What Is Danger?

A knife lying deserted on a table, an unlit Zippo lighter in a pool of petrol, what is danger? In any other situation these objects could be considered ‘dangerous’. The definition of dangerous is:

To be in dangerous situation is when a human is in peril, so naturally one would assume that danger is only felt within living beings. Inanimate objects are incapable of feeling or even being in danger because technically they aren’t alive. Earthquakes and rockslides occur when humans aren’t anywhere near the epicentre, we don't hear about them, they aren’t dangerous.

Feeling that you are in danger is based on fear. Fear is the belief that a person is in certain or possible danger. Fears can be irrational or rational. For example the co-creator of Apple, Steve Jobs, was terrified of buttons – that’s why he always wore a polo neck jumper.
Where does this apply to the performing arts? Don’t worry, I’m not meandering off on one! I’ll try not to include a picture of a cat, I promise - oh, maybe just one. 

Above: Steve Jobs

Take a tightrope walker for instance; he walks across a wire whilst juggling, there’s a net beneath him in case he falls. The walker believes he is in danger of falling, the nerves take their toll on his mind and body so he eventually falls to the safety of the net. Let’s say that the performer meditates on what fear is, he removes the fear and controls the anxiety of potential danger - let’s say he then burns the net in a dramatic frenzy!

The man walks out along his wire, juggling and whistling a tune. He believes he is not in danger, and confidence twinned with focus leaves an incredibly low opportunity for human error.
The audience thinks what he does is super-dangerous, and this is the key, people love risk. A final thought, when you are in a car (a very dangerous situation given the statistics of chance) do you feel in danger?

I juggle dangerous things on a regular basis; I know that if you are afraid of something, usually when you are first trying to learn how to juggle a new sharp prop, you’re likely to slice your hand open like a peach. A perfect example of this is broken bottles, I could juggle them reasonably well. I dropped a few and had to replace them, then after cutting both my foot and finger I called it a day. The fear of cutting my hand open had gone because I had already done that. Coming back to it a few days later, I picked up the bottles and became quite good at throwing them about. Then I had a little photo shoot.

Prosecco bottles are ideal

 

I haven’t cut myself since.