Today we’d like to introduce you to Wildfire Arts Collective
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Wildfire Arts Collective is a specialty act entertainment agency owned and operated by two best friends – Amanda Lee and Kimberly Faith.
As young girls, we both had big dreams of becoming professional dancers and spent many years training. However, life had other plans for us. Things didn’t turn out quite as we expected; they ended up better than our wildest dreams. Both of our unique paths led us to discovering hula hooping and circus arts, which opened up a whole new world of dance, including fire dance. Our shared love of these art forms brought us together as friends.
We spent many years as friends, collaborating on other projects, meeting up for “flow jams” and taking the occasional girls trip with all of our hula hoop loving friends. One day, Kimberly got an incredible opportunity to bring a troupe of performers to a large music event in Florida called Cyclops Cove, put on by Subtronics. Amanda was amongst those invited, along with two other dear friends Katie and Esha. It was at Cyclops Cove that we realized how well we meshed as a group. We performed our hearts out all weekend, and on the plane ride home, Wildfire Arts Collective was born.
We started out by making themed videos, creating choreographed dance acts to submit to music festivals, and coordinating themed photoshoots. We performed at our first West Coast music festival, Lightning in a Bottle, where our acts were met with incredible enthusiasm and support from our audience and peers. The more time we spent together, the more positive feedback we received and the more we realized that, together, we could turn our dreams into reality.
After a year of working on this project, it was time to make our business official. In January 2024 Wildfire Arts Collective became an LLC. Our first gig as an LLC was performing for Super Bowl LVIII, and it was only the beginning.
What started off as a fire and LED dance troupe has evolved into so much more. We now offer aerial performances on a variety of specialty apparatuses, stilt walking with larger-than-life costuming, character work with costumes designed by our in-house seamstress, juggling, contortion, burlesque, and so much more.
Our shared love of dance choreography has blossomed into a catalog of fully choreographed shows which we have performed on stages all over the world such as Envision Festival in Costa Rica and Lightning in a Bottle in California. Our next big adventure will be a two-week tour in the Maldives at the Sun Siyam resorts over Christmas and New Years to perform 6 fire and LED shows, where we will be debuting many of our new acts.
While the growth has felt as powerful as a wildfire – pun intended – we are still in the early stages of our company’s journey. We are so incredibly excited to see what the future holds for us and we are committed to offering the highest quality entertainment in California with services worldwide.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Wildfire has faced some challenges along the way, but each challenge has only made us stronger. Having been involved in many other groups and entertainment companies, we were at first nervous to step out onto our own. When we overcame this fear, we received overwhelmingly positive feedback from clients and peers, confirming that we had made the right decision. There was no sense in dimming our light, we shine as brightly as we can.
Personally, we each recently lost a parent, which has been a difficult thing to process. On one hand, our business is booming, but on another, we just lost someone we love dearly. The juxtaposition has been jarring to say the least. While we both wish they could see us now and long to share our successes with them, we have used the grief of loss as fuel for our fire. A lot of what we do is in honor of them. Life is too short to ever hold back.
Wildfire is stronger together… The pairing of our personalities has been a dream come true. Our strengths complement each other in so many ways, allowing our business to flow and grow with ease. We each have our dedicated roles in the business, we support each other in these roles and we come together to perform and create.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Wildfire provides entertainment for corporate events, weddings, birthday parties, festivals, concerts and more. We specialize in choreographed fire, LED and aerial performances, and we have created a massive catalog of unique acts to choose from. Our background in dance heavily influences our act creation, which makes us stand out from other entertainment companies. We “speak the same language” – when we’re creating together, the choreography just flows… Our capacity to create is endless.
No gig is too big or too small. We pride ourselves in delivering unique, flawless choreography for every performance featuring a wide variety of unique props. Our costuming reflects the theme of each event and we have loved bringing themes to life with creations like our Disco Ball Dancers, Living Flowers, Patchwork Dolls, Golden Goddesses, and so much more. It has been the most magical experience to create an idea from scratch and have clients excited to pay for the service.
When we aren’t performing, Amanda is the lead on all things social media, while Kimberly spearheads the behind the scenes business operations.
Amanda creates and edits all of the content you see on our social pages. She has an eye for capturing beautiful content and a deep passion for creating videos showcasing Wildfire’s offerings. She helps plans photoshoots, has built their website from scratch and uses all of her experience in the film industry to give us a competitive edge in the marketing realm.
Kimberly is at the core of business operations. Her strength lies in sales and business management. Having been VP of sales and a sales manager for small to medium size fashion companies, Kimberly wore many hats from sales lead to customer relations to team management, which has given her the the confidence needed to grow the business from the ground up.
We are committed to our professionalism when working with our clients and are ready to deliver the best possible product possible, no matter what it takes.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
While Amanda is a thriving performer today, that hasn’t always been the case. She spent her senior year of college bedridden after two life changing hip surgeries – at that point in her life, she never thought she would dance again. It wasn’t until she attended Joshua Tree Music Festival and saw someone dancing with an LED hula hoop, that her beliefs changed – she had hope again. She was so inspired by this dancer’s smile and unlimited joy inside her circle, she knew in that moment that it was something that she had to try. She shed tears of joy her first time hula hooping because it was the first time since her surgeries that she allowed her body to move freely. The rest was history… she became obsessed with learning, slowly transitioned to teaching hoop dance, traveled the world to over 15 countries sharing her love of hooping and now has her own entertainment business with her best friend. Life can’t get much better than that.
Besides her career in entertainment, Kimberly is also a yoga teacher and will soon be a certified yoga therapist (C-IAYT). After years in a high-stress career in fashion, suppressing her inner dancer thinking it was the “safe” thing to do, Kimberly experienced first hand the healing powers of yoga which fundamentally transformed her life’s journey. The teachings of yoga gave her the courage and physical strength to boldly pursue the life she imagined. She is now committed to helping others discover their innate joy within by creating space for self-exploration (yoga therapy) and creating experiences for play (Wildfire Arts Collective).
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wildfireartscollective.com
- Instagram: @wildfireartscollective.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wildfireartscollective/
- Youtube: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=youtube+wildfire+arts+collective&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
- Yelp: https://m.yelp.com/biz/wildfire-arts-collective-los-angeles
Image Credits
Photos by Keiki Knudson, Kevin Teichner and Dustin Engelskind
