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THEIR PERFORMANCES:

Patika Starr: Our performances are unique and avant-garde, and we're constantly reinventing ourselves. We're known most for our fire dances and hoop dance, but we also do vaudeville, cabaret acts, stilts, flags, black light acts, a lot of nonfire, too. Our performances transport the audience to new and mystical realms.

Christine Geiger: I love what our MySpace page says: "Take a pinch of cutesiness, a dash of lace and feathers and twist it with an edge of mischief and noir," and you know exactly what our performances are like. Some will be more dark, and some, we're more playful and crazy.

PERFORMANCE ART:

Patika: It's not even that we ever pursued it, it's that it is who we are. It's just an expression of who we are, and it was naturally already coming out of us anyway, and we just sort of found a way to hone it in and focus it.

Christine: Entertainment is a form of escape from the day-to-day routine. As children we call it make believe, but rather than it being an "escape," it's a chance to be and do anything your heart desires. And as we mature, we should never lose that particular innate beauty in being a child. And so pursuing this act allows me to continue to create my own world. It can serve as a reminder to others that we still can be and do whatever we want at no matter what age.

HOW THEY MET:

Patika: I happened to shop at the store she worked at and always liked the same things that she liked. And then we'd go out to parties, and it didn't matter if the party was in Wilmington or Charlotte or here or some other place, we'd always see each other. And we were both really good dancers. We just had so much in common. Then I started performing with fire and hoops first and wanted to share it with her, and then we started doing performances together here in town.

Christine: It got to the point where I was coming into town every weekend and she was like "you should just move here and let's do this performance troupe thing." I just had a couple things holding me back there, and then finally everything just fell through and I packed my car that day. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

THEIR FAVORITE PERFORMANCE:

Christine: We call it the "Evil Night" routine. It's a song by Jill Tracy, and we were so inspired by this song that we literally spent three weeks not having a life other than our sewing machines. We were inspired from the costume to the routine itself. In the routine we're kind of two bad girls on the town together and our costume is very "Clockwork Orange" meets "Beetlejuice" meets saloon girl.

Patika: It's a very dark, cabaret-sounding song. It's a full-on stage performance, and it's some of the best choreography we've ever done.

WHAT'S NEXT:

Patika: We have a new backdrop that we built. It's a giant backdrop, 13 feet wide and 12 feet tall.

We're so much into theater, and when we transition from one fire tool to another people can see it, and we feel like it takes away some of the magic. So we wanted to be able to emerge lit.

Christine: We've been working out close to a year now building up core and upper body strength to start doing aerial performing. And we'll probably start incorporating a lot more stilt work with our dance.

- Alexa Milan