PHILADELPHIA — She rises like a vision. An audience stirs.
"And it's beautiful because that's the first time we connect and I can hear them."
Every night at Cirque du Soleil's Volta, Danila Bim defies gravity. Flying, spinning. Held aloft by a single cable and the hair on her head.
"This is all you need," Bim says, holding up a strudy metal ring that she weaves into her hair night after night. "And then I fly," she says with a chuckle.
The Brazilian acrobat has been performing with circuses for more than a decade. A couple years ago, she took on the rarely performed art of hair suspension.
"When you're learning the discipline, like every other discipline when you learn at a circus, it is painful," Bim says.
Painful from top to bottom.
"Usually the whole body," she explains. "I use all my muscles. It can be painful in your neck, on your shoulder muscles, in your back."
Bim will never forget her first flight. "It took a long time until I could take my feet out of the floor. So, there were like weeks, months, until I could really suspend. And it was a great feeling because it was like, I can do this."
Show after show, Danila makes stories take flight, using the motion of her body to weave a tale of life's journeys and destinations.
And that pain? It just disappears.
"On stage I feel nothing," she says. "I feel just the pleasure of being in front of so many people and sharing that with them."
