At first, nobody in Edmonton would give me circus insurance. They were like, "What? No. We have aerial skiers in Banff and Jasper careening in the air with these things on their feet but... No! We’re not going to give you insurance to hang off a trapeze with a crash mat underneath!"

But I finally convinced someone to cover us, and John and I started Firefly Theatre. The idea is to tell a story in more ways than the usual one. We combine theatre and circus. We teach aerial arts, we do main stage shows, and we do corporate gigs. You know, when they want a Cirque du Soleil type theme for their event.

It's a lot of work, but I can't stop doing it. I love it too much. We're the only company that offers the aerial classes and then works with our students to create theatre together.

And that's one of the things I try to instil in everyone in our program: be creative with the skills you learn. Yes, it's a technical skill. But once you know the trick, what else can you do with it? What's it say? What's it mean?

The other very important thing is that flying through the air can be dangerous. No matter what you're trying to do creatively, you have to be safe at all times and costs. So I show them this video of John. 'Cause we were training for an act once, just learning the routine. The plan was that we both wrap for this complicated drop at the same time, then I drop and then John drops.

Anyway, we wrap. I drop and land. And then John is in the video camera and you can just see him struggling with the fabric: "Is it this way, or this way? No. It’s that way? No. This way." And then he drops and just falls, like, 10 feet, completely out of the camera's view and bounces back up, totally out of control. Good thing there was a mat underneath. It's scary, but also very funny ... you see him just crashing and then bounding to the video camera. Students remember that class, I think.

So I'm really happy I started doing my own thing, because Edmonton is the type of place where if you want to get involved - if you take the chance and put yourself out there - people give you the opportunity to do what you say you're going to do. And that's really amazing.