The Amazing Art of Hair Suspension

“Oh, my God. I don’t believe it…”

“You mean she’s going to…”

“Wait a minute, this can’t be real…”

Michelle Quiros, like a bird of paradise, glides from the wings of the darkened tent into a light that ignites the plumes that sprout from her Napoleonic hat. Dressed regally in a flowing black cape embroidered with pink-and-white fleurs-de-lis, she drifts into the ring with a silent flutter of chiffon, ruffling the feathers of her never-ending train with a not quite flirtatious quiver. Draped on the arms of her tuxedoed chaperon, she appears for a moment like a lithe ballerina in the pastel fantasies of Degas. That is, before she takes off her hat.

“Ladies and gentlemen, what yoooou are about to seeeee, is an amazing display of haaair suspension…”

Michelle steps forward into the center of the ring, flitters her arms like a butterfly, and in one dramatic sweeping motion flings the cape off her shoulders and into the arms of her consort. For a moment she poses—both arms in the air—as the next layer of costume, long black pantaloons, settles over her fragile body. Then, almost coyly and with no apparent chagrin, she carefully removes her hat. And suddenly there it is: it’s almost imperceptible, it’s draped in black velvet, many find it fascinating, a few even revolting. Sticking out of the top of Michelle’s well-oiled head of hair is a three-inch solid-steel ring.

“You don’t really think…”

“I’m going to be sick…”

“In ring three…,” the ringmaster calls, “from Brazil, Elizabeth Crystal, and in ring one”—his voice escalates—“from Mexico, Margarita Michelle…”

Elizabeth Crystal, alias Lupe Rodríguez, struts to the center of ring three, while her cousin Margarita Michelle, alias Michelle Quiros, walks to the middle of ring one. Michelle takes a bow as her attendant attaches the ring sticking out of her head to a three-quarter-inch cable hung from a pulley at the crest of the tent. With a slight lift and a gentle push around the ring, the twenty-three-year-old Michelle slowly rises into the air and begins to slither out of her next layer of clothes. First she takes off her left shoe, then her right, and tosses them to her attendant, who is actually her husband. Next she unzips the pantsuit down her back and lets it ripple down her legs and drift teasingly toward the earth.

“It’s all a matter of presentation,” she told me in a voice as elegant as her act. “I’m trying to gather attention, to draw your mind to my act. When I take off my cape I’m still wearing my pantsuit, but when I take off my pantsuit all I have on is my bikini. At that point you look at my hair.”

And look at her hair people do. Though naturally brown, it has been dyed black for the act. Though fairly brittle, it has been wetted down for pliancy. And though relatively thin, it is clearly strong enough to support her body weight. Still there’s the trouble of that ring: How did it get there? What does it do? And where does it go at night? These questions, like Michelle, just linger in the air, cryptic and aloof. Indeed, as she hangs in the dark for a moment before turning her own set of tricks, Michelle’s hair pulls up on her scalp, which in turn pulls up on her forehead, which in turn pulls up on the edges of her eyes, giving them an oddly Asian look—the essence of enigma.

“The act was originally done by Chinese acrobats hundreds of years ago,” explained Michelle. “When they did it they used to drink tea and fold their legs, sort of like having a tea break in the air. In Mexico they bring a lot of Chinese acrobats into the circus. My grandmother learned it from one of them. She taught it to my mother, and my mother taught it to me.”

Michelle started practicing the act when she was eleven years old. “I told my father one day, ‘I want to tie my hair up like Mom.’ I stood on a chair and he hooked my hair to a cable. At first I didn’t even kick my feet out, but then, little by little, I slowly lifted my body weight to see what it felt like. At first it hurt, it hurt a lot, but I wanted to do it so much I didn’t care. I vowed I wouldn’t cry.”

After a few months Michelle was ready to kick out the chair and hang alone for several minutes. Within six months she was ready to try a few tricks. Then tragedy intervened.

“We were on Ringling at the time. My mother was doing her act in the center ring. She was spinning in the air one night when the cable holding her up suddenly snapped, dropping her thirty-five feet to the floor. It was horrible. She broke a vertebra in her neck. She fell into a coma. It was a miracle she didn’t die. For several months she stayed in the hospital and after that we moved back to Florida. We stayed home the whole year. I couldn’t stand to see her upset, so that’s when I told my dad, ‘I want to do the act. I want to help the family…I want to be like Mom.’”

Michelle had just turned twelve years old.

After stripping to her bikini, Michelle is ready for her first trick. Starting from a stationary position several feet above the ground, Michelle slips one neon-green hoop around each of her thighs and spins them toward each other. Moving deliberately, she then slips one hoop on each of her elbows, one on each of her forearms, and one on each of her hands. At this stage she looks like an octopus spinning eight mini-Hula-Hoops. Next, the three members of the prop crew who are controlling the rope that holds her hair slowly step backward and hoist her upward as if the rings around her limbs are propelling her into the air. As if to illustrate the point, the band plays “The Wind Beneath My Wings.” The trick could easily seem comical, instead it is sublime.

“My father always taught me: ‘It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.’ He’s always told me you can do something very difficult, but if you don’t do it nice the people won’t appreciate it. But if you do something simple and you know how to make it elegant, the act will look nicer and the people will like it.”

With her sparrowlike body, her graceful figure, her caramel-candy skin, Michelle always looks nice in the ring…even when she’s on fire. For her second trick, Angel lights three juggling torches and carefully tosses them up to his wife. Occasionally she would catch one on the wrong end, several times she actually singed the hair on her forearms, and on one frightful occasion during the fourth week of the year the torch unfortunately alit on her bangs and set her hair ablaze. “Oh, the smell!” was all she could remember. “What delight!” the crowd responded: they thought it was part of the act.

“I’ve noticed that people like things that look strange. If I just hung by my hair, at first they would be ‘Oh, wow.’ Then, after a while, they would say, ‘Big deal.’ I have to make it exciting. Not only can I hang by my hair but I can juggle while hanging by my hair. That’s the way people think.”