Never, I repeat, never do to your back what I did to mine on the show. If you strain or pull something, for godsake, stop doing whatever you were doing, take some NSAIDs, and rest. If it doesn’t feel remarkably better the next day, go see a doctor. Don’t be tough. Really. I’m dead serious: be a wimpy little pussy when it comes to back pain.

I was all of 19 years old, having just turned 19 on the show, when I strained my back – the first time. At 5′4″, I was considered “character height”, meaning I was of the appropriate height to don the classic disney cartoon character costumes. Most of the characters, ‘cept for Goofy, were played by girls. I was Lumiere, the candlestick from Beauty and the Beast, during the Beauty segment of the show. The costume was horrendous. I wore a big fiberglass tube – the part that made up the midsection – over a long skirt. The tube was cinched just below my knees and went all the way up to my armpits. It posed a tremendous restriction to my normal range of motion. On the very top sat the character head, which towered a good 4 feet over my actual head and weighed 15 pounds. The head wasn’t supported by any other part of the costume, but rather it perched on top of my shoulders. The only attachment from the head to the body was two nylon straps running down to the fiberglass midsection. The head was free to move and bobble around. See, Disney characters talk by moving their heads around. Part of my routine was to bow several times, and each time I bowed, the 4-foot tall head would lob forward and yank my head down. The rest of the costume made it impossible to properly compensat for this motion. Instead, I would end up pitched forward and pinned against the fiberglass tube around my torso with the character head pulling on my neck and back muscles. There was no good way to get back upright from that position due to the restricting costume, so I had to throw my weight backwards into my straining back and jerk myself up.

I strained my erector spinae, latissimus dorsae, quadratus lumborum, and I sprained my sacro-illiac joint.

And then I did it again twice more within 6 months of the original injury. In laymans terms, I permanently damaged the ligaments that fastened my spine and sacrum to my pelvis, and I did this all before I was 20. I’ve been in near constant pain ever since.

Amazingly, my spine remains absolutely perfect. I’m just a little too bendy for my own good. The problem lies in the muscles and ligaments. The ligaments are too loose, due to my injuries, to stabilize my spine, which causes my muscles to be in a constant state of clenching, otherwise known as a “muscle spasm.” A muscle spasm is like a knot in the muscle. It doesn’t spasm like you might think a muscle would spasm – it’s not like a great big uncontrolled twitch. Rather, it’s the muscle tightening up on itself because it’s getting the signal to tighten up, due to be pulled on, in my case, by my spine flopping around all willy nilly. The muscles begin to accumulate little tears, and swelling and irritation ensues, restricting blood flow and prolonging healing. When muscles are damaged, they become tight and weak. The weaker the muscle, the more it strains in effort to contract, causing the unremitting tightness and soreness that is “the muscle spasm.” Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

I’ve spend hours laying on the floor, my injury keeps me up at night – sometimes all night. Sometimes several nights in a row. Ibuprofin, and other NSAIDs make it worse, since they effectively relax other supporting muscles and cause more strain on the weak, damaged muscles.

I’ve asked to have my vertebrae fused together, to releive my muscles of the arduous task of supporting my excessively mobile spine. I was turned down. They tell me that my condition will improve when I get older and get arthritis, that the stiffening of my joints will help relieve my muscles. Great – I can look forward to arthritis. For now, I’m just glad my spine itself is free from damage.

So…yeah. I get to look forward to arthritis. Dude, seriousely, if the devil incarnate came to me and said, “yo, I can take away your back pain for the rest of your life…all you need to do is kill a man,” it would give me a moment’s pause, like, I would think, “Ok…let me think…uhhhh…yeah, well, you see….no.”

I wouldn’t kill someone to relieve my pain, but ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh I’d cedrtainly entertain the idea for a moment or two.

Before all that shite, however, I managed to have a relatively injury free, normal career as a D20 showgirl. Key word being “relatively…”

But that’s kinda towards the end of my story. And I’m not quite there yet. Before the big injuries finally did me in, there were the minor not-so-serious injuries. Oh yeah, and some bloopers as well. Have I mentioned the time I fell off of the castle?

I fell about 10 times during the show, over the course of the states tour. And I fell at least once in every costume I wore…except the candlestick (Lumiere)….and thank jebus for that, because when you fall in the candlestick, so I heard, two stage-crew guys had to run out onto the ice and prop you back up because it was imposible to get yourself upright again on your own, due to the limitted mobility of the costume. In the mean time, I was instructed – in case I took a spill, you had to continue speaking your lines, meaning moving your hands around while laying on the ice. The line-captain, a 30-year old seasoned brittish showgirl, was the candlestick before I took over her part, and she fell once, and it put her in tears.

“Pretty little clouds”

My first fall was in my second show. I was a cloud in the blue-fairy/pinnochio number. The cloud costume, unlike what you’re probably imagining, was a pretty, sexy little dress. The “clouds” were the ensemble skaters during the blue-fairy’s entrance. I have one picture of me in the cloud, and it is in MA, and I’m trying to get it sent down here. For now I’ll have to describe it to you: it was a sleek dress with a low back, and a weird sparkly headpiece. During the clouds, we carried, uhhhh, “clouds”: big 12 foot long silky scarfs, which we twirled around and ruffled etc., etc. If you don’t hold your cloud high enough, or move it properly, it drags on the ice and, well, can get caught in your skates. I have to say, I’m quite proud of the fact that I fell quite gracefully as a cloud, hitting the ice and managing to grab my “cloud” and strike a pose as I slid across the ice, narrowly avoiding hitting the wall.

Ok, that one is admittably, no fun. There was another cloud issue while I was touring, involving multiple cloud girls. This one happened to occur opening night of the Japan tour. See, the blue fairy enters first, and then lead us clouds out onto the ice from the side of the castle about 2 minutes into the number. Before our cue, we had to wait, all lined up at stage left. I mentioned those unwieldy headpieces and flowy bits of cloud…the costumes, by and by, were also silky and flowy. The head pieces were – oh geez – how to explain them – kinda wire-y curly-doodles that spiralled and twisted upwards, with some sparkly shazamms on them. Again, I apologize for the lack of photo, I’m workin’ on it. So, there we were. I was the third cloud in line, cloud #3 if you will. Cloud #1 was straightening out her cloud-scarf thing, and managed to get her cloud ensared upon cloud #2’s head piece. Cloud #1 then turned around to held untangle cloud #2, and in the process, their headpieces because entwined. Keep in mind, we had about 20 seconds before our entrance cue at this point, and clouds 1 and 2 were all tripped up in headpiece bangles and fabric. Me, being next in line, then attemped to seperate them, and you guess what happened there, and cloud #4 – there were six of us total – followed suit as well.

[Todd - the stage right carp: "Cue clouds"]

“shit! shit! shit!shit…..”

[Our P.D., over the walkie: "Todd, why are there only two clouds? What's going on?"

Todd:" Uhhh, they got stuck."

P.D." Stuck?"

You ever see the string of circus elephants walking around in tandem, each one using its trunk to hold onto the tail of the elephant in front of it? I imagine we kinda looked like that, the four of us, as we manuevered our way off of back stage.

"Genies"

Looking back, the genie number was great fun. It was the "never had a friend like me," number from the Alladdin seg. The lead genie, Scott, was awesome, and did a full-layout backflip on ice. There were about 20 of us back-up/replicate genies, you know, from when the genie replicates himself in the disney film. If you haven't seen it, never mind. At the time, however, I remember that I never liked being in the genie number. No one really did. The genie costume, like much of the other costumes, was bulky and unwieldy. The upper body was padded to a great deal. It was like wearing several fluffy pillows. The genie slippers fastened over the skates, and the head was a full head rubber mask, under which we had to wear a hood so that no bit of neck or hair could peek through.

I fell several times in the genie, and I have to say, I remember it being kinda fun. I mean, my upper body was essentially one big pillow, and made for some good slidin' on the ice. I had one other not-so-fun genie accident. See, the ensemble genies entered through a big cloud of smoke. The stage effect of the smoke cloud was accomplished by Lee - yes - the same one I happened to be dating - spraying a canister of compressed CO2. There's this really neat thing that happens when compressed CO2 is released from a canister: the drop in pressure within the tube causes it to become very cold at the point where the gas is being released, and water vapor will condense to form ice on the nozzle. It just so happened that, one day, as I was going through the CO2 cloud in the genies number, that a piece of ice managed to fly though the very small eye pieces in my mask and strike me in the eyeball...right as I was emerging on stage. And hoooooooly f*ckberries, that sh*t hurt. I was then presented with another problem: I had one eye which I could see out of, and no peripheral vision as it was because of the full-head rubber mask, and my eyes had promptly begun to water up. I could see the blue blobs of genies around me with just enough contrast to tell where they were, and so I could guide myself appropriately to effectively remain in place during the number. Really, what I needed to do was get my ass off the ice to have my eye checked out, but I was scared shitless about getting in the way of the principal genie, whose routine was one big slew of acrobatic feats. Scott, the principal genie, happend to be a tall guy, in a similar costume, with similar restrictions to his vision. Colliding with him would've been like an F150 crashing into my ford focus hatchback, so I finished out the number, all the while yelling to Kit and Sarah, the genies to my right and left, that "you have to help me out, I can't see!"

So I finished up, tore my mask off and was off to the e-room. Thankfully, my cornea remained in tact and unscratched, and I missed only one show due to having to wear an eye patch. I got chewed out for not exiting the ice promptly, which, truthfully, I don't know how I was supposed to do that; I couldn't see, and communicating through a full head rubber mask is not easily done. Lee felt damn bad about the incident, since he was the one who had been spraying the CO2. He ended up carrying me to the e-room on piggy-back after the show. On our way, we passed another one of the skaters, an acrobat, who had just come from the e-room himself. It really was a circus, that show, I tell you...

One of the stage hands, Tommy, took to calling me "patchy" for a spell after that. He later gave me another nickname, "stitchy." Y'all can guess the outcome of that accident....

"The skater scar"

We call it the skater scar in the skating world because many skaters have it: a scar that runs from left to right on the underside of the chin. One acquires this scar from falling face forward and sliding their chin across the ice. It's not a painfull injury, but it bleeds a lot and typically requires a few stitches. I've done this to my chin twice: once, when I was a wee skater of 5 years old, and once while practicing after the show. Yes, I have fallen on my face. To give you a visual image of how this happened, the move I was doing when the fall occured looked like this:

That's not me, by the way. We made our own ice on the tour, and it wasn't always of the highest quality. We had some issues with the compressors and pumps going down, and the ice melting, or becoming too thin. I was in the middle of what we call the "stars," the move that the guy in the above video is doing which involves toe-pick-kicking while swinging your body parallel to the ice leading up to the fancy gravity defying jump-spin, called "an arabian". If you watch closely, you can see that this involves really leaning into a deep edge to generate the angular momentum. However, inorder to stay on the foot and not fall on your face, the edge of the supporting blade needs to cut deeply and securely into some ice. As I prepared to kick up into the arabian, which meant one great big push with my toepick whilst swooping my torso in a big parabolic arch, I hit a spot with insufficient ice. Rather than the momentum of my legs carrying me aloft into a sort of vertical twisting hurdle, I effectively cartwheeled my self directly onto my face. The whole thing was rather fast, and I'm happy to say, not too painfull. The skin on the underside of your chin, you see, isn't all that sensitive. I'd never fallen on this move before, and finding myself suddenly on my face and bleeding was a bit disorienting, but I was fine...except for the bleeding bit.

F*ckSh*tPiss! I hate going to the e-room, I thought. I really didn't want to go to the e-room...again. Especially for a scrape which didn't even hurt. But at the urging of everyone else who saw me oozing blood all over the ice, I was prompted to scuttle off to get some stitches.

"Stage-left hunnies."

The Mulan segment culminated with a fight between the chinese and the huns, and it was actually a pretty cool number. All the chinese soldiers, save Mulan herself, were played by boys, while all the huns were showgirls, reason being that the "fight" involved the chinese picking up and throwing the huns. It was pretty fun.

I was a stage-left hun, meaning that I entered the scene by climbing over the stage left turret of the castle. It was good to be a stage-left hun. Todd worked the stage left turret, and did something he was not supposed to do: he gave us treats. Third-show treats, he called them. Typically, on the third show, as we passed him to scale the castle - skates and hun-costumes and all, he would feed us pieces of candy, usually a starburst or some skittles. Eating in costume was a bigtime no-no, and so was eating in costume while skating in the show. But it was our thing. We got a bit goofy in some numbers, when we could get away with it. We liked to make with the humor to keep spirits up at the end of tiresome three-show days. One show, the hun in front of me, in an effort to make a humorous un-hun-like emergence atop the turret, as we were want to do out of fun every now and again, paused and kicked one leg outwards in a sort of arabesque. I, however, was not aware that she was going to do this, and, being right below her on a ladder, received a swift kick to the forhead and fell about 8 feet off the castle. Luckilly, Todd managed to heroically catch me.

"Whoa, thanks! I'm ok," I insisted. "I'll just go out the bottom of the turret,"

"No, I don't think so. You're not going anywhere."

"Wha - I'm fine, I'm not bleeding, am I?"

"No, but you just got kicked in the head and fell off the castle. I'm not letting you out there."

I took a few other bruises during that number. Amidst some light stage-fighting, I caught a solid elbow to the eyesocket when my fighting partner slung me a little too agressively and I flew into another skater's arm. I imagine it looked quite comical: me hitting him, and then me hitting the ice. Sorta like Wiley Coyote running into the wall.

It's a goddamn oddity that I didn't accrue any significant permanent damages to my body resultant from all the flying through the air and landing on parts I was not meant to land on. *Sigh* Noooo, it had to be that stupid, f***ing candlestick costume.

The first injury was slightly gradual. It was discomfort at first, and not pain. After the pack-out show, I would bring bags of ice onto the tourbus and ice down my shoulders and mid-back, which felt like the sore parts at the time, and I would ice myself down as we bused to the next city. I didn't want to go straight out when the pain intensified, because, in addition to being a candlestick, I was also a principal understudy, which involved some actual figure skating. I went to the office and I told them that, truthfully, I don't think my body can take being in the candlestick, that it's causing me pain and making it damn hard to perform. I asked if I could not do the candlestick and still do my other numbers. The answer was not what I wanted to hear.

See, D20 was a popular show, not just for audiences, but for skaters as well. It had a lot of big musical numbers, and very little stupid dialogue. A lot of skaters wanted to get onto the show, and a lot of skaters with years of experience on other tours wanted to transfer over. I, as an ensemble skater, would be easily replaced. My options were to go out, heal, and come back and do my parts - candlestick and all, or to quit. I believe the exact words said to me by Mike, the tour manager who I swear wanted to see me quit - or at least that's how he acted, were "there are about 10 skaters waiting to take your place if you want to leave."

At that point, I began to realize that I might not want to committ myself to showbiz for the longhaul. It really was stupidity that made me say, "sure, I'll keeping doing the candlestick. I love doing character work," during contract negotiations. The problem with being a full-time salaried perfromer is that there's typically a contract involved. The Disney contracts didn't give much room to wiggle. I didn't have a lot of say with my contract, being a new girl and all. The contract I was offered, take it or leave it, essentially said, "we own you, baby, and you'll do whatever we tell you to do baby, and wear whatever we tell you to wear, baby, or else." F***ing showbiz circus. Like I said, we ensemble skaters were a dime-a-dozen. They really weren't concerned about replacing skaters.

The tour would be heading to Japan and South East Asia next, and Lee had already been offered a spot on the crew for Japan. I wanted to stay with him, so I talked myself into signing away my body for another year.

I would be heading to Japan - yippee!

Ahhh, me and my youthful abandon, thinking I was invincible, not caring about too far down the road....

There was a two-month break in-between the states-tour and the Japan-tour, and I would be spending the break in NYC, skating with the Ice Theatre of New York and doing a nifty little avante-garde show, Greg Wittrock's Freezerburn, on the side. I also reinjured my back while in New York, but that bit is still to come. I still had to finish out the first tour in the states.

Next Chapter: Media Blitz!

(That's right, I have some actual footage for you!) Here's a preview:

Shoothouse Barbie, age 19, pre-show in stage make-up: my "Betty boop" false lashes and the "Disney smile"

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