a troupe to herd around this year. I'm adding a Burlesque twist to my fire Tristaff solo set to challenge myself and do something different and memorable.. I'm using the song Dance Without You by Skylar Grey and I intend for it to be a very personal statement piece as I do quite literally have pretty extreme claustraphobia or fear of being surrounded and closed in by people causing me to get angry on a dance floor (lyrics) which most likely is in fact the result of being a victim of date rape twice in my teens. 

Here's a fabulous dance scene video from the movie Step Up Revolution to the song:



My Fire Set is tentatively scheduled for 11pm 

and Seacompression is this Saturday Nov. 14th, 2015 happening block party style in Georgetown. 

Event page/tix info ~ http://2015.seacompression.org/

10/15/15

McFondle & Wendy Save Shorty's!

Shorty's granted Historic Landmark Preservation thanks to Crackwhore Wendy, Ronald McFondle, and Seattle Clown friends!

#CrackwhoreWendy, Gia Contour, and Reverend O'Hare pleading passerby's to not let the best place in town to score (pinball, hotdogs, tattoos, hookers, & blow etc) go the way of Hurricane Amazon

Shorty's Seattle

2222 2/3 2nd Ave ~ Seattle, Wa 98121


tattoo special $22.22 in honor of Shorty's address 2222 2nd Ave


More photos and story by Kelly O in the Stranger SLOG

10/1/15

Just released: New Paula Boggs Band Music Video

Just released today! 

New Paula Boggs Band music video feat with Seattle rapper, J. Pinder, Look Straight Ahead. I'm credited for being an actress in it as I play "the working girl" who hits on him. Lolz.. It was filmed in Georgetown at the Ballroom and then driving in circles on a rented Seattle Metro bus approx. 30 weeks ago (according to Instagram is when I posted a selfie taken that day with Paula on there but it doesn't give an actual date.. oh well.) and directed by John Logsdon of Blind Vision Films out of LA. 

I'm proud of it. Cheers ~





contact me:

8/21/15

When can we watch Bodyslam again?



Kinda dying to watch our movie again and/or have a little clip of it to put into my film/acting reel but alas we are still waiting to see what kind of distribution it gets ~ whether it will hit theaters after the film festival circuit which I know nothing about.. ends, or released on say blue ray, or netflix? So in the meantime this is the best I could come up with... Doesn't suck, I must say so myself!



7/26/15

3 Things I Learned From Being a Professional Performing Artist

WHAT I'VE LEARNED ABOUT BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL PERFORMER FOR HIRE


If you've spent some years doing paid performance gigs you know that navigating the business end is far less intuitive than the art part. Here are 3 of the biggest things I learned:


1.) Be prepared for everything to go completely, unpredictably, and horribly wrong.


Just as much as you never want to show up at a gig having no idea what you're actually doing for a performance, you also should never be so rock solid well prepared that you're no longer maleable. As a fire dancer who goes on tour with a band you very quickly learn that event promoters are idiots that often have a habit of telling everyone what they want to hear without checking up on the facts and make a lot of assumptions.

For an example when I was with Super Geek League we once played a show in a giant fiberglass igloo and were suppose to open for Green Jelly. The promoter, who will remain nameless even though he really should be publically called out on his incompetence but that's a different lesson, told us that we were set to both do aerial and fire in the venue. I know from experience to check up on these kind of facts because aerial can be deadly if the points are not rigged for 2000 lbs instead of a 20 lb light or projector and fire can be as well not only for the fire dancer but everyone in attendance. (see Rhode Island Whitesnake show) Since our setlist was rather complicated back then with only 6 official dancers doing multiple costume changes and we had just learned at Hempfest the day before that Green Jelly didn't make it into town and we were now headlining and had to double the length of our set which was an intricate science to make feasible and practically impossible to please all participants, I went down to the venue to inspect and confirm these 2 key aspects so we would have an experienced professional opinion if they would fly the next night. The igloo had extremely high ceilings, great ventilation, and 4 or 5 emergency exits over the required 2-3 for doing fire BUT the management told me the owner said absolutely not. That was that. Then the one that was utterly ridiculous was the supposed rigging point that could bear no more than a paper chandelier as the geodesic dome might as well have been made from popsicle sticks and paper mache. If an aerialist had tried to hand from it, it would surely have pulled a chunk out of the ceiling if not the whole thing down. I went back to the shop to wrap el wire around my staff and the aerialist started working on a grounded dance for her song bummed that she gave up 3 others for her big Sky Captain spotlight. THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME SO CONTIGENCY PLANS ARE CRITICAL.

When you're performing with a band you can count on not having too many sound problems, at least from your perspective not theirs (don't ask "Millie Vanilli" Tuesday Luke of Murder Weapons) but when you're on your own this is the number one place where well prepared, thinking themselves superior quality than anyone else because of their complicated choreography, can be completely thrown from their high horse. Just as, and trust me you seriously don't want to do this, you never want to arrive or be trying to decide in route which song you are planning to dance to.. you never want to be so set in your planned set that you can not change it last minute or will be utterly ruined if you come to find one of your key elements is missing. I do respect performers who have 100% polished choreographed routines but they are one missing iPod to RCA cable away from disaster. You can try to be extra prepared by bringing a back up disc as well as a flash drive but this will also give you a false sense of security because you might arrive to a boombox plugged in 20' away that you have to stop spinning fire and be really still to hear if you are in time with the song or not. Be comfortable with just winging it. Be comfortable with adapting to a smaller space. Be prepared to be on squishy wet grass with a downhill slope or beach sand (yeah, heels are sexy but not orthopoedic shoes after you break an ankle). I'm hopefully not encouraging pre-show nervous breakdowns btw, I'm actually trying to prevent them because you considered the fact that you may have to completely let go of all attachments to what's suppose to happen. A professional performer will just laugh and adapt instead of have a hissy fit or tears and stomp out saying they quit!


2.) Know what your time is worth and demand fair compensation. Always stick your ground if you ever want to see progress in that regard.


This is absolutely the number one thorn in the side of those seeking to make the break from hobbyist to a professionally paid performing artist. So you've been honing your craft for a few years and not only feel you have developed a variety of performance quality skills but have also mastered the art of stage presence and are starting think you could pursue your new dream of making a living doing it. First off, don't quit your day job! Maybe see if you can merely cut back on your hours committed to work instead of fully take the leap to starving artist because a deadly malnourished artist is worthless. Your act can always be improved upon by say a custom made costume or shiny new prop and it wasn't exactly an cheap habit on your former budget, was it? Don't get caught dead in the water and fail. Be prepared to cover the immense cost of your presentation on your own and do not expect to even break even. The biggest problem with trying to make a living doing performances is once you clear the hurdle of getting paid what you ask is the frequency and availability of paid work. This is the banana peal you will inevitably step and slip on so it's best to consider this when you are deciding what you should charge per appearance.

Here we arrive at the big question I'm sure at least three quarters of you are reading this for. In America as a performing artist you are looked upon as barely a half step above a street vagrant or traveling trailer trash carnie so no one expects or will treat you as a highly skilled professional with rates equivalent to a lawyer considering the amount of time and experience you invested in it, not to mention it may be dangerous and you risk your life by doing it, but you need to set your rate this high and here's why: You are only working 1-3 billable hours a week even though you are going to be working constantly every single minute you can spare. I put in and keep regular daily office hours working on and maintaining the business front of my troupe and this does not even include time for practice or rehearsal which you will find can go to the wayside if you're not careful and expect to be successful in show business. Note the fact that it is a business first of all which means you must learn how to be and do business. You are offering a product that is not tangible meaning no one can hold it in their hands and enjoy it in years to come except for the memory of the energy they experienced while watching your performance. This is unbelievably challenging! As mentioned even if your were previously in a salaried management position, people will see you in terms of hourly hired help. If your performance is a commodity they will only be able to value it in terms of how long it will last. This cause some newer wannabe professionals to think they need to use a thesaurus and write up a heavy adjective laden description of their product in order to sell people on the profound energetic benefits of beholding it. Don't waste your breathe and check out how cheesy and fake they sound on others websites and blogs. Even though you truly understand what they're getting at do you even find it believable or are you tempted to think they're trying to make up for in description what they lack in talent?


3.) Be prepared for rejection and a lot of frustration.


Rather than describe your act with a lot of fluffy metaphors connecting it to your spiritual viewpoints along with elaborating on the philosophical concept of "flow", try describing your talent in terms of your tangible investment just like your resume for employment will always contain your level of education, exceptional accomplishments, and proof of the amount of applicable experience you have with it and references. This is the language clients appreciate when considering whether to hire you for the job of entertaining their guest. They absolutely won't get how exciting and inspirational of an impression and what a life long special effect that 10-15 min performance will have on them until after the fact and are then thrilled that they went ahead and accepted your terms and add in a tip. Nothing about your magical fairy tale like delicate awesomeness will convince them to decide that you are worthy of the risk of having at their event and may just convince them you should remain in the forest where you belong if not a mental institution. Sappy positivity butterfly hippieness will make a busy event planner run the other direction because they don't have time to bring you down to the world of dollars and sense.

The next obstacle once you have a price and start promoting and marketing your act is the response:

$200 for 15 min?! You have got to be kidding!

Because that means your rate is $400 an hour and they are surely superior to you since they work IT at Amazon for no more than $75 an hour once they've done the math.. Therefore you are highly inflating your costs vs. profit margin something exponentially ridiculous and once again must be fairy tale delusional. This is when it's okay to let your perky positive good vibes come through even though you want to chew them a new asshole. Explain that they are not paying for merely the 15 min that you will actively spend in presenting the final product but the full 40 hour work week you will spend in prep for it. Then they can see it in terms of $200 a week and they are back to feeling horrified by your willingness to live in dire poverty and now they think you undervalue yourself so you must not be very talented. See how that flipped? Do absolutely consider the amount of time you will spend on preparing giving yourself a min wage (what? you don't have any time sheets to turn in so be thrilled if you even manage to get it) and include it in your quote, plus some of your expenses you will incur. I like to charge for travel time if over an hour at a standardly recognized rate of .50 per mile and I also include how much I could have added had I not come with my own permit for the event as I pay $500 annually but a single event cost $189 which validates your $200 right there and gets us into a concrete perspective plus you look like a professional who is prepared, legal, legitimate, and experienced assuming you have the permit which is required for what I do in public in my city. Sidenote: check into your local laws and know that bureaucrats can totally be your friends and I'll leave that for a future post. Once you named your price people will try to barter you down so either do in fact inflate it a bit to leave room for negotiation or stand firm. Period. I know you may be broke and desperate and half of your fee is better than nothing but HOLDING YOUR GROUND IS CRUCIAL TO ESTABLISHING YOUR MARKET NOT ONLY FOR YOU BUT FOR YOUR HARD WORKING COMRADES AND COMPETITORS. 

Think of it this way: that person will talk at their event that you are not performing at and they will tell someone that they thought of hiring fire dancers or what have you and tell their guest that they are really expensive and asked for way more than they had thought they would have to pay or were willing to pay for them! This puts the thought into people's heads to expect higher prices so that it will be absorbed into the collective consciousness for ultimately your benefit eventually. I was rejected consistenly asking for only about $100-150 for two solid years before I booked one single paid gig. Now I easily get contracts for $500-2000. Cheers!

Next time I'll write about how:
4.) Shit talkers are the only ones who stink.
Until then peace, love, and gigs ~

Asraiya On Fire

6/11/15

GOAL: win more awards! for acting in film! or just act in film!

Long term goal:

Be nominated for a Stranger Genius Award in Performing Arts!


Short term goal:

Master a minute or so monologue for film auditions.

This is a whole lot easier said than done! The thing I don't get, especially being the older and wiser I get the more intensely method I insist on approaching it.. is "who the fuck are you talking to?" when delivering a monologue for a hypothetical film? It seems the easiest option is to select a character that is crazy so it just doesn't matter but, also being method, and crazy, this is just too easy for me therefore I am strongly avoiding it since the overarcing goal is to convince these people that I'm not crazy or am only crazy enough to be able to convince people I am a character but otherwise am quite sane and competent enough to work with. So considering that I recently was asked to come audition for a very plain, mundane, female supporting role (girlfriend of the grandson of the woman with the title role or who the movie is about..) I needed to learn how to tone my naturally quirky and extremely flamboyeunt, annimated as fuck, self down a lot or well exponentially for close ups in film!! I chose a only ever so slightly rebelious kinda comedy monologue with the punchline being "Men Having Babies" by D.M. Larson. The subscripting states at the beginning she "jumps up and speaks with power and conviction". First of all you don't want me to jump EVER on a close up or semi close up or even just moderately framed with good head space (camera op terms because yes, I have been paid to operate one once.. if you don't speak just ignore) because I will jump clear out of frame and focus or otherwise fuck something up with my overly melodramatic theatre cheerleading, mime, clowngirl, gothgirl, goofy manuevers AND always in an audition for film you are either asked to sit in a chair (which means stay there!) or stand on the X (gaff tape) for the purpose of the camera man also being able to watch you in the flesh or with his real eyes (suddenly reality doesn't make sense with the hypothetical hypothetical ADHD.. am I making sense?) and know that you won't go out of focus or off frame. We are scratching that bit. Next is "why?" or "wtf am I talking about this?"?! I need a scenario where someone asked me a question and is now giving me the space to talk to myself (out loud instead of blogging lol..)

Guess I'll have to go with the easiest and most obvious and ignore my inner gremlin that says that the talk show host would be dying to interject because no, a talk show host is required to be a good comedic monologue deliverer and therefore he would know to wait for the punchline! Ah.. space given, how nice of him (I'm seeing the guy from the Man Show who's name I'm blanking on because I have a really hard time connecting faces with words because people deliver so much more character than these words called names could ever convey especially when they are overused as all hell so the words themselves are associated with several different personalities causing the first one to come to mind is the most recent or frequent as in my case it's Jimmy, my former next door neighbor). Thank you, Jimmy Kimmel. Now to memorize it. Peace ~

(or in this picture playboy bunny smoking fetish model at last years BunnyCon After Party which she was the Promoter of at Resurrection Sundays at the Baltic Room and got to attend this year's award show as the guest of BunnyCon organizer, David Sinclair... fyi ftw knk) taken by Keith Johnson

PS. I sadly will not meet my long term goal by completing this short term one.. dammit all to hell! Next? J/k..... heheh

In other news though my resume DID receive one of those little award graphic things you see on films that made it into a film festival.. as Resurrection Sundays, which I promoted for a year, won reoccuring "Theme Event of the Year" or "regular club night" or something to that effect and my graphic isn't available yet but I will be looking for it eventually here DList Magazine 



5/24/15

Suddenly your life becomes a movie...

  Surreal. Awesomely surreal and the best night of my entire life!!


The documentary on my friends in SSP premiered at SIFF on 6/21/15 and surprisingly I'm in it quite a bit.. plus played a McFondlette at the after party at Re-bar.


I LOVE my life and the PEOPLE in it!!!





5/2/15

My characters


I am very much an extreme method actor so the characters that I've been cast as or personally created and developed for either the moment (a night out on the town improvising) or for ongoing sketch comedy dramas (WXPFL/3-2-1 Battle!) often take on a life of their own and completely envelope me when given over to portraying them. *Allow me to introduce you to them ~



THE DEMONESS
encompassing both light and dark, creation and destruction, beauty and wretchedness, iron clad power & control on earth and yet dire servitude to a higher power she is loyalty and utter loneliness as she was birthed in the beginning of time itself and even existed before that in the ever tranquil dark of the abyss. she awoke when there was light and serves him her beloved until time ends, and begins again... 









CRACKWHORE WENDY
here's the progression of the development of this character in pics.. she is the world extreme pencil fighting league partner of Ronald McFondle of the SSP and 3-2-1 Battle! and now Bodyslam: Revenge of the Banana

McFondle with a McFondlette for SSP show 
+
Roxy Hell, illegitimate daughter of Jackie Hell 
=
Crackwhore Wendy (not in complete make-up here)


WILL-O-THE-WISP



JUJU THE CLOWN










MIMI THE MIME








HEYOKAH
old kachina bird tribe ghost dancing warrior grandmother sacred clown, peace, death, rest, spirit, wind who embodies everything I do and all my relations, all my relations...