Mr Jashairie Jamsairi, 19, had an unusual pastime growing up.Jashairie Jamsairi playing the drums during a performance held at Thye Hua Kwan Moral Society in 2017. ST FILE PHOTO: NEO XIAOBIN
A "plucking the green" component of a performance involving crabs at the official opening of a spa in Holland Drive in 2017. ST FILE PHOTO: NEO XIAOBIN“I don’t like soccer, I don’t like sepak takraw, or all the games we played in the void deck,” says Mr Jamsairi, who first started lion dancing with the now-defunct Kuo Chuan Police Boys’ Club lion dance troupe when he was seven.
“Mermaids come in every shape and form you can imagine,” says Ms Cara Neo, 31, better known by her chosen mermaid name, Syrena.Singapore’s first full-time professional mermaid runs the Singapore Mermaid School. The mermaid tails are made of different materials. Fabric tails weigh as little as 2kg, while hyper-realistic silicone tails can weigh from 15kg to 25kg.“A core part of mermaiding is bringing the audience into a different world. So even in that minute or so where you are holding your breath, you have to make sure you’re juggling your hair, make sure it’s not going in your eyes, and make sure that your eyes are neither too small nor too big, even with water rushing up your sinuses.” Syrena says.
Not to mention, “it is an amazing workout for your core and back, which is why some people take it up for fitness reasons”.Life as a mermaid would be a lonely business if it weren’t for mermaid friends in this unusual community. Co-founders Koh Jia Sheng and Beverly Wan, both 26, formed the troupe in 2020 after reaching out to friends and contacts like former gymnasts, cheerleaders, and parkour practitioners.
Besides the core discipline of group acrobatics, the members perform contortion, hand-balancing and tumbling, as well as prop manipulation like juggling cigar boxes and spinning diabolos. They even have a fire breather on the team.
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