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Smithers performer looks to share the secrets to her soaring success

Somewhere between silk and sky, you'll find Jamie Holmes. Her two most noticeable trade tools are glitter and gravity.
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She went from Smithers straight to the sky, but Jamie Holmes comes down for a landing in Prince George this week to teach anyone how to fly. She provides the silkand the expertise, participants just have to provide the desire to defy gravity.

Somewhere between silk and sky, you'll find Jamie Holmes.

Her two most noticeable trade tools are glitter and gravity.

She dances with the wind like a leaf on a tree, fluttering, twisting, whipping, held fast from falling by the slightest points of contact. The jaws of her audiences fall to the floor because somehow she doesn't, suspended and spinning from threads.

And she can teach you how to do it. Holmes will be in Prince George on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to reveal the mechanics of her magic. She teaches aerial dance for a living back in her Toronto base, but Prince George is not a field trip into a new market for her, it's a homecoming mission. Holmes is originally from Smithers, and this was like her region's capital city during her youth.

When she was back to spend time with family and friends, she called up the matriarch of local dance Judy Russell to offer her rare and radiant services.

Russell agreed to host Holmes's acrobeautiful activities. Her own dancers will get some up (and we do mean up) close and personal lessons, and the public can also take part in some of the sessions.

"I grew up competing against Judy Russell's dancers - she's Mama Dance in northern B.C. – so it was just awesome to have this conversation with her and make this relationship happen," Holmes said. "So we get to make this happen in a great place that deserves it. Because it's pretty freakin' fun, I've gotta say. I am pumped. I hope it opens doors for people to get stoked about it, and opens doors for me to come back again for more, because I just love it there."

With the grace and spectacle of dancing and dangling from long ribbons of silk comes, like all theatre does, with behind-the-scenes grunt work. Holmes is also a certified rigger, because she has to clamber up to the overhead superstructures that will hold her aloft from the silks. She has to personally ensure the safety measures are checked off, and the equipment secure. (She also carries ample insurance for these lessons, so the students and staff are secure in that sense, too.)

It's a job that is half hardhat and half glitter. Oh, the glitter.

"Yes, my life is completely bedazzled," she laughed. "I keep a clean house, but you cannot ever get all the glitter out. I took my car in for detailing and the guy said, when I came to pick it up, 'look, I'm sorry, we did our best, but no matter how much vacuuming and brushing we did, the upholstery still had glitter everywhere.' I told him it was all right, my life was permanently sparkly."

It's not the kind of profession her high school career counsellor would have had a brochure for back in the Bulkley Valley. Holmes was into competitive gymnastics as a child. She took some ballet classes to augment the gymnastics, and the choreography took over.

Upon graduation she was accepted to the Randolph Academy of the Performing Arts in Toronto where she developed the skills for a professional performance career.

"I pretended I could sing for awhile, did some acting work in commercials and music videos and industrials, I got a cruise ship gig as a dancer and loved going around the world for a year without a mortgage and the great U.S. dollar exchange rate," she recounted.

After the cruise ship contract, she got an offer from a dance troupe in Las Vegas. It was there, in that hotbed of live entertainment, that she got introduced to the silks.

"And I pursued it and kind of became obsessed" and brought it to Toronto when her Canadian citizenship clashed with American hiring restrictions.

She didn't mind. By then, she had more than a profession, she had a passion. "It's a great combo of everything I've always done – all the razzle dazzle, just higher up."

Her business is thriving, or it's probably more accurate to say her multiple businesses are thriving. She teaches, she performs, she co-ordinates special events. All are in demand.

She's not even the only one in the Toronto area with these rare specialties (one of her aerial peers teaches only people over the age of 40, another is breaking ground teaching students with disabilities, etc.) and she still has ample amounts of work.

Part of the edification for her is seeing new audiences wowed and new students hooked.

"What I definitely find great about aerial is, almost everyone who tries it has a clear progression in their skills. The learning curve is quick. Once you get it, it's a whole revelation for people so they leave feeling super jazzed, so I leave feeling super jazzed.

"I find it quite gratifying. It's a wonderful world that doesn't really turn down anyone. And I find, too, that it attracts really cool people."

If you might be one of them, the classes are about 90 minutes long, there are three classes to the process, and the cost is less than $150.

Anyone interested can call Enchainement Dance Centre at 250-563-2902.