I did a lot of trapeze stuff when I did 'Pippin' and continued to do it afterward. Flying is so fun, and I was used to the harness idea, but these harnesses are like intense, full bodysuit things.
I do about 90 percent of my own stunts, and the things I can't do for insurance reasons, like swinging out of a flying helicopter, I wouldn't want to do anyway.
Sequoia seeds have flat wings, and glint and glance in their flight like a boy's kite.
The rig work can be rewarding to pull off, a really good rig in a set of wires where you're throwing yourself up walls and doing moves mid-air. That's just fun.
August is the month of the high-sailing hawks. The hen hawk is the most noticeable. He likes the haze and calm of these long, warm days. He is a bird of leisure and seems always at his ease. How beautiful and majestic are his movements!
I had no more alphabet than the journeying of the swallows, the pure and tiny water of the small, fiery bird that dances rising from the pollen.
I'm never gonna be somebody who's gonna fall down from the sky on a trapeze. That's not me. I really want to make sure that my focus stays on connecting with the audience.
From regular, relative skydiving, I went on to freeflying. Freeflying is more the three-dimensional skydiving.
I remember, as a kid, we would go and watch the Red Arrows, and I thought it was similar to British wrestlers and the acrobatic division.
I wish they'd build a ski jump at the Grand Canyon; it'd be fantastic.
I wanted to do a corkscrew moonsault backwards, so I had the idea of doing it forwards like the shooting star corkscrew, and I was aware no one else did that in wrestling. If I could perfect this technique, it would be unique to me.
The Golden Eagle, which has universally been considered as a bird of most extraordinary powers of flight, is in my estimation little more than a sluggard, though its wings are long and ample.
I'm like the only Kiwi that can fly, I'm the one with the biggest wing.
I've never been more terrified than when I learned how to paramotor. They attached this machine to my back, as if I was a stuntman in a James Bond movie, and I had to fly over all these trees and patches of concrete in Cirencester.
Ah, to be a bird. To fly the skies, sing my song, and best of all occasionally peck someone's eyes out.
The stunts on the ground I can do, but I've never been good with heights.
The trapeze was my first love. To me, it's normal. It's all I've ever known. But when I see other people's upbringings, I think, 'Hmm... mine was rather unconventional. Quite different!'
Once Michael gets up there he says, 'Well, maybe I'll just hang up here in the air for a while, just sit back.' Then all of a sudden, he says, 'Well, maybe I'll 360. No I changed my mind. I'll go up on the other side.' He's just incredible.
Sometimes it was tough doing take after take upside down! I did a lot of that sort of thing.
It is very normal for people on the ground to look at somebody apparently walking in midair and thinking first that person is crazy and thinking secondly that person risks his or her life.
Nik Wallenda and his family are legendary.
I like the challenge and instant gratification of landing a new jump or learning a new element. That made me fall in love with the sport.
I've never really had a fear of heights; in fact, I love being up high, so hanging from wires high above everyone's head has always sort of felt natural for me.
Well one of the times I did a stunt was in the devil's snare room and they lifted me up on a harness and a safety rope really, really high, and they just dropped me down into the devil's snare.
The scenes in the show were filmed with a crew of really excellent stunt jumpers, but we had the feel of the parachutes, so we could be more realistic in the roles.
