SPECIAL EVENT

Human cannonball ready to fly

Meet Nicole. She got a new job in January, and she likes it. She travels and meets people, and they seem pretty amazed when she tells them what she does.

"They're impressed," Nicole says. "And then they ask me how the cannon works. And of course I can't tell them that, because it's a circus secret."

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus XTREME

7 p.m. Friday, 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. Saturday, 1 p.m. Sunday, Verizon Arena, North Little Rock

Tickets: $16-$61

(800) 745-3000

ticketmaster.com

Nicole grew up in Alabama, and -- well, let's back up.

Nicole gets shot out of a cannon for a living.

Since January, when she joined the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus XTREME tour, Nicole estimates she has been ejected from a cannon somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 times.

Arkansans can watch in person when the tour stops at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock Friday through Sunday.

Along with Nitro Nicole, the Human Cannonball, circusgoers can glimpse acts featuring tigers, camels and dogs, as well as high-wire performers, aerialists and a trampoline troupe.

So how does one go from Nicole Sanders, human from Alabama, to Nitro Nicole, human projectile?

Sanders says she always loved to perform. She began ballet lessons in Spanish Fort, a suburb of Mobile, at 3 years old. Her mother could occupy her indefinitely by aiming a camera at her.

"When I was little growing up, I would perform for hours," she says. "I don't even know what I was doing. Just dancing and singing in front of the camcorder."

Over 15 years her dancing career suffered setbacks -- she tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her knee twice in high school, once while dancing and again while playing volleyball. But she continued to perform during college at Loyola University in New Orleans.

After graduating in 2007, Sanders discovered a new love when she enrolled in a trapeze fitness class. Before long the instructor told her she had enough talent to attend a professional circus training school.

"Immediately something clicked," Sanders says. "I said, 'I want to do that.'"

After two years at the San Francisco Circus Center, she landed a job with a small circus that toured Peru. There she performed aerial acts on hanging straps and a hoop called the lyra. After a stint with the midsize Cole Bros. tent circus, Sanders heard from an industry friend that Ringling Bros. was looking for a new human cannonball. To say there are few openings might be selling the position short; roughly 20 people in the world perform the act, Sanders says.

She got the job after sending a Facebook friend request to Brian Miser -- builder of the company's cannon and a sometimes-cannonball himself -- to inquire about it. She admits to harboring some reservations.

"Shooting out of the cannon is physically demanding, but more than anything it's mental," she says. "So I had to be sure I wanted to do this."

Of course, since human bodies are generally resistant to spontaneous combustion, Nicole is not actually being "shot" out of a cannon like traditional ammunition.

No, the process by which she goes airborne for 100 feet and lands safely on an inflated bag -- the kind used by fire departments to catch people who fall off buildings -- is more equivalent to the launch of a catapult.

In her act, she dances along and around the 24-foot barrel of the cannon, which soon rises slowly toward the ceiling to a roughly 45-degree angle. That's her cue to climb to the mouth of the barrel, where she sits on the edge, swinging her legs. Finally she gives the crowd a wave and slips on her stomach into the cannon. Inside, her thoughts are dominated by keeping her muscles tense for the landing -- the most important part -- and the technique needed to flip on her back by the end.

"I actually love it," Sanders says. "You know, it's a thrill, it's a rush. There's so much adrenaline built up into it. ...

"It's a fantastic job."

Weekend on 09/01/2016

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