All photos courtesy of Charm City Movement Arts
In early May, Nik Wallenda walked a tightrope across Batimore’s Inner Harbor as a publicity stunt for the opening of the new Ripley’s Believe it or Not Musuem. Last weekend, he fulfilled a lifelong dream to walk a tightrope over Niagra Falls, and Charm City was there was to represent. Erica Saben, the founder and director of Charm City Movement Arts made the trek north to watch the historic walk, and provide curious onlookers with the opportunity to walk the wire themselves.
The Niagara Falls is both breathtaking and nightmare inducing; the kind of natural wonder that makes you question your belief in miracles and reach for your iPhone to snap a million photos. It’s a rare breed of person who walks right up to the edge of the Falls, though, willfully suspending (or maybe indulging) the fear that you’ll fall in and be eaten alive. It seems implausible that anyone would want to walk right above it, then, and risk falling into it from an unimaginable height. And to put this walk on a wire? That anyone would complete that walk, or even want to complete it, seems impossible.
“The impossible is actually possible,” says Nik Wallenda on his fundraising page for the walk. For Wallenda, the seemingly impossible desire was realer than anything else—real enough that he’s spent his past two years lobbying for the change of century-old laws in both the United States and Canada. The laws were changed. He transversed the Niagara Falls on a tightrope this past Friday, June 15th.
Nik comes from a long line of circus family who have walked wires since the 1920s. Their name, the Flying Wallendas, speaks to the way they’ve dazzled their audiences for nearly one hundred years, seeming to exceed human capacities of movement and courage. They’ve been involved with names as well-known as the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey, and have pursued their passion despite several tragic deaths in the family due to their very art itself.
Nik is a seventh generation Wallenda, and all over the globe, he’s completed walks that his ancestors never could. His great grandfather met his death in 1978 on a walk between the Condado Plaza Hotel’s towers in Puerto Rico, but Nik completed that walk last year. Nik was not the first to wire walk over the Niagara. But where daredevils before him had crossed the Gorge, he was the first person in history to walk across over the entire Falls. This accomplishent is huge, as felt by onlookers, members of the circus community, and others who are faced with their own struggles.
Perhaps it goes without saying that no one felt the affects more than Wallenda himself, who had dreamed of this accomplishment since he was six years old. Of course, that didn’t hinder the rush of cheering and applause with which he was met upon taking his final step in the hugely mentally and physically demanding task at foot.
Erica Saben, who moved to Baltimore less than a year ago to open her Circus school located in Highlandtown, spoke to the features that set Nik apart in the community. As someone who brings the art of circus to the public of Baltimore, Erica loves to liberate people from conventional limits on dreams. “[Circus] is everyone’s childhood dream and it’s great just to tell someone, if you wanna do it, then just do it. That possibility…is kind of an eye opener.”
Hours before Nik walked his latest wire, and accomplished his lifelong dream, Saben allowed the crowd that had gathered to bring their dreams to fruition. She coordinated a tightwire performance and workshop, allowing onlookers to get up close and personal with an art about which most people know very little. Saben travels with a portable tightrope rig, which stands only two feet above the ground, but even walking a wire this close to the ground requires courage and overcoming fears. Providing this opportunity for young and old to try it out, provided context work Wallenda’s eric walk to come.
Erica is a professional tightrope walker in her own right, and is happy to say that the world of circus is becoming increasingly penetrable by those who didn’t grow up in a lineage like Nik’s. “Now, many of us get recruited from similar paths—art, theatre, dance. You might cross paths with someone who is is a longterm circus family..usually, they’ll take you under their wings and [literally] show you the ropes.” She spoke of the many full-time circus schools in San Francisco, Canada, and Europe, and also of the ways in which Nik is helping bring circus into the public eye, legitimizing it to the masses.
“A lot of people in circus want to do their act, but they don’t need you to know their aim. Nik wants to break a lot of records [and has broken six so far]. He wants to…be a household name, wants people to know what circus is and what tightwire is…he’s comfortable in the spotlight.” But classes like the ones offered by the Charm City Movement allow ordinary people to take the empowering, unusual spotlight, which is equally important. No who came out to see Nik expected that they’d be able to try their own hand (or foot) at tightwire. Many jumped at the opportunity.
Perhaps tightroping is so magnificent to the public eye because the act of performing such a normal act—walking—under such foreign and visibly dangerous circumstances is completely counter-intuitive. “The thing with tightrope is most people will watch and just assume, you know, I can’t do that. It seems like magic…like, oh, they have some magical superpower, they’re like Superman. But when you get the experience to try it, you still think, okay, I can’t walk a tightrope, not for twenty minutes, not from that high up, but you see the little bit you can do and it becomes an addictive habit.”
Eventually, Erica says, something clicks and the overwhelming sensation that you’re doing something dangerous goes away. Nik’s family makes this pretty clear, because they’ve gained fame for their safety-net free performance. He was harnassed for his Niagara Falls walk, but no net was present. “A lot of people see [tightrope walkers] and think they’re not being safe,” said Erica, “but for us, for Nik, he doesn’t see it as a [lack of] safety precaution. His safety precaution was learning to walk a tightrope under any condition.” Endless rehearsal under one’s belt and full focus ensure walkers of their own safety.
Circus doesn’t have the huge popularity in entertainment that it held for past generations, but as Erica said, everyone still knows what it is. Both old-school, Ringling Brothers-esque styles and newer, more theatrical forms continue to bewilder and enchant audiences everywhere, pushing limits of what they see as impossible.
In the end that’s why Nik wanted to walk the Niagara Falls—to inspire everyone he could. As his video passionately states, he wants to show the world that “no matter what they’re facing, whether it be a bout with cancer or problems in school or a battle with drugs, they’ll make it through to the other side as long as they focus on that prize.” The opportunity to try tightwire oneself, then, can also be hugely inspiring. Nik wants to show that “the impossible is possible.” Charm City Movement Arts allows that people actually experience that, rather than just see it from afar.
Interested in walking the wire yourself? Check out Charm City Movement Arts full schedule of circus and dance classes here: www.charmcitymovement.com
