A British woman dropped out of university for a circus performance where she drives nails into her father's nose
In this family, the father uses the stomach of a 24-year-old daughter instead of a cutting board, and she drives nails into his nose. With the circus dance of father and daughter, Neil and Evie Travis, he said goodbye to ordinary life for the sake of a full-fledged career as artists and earns his bread, risking his life.
A former warehouse worker, 50-year-old Neil from Stafford cuts zucchini on Evie's stomach, and she lies quietly on nails. The girl dropped out of university when she realized that it would be better to risk her life next to her father, a former circus performer, than to study law. She even persuaded Dad to quit his regular job to create a creative duo.
The only limitation is the need to rehearse each trick in front of Evie's mother Deborah before she allows it to be performed in front of the audience.
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Evie says: "On stage, it's much easier to trust my father than anyone else - there is no one else to whom I would entrust my life. Some may think that this is crazy, but I trust Dad one hundred percent. I know that most fathers would never dream of slicing vegetables on their daughter's stomach, but we are different from most families. My friends think it's cool."
"I've worked with other partners before, and some were really unreliable. I needed someone I could be sure of, so I asked my father to come back from retirement and start performing with me again," the girl says.
A couple can walk on broken glass, lie on nails, juggle knives, breathe fire, walk a tightrope, ride a unicycle, walk on stilts, climb ladders made of swords, as well as slice zucchini and break concrete blocks on each other's stomachs.
Viewers can also watch how Evie pierces her cheeks and drinks from her father's nose, which drives nails into his nostrils.
"I love working with my daughter," says Neil. "I trust Evie, because from the moment she was born, I love her more than anything in the world. She is the most important thing for me in the whole world, and the most important thing for me is to take care of my baby. Since she is my daughter, I train even more so as not to harm her in any way."
"People ask how I can try such dangerous tricks on her, but everything we do is carefully rehearsed, and I'd rather do it than someone else. Besides, everything I do with her, she does with me!"— explains the father.
Barely learning to walk, Evie, thanks to her parents, got acquainted with circus art, but no one expected that the talented little girl would put these skills at the heart of her career. At the age of three, the girl already knew how to handle stilts, and at four she deftly walked on a tightrope. "As a child, it was interesting to me because of my parents' activities. I thought I needed to get a normal education, but when I started studying at the university, I realized how much I miss performing," says Evie.
"My friends saw me performing and said, 'You have all these skills, you're too talented to work in a normal place!'" the girl adds.
Neil says: "I love the creative process. I offer crazy ideas, and Evie gradually processes them until they become safe enough to execute and not so ridiculous. What we're doing is dangerous, but there's also a bit comical here—Evie is good at it. I really like the concept of getting paid for giving people topics to talk about."
Initially, the father and daughter's performance was supposed to be a one-time Halloween performance last year. "We showed our interlude in a duet last year on Halloween and thought we'd probably be hired for the interlude again, but the reaction was overwhelming," says Evie.
Deborah, Neil's wife and Evie's mother, says: "I'm not brave enough to do what they do because I don't like pain at all. It's hard, and you need to be strong, so I won't agree to do this for any money. At first I turned away during performances when Evie performed dangerous stunts, but it didn't last long because I'm a big fan of interludes. After watching them rehearse, I know for sure that they have everything under control."
"I wouldn't let anyone teach her to do tricks, because she trusts her father, and we both trust him unconditionally — he is very experienced and trained," Deborah admits. Since she is the only one in the house who knows how to use a sewing machine, Deborah invents and sews stage costumes for them. Who would have thought that by giving Evie stilts for her birthday, Neil and Deborah would lay the foundation for her circus career.
Keywords: UK | Daughter | Career | Father | Circus | Circus performers