LA CLIQUE are in town.
A decade and a half after their birth at the Fringe, the Olivier award-winning cabaret and burlesque group return to Edinburgh, rebranding themselves as La Clique Noel – Part Deux.
Among the troupe is ‘sword-swallowing sideshow babe,’ Heather Holliday.
Her act is one so dangerous there are only a few dozen full-time professionals in existence, according to trade association Sword Swallowers Association International (SSAI).
Less than a third are women.
Small and petite, Heather’s five foot three frame certainly doesn’t look like it could handle the two foot swords and objects her body somehow manages to engulf.
But impressively, it does. And it’s not a trick.
“Getting the very first sword to get down your throat is extremely hard – not only are you struggling with your gag reflex but you’re also got several valves that it has to go past, including your oesophageal sphincter,” she says.
And it’s not just the oesophageal sphincter that the swords have to contend with. Passing just millimetres from the aorta, heart and lungs, Heather guides the sword past the sternum, through the diaphragm and the liver and kidneys until it reaches her stomach.
“People say it’s just mind over matter but it’s also down to years of conditioning your body to adapt to this strange foreign item you’re putting down your throat into your body. But with everything, practice makes perfect.”
Most sword swallowers can only keep objects down for a few seconds. They are constantly repressing the gag reflex which is said to feel a little like trying to hold back a sneeze.
While most professional sword swallowers can take up to ten years to master the art, Heather took just six. But ‘simple’ straight-up sword swallowing isn’t all Heather is happy to stop at; she likes to challenge herself with more difficult objects – spinning plates from rods down her throat while hoola-hooping, glass neon tubes, multiple swords at once and curved swords included.
“While getting the first sword down is the hardest, as you change your repertoire and introduce new things it gets harder and harder,” she says.
“So even though I’ve been doing this for years, I still wouldn’t like to call myself a master, because I’m still teaching my body new things all the time.”
Performing multiple times a day, Heather’s amazing stunts have wowed audiences across the world. She began her remarkable career after working as a teen at the Coney Island circus sideshow in Brooklyn – one of the last remaining side shows in the USA.
Developing skills in both sword swallowing and fire breathing, her whole sideshow process was one she never saw coming:
“I started working at the Coney Island circus side show in Brooklyn when I was at high school. It was just a summer job. I didn’t know it at the time, but somehow it turned into a career. I started learning everything there.”
Even though the work is dangerous and injuries are frequent, Heather’s love for the art-form is one she couldn’t imagine replacing with anything else, in part because of her sideshow comrades.
“I enjoy this work so much because not only do I surprise myself daily with the weirdo stuff that I decide to do but I’m usually surrounded by a cast of people who are doing ridiculous and extraordinary things that I couldn’t even fathom.
“Show business has always been a part of my life, even before I was doing side show I was working as a child in cereal commercials so I feel like if I wasn’t performing in this capacity I would be involved in it in some sort of way.”
La Clique Noel – Part Deux, Festival Square Spiegeltent, Edinburgh. Until 5 January 2019
Tickets available here.
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