I ran into Logan on Boston Common, where he was practicing rope dart with a small group. Rope dart is a length of rope with a small dart attached, or, in Logan's case, a fist-sized ball. You alternately wrap the rope around parts of your body -- your arms, legs, even your neck -- and twist around in order to launch it, often using the momentum already built up.
It's very uncommon in the U.S. Ultimately I want to find somebody to teach me. The reason I teach is to find somebody to surpass me.
The twist is that Logan does this as fire art, which is to say the fist-sized ball he is swinging around is, in performance, lit on fire.
He also does "contact fire", aka "fleshing", which means putting a thin strip of fuel across the skin and lighting it. Normally, Logan explained, you ignite the line and, at the end of the line, there's a torch of some sort waiting to be lit off of your body.
A lot of the appeal of fleshing is being naughty. Every performance I've seen has been very sensual.
I had to ask him about accidents; he told me about a time he was using the fire whip.
When you crack the whip, it literally shoots fireballs.
There was a time when one blew back on him, but, of course, he survived.
I've been on fire -- I know how to put myself out...The entire left half of my torso was on fire.I had to ask, "Why fire art?" He says it's largely because of the performance aspect, and, of course, a touch of fascination with flame. Julia, another performer, added, "It's the adult version of pyromania that doesn't include burning things down."
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