For Alaine Wray, trapeze and acrobatics is the unconventional route via which she has reached the heights kept by great traditional athletes.

The origins of the story are to be found in the year 2003 when following introduction to the art form while working at Breezes resorts, she started performing as a trapeze artist. She took to the coaching by her Hispanic tutor and was convinced by her own progress that she should be a high flyer.

One day she observed the island’s most advanced all-male acrobatics team “Soul Dynamics”, in performance and boldly informed them she would like to perform with them. Not surprisingly the men all took it as a joke but she persuaded them into giving her a try. It took her only one evening’s rehearsal with team captain, Eaton Sommerville, to learn the double trapeze act and she was placed in the next show.

As the lone female within the group, she can easily steal the spotlight. She is proud to be pioneering as a Jamaican woman in this area of sports entertainment. When she is touring with the male members of the team, she gets spoilt as the lone female, but at training time she gets no special consideration. During practices she is treated with the same intensity as the boys. Physical preparation is critical and during gym sessions she has to match up with the male members of the team.

It’s hard to imagine how this petite fashionista who loves to sport flashy, long, polished fingernails is involved in such a physically demanding art form. However, as soon as she starts swinging, you recognise that she is a physical force to be reckoned with and the Jamaican saying “Mi likkle bit but me Tallawah” comes readily to mind.

Perfecting her art form has proved dangerous on occasion.

Once while doing the three-bar flying trapeze, she miscalculated on the third bar and landed outside the catch net, damaging one of her toes. Funny too; a wardrobe malfunction at one big New Year’s Eve show saw her newly installed hair extensions was coming apart in the middle of a routine. “I was so embarrassed, but I had to stay professional and continued as if nothing was wrong as

one by one braids kept falling to the ground,” she recalls laughing.

That aside, Alaine enjoys the roar of the audience during performances and she feels extremely elated when foreigners in particular compliment her. The group constantly gets the same surprise reaction when they inform audiences that they are all based in Negril and for the most part have been self-taught.

For Alaine, it is a blessing that she never takes for granted.

“Being up there on the high bars with the men is an empowering experience and proves that a woman can do anything she wants in life,”

she said.