There are two sides to Dani Fortune. “My two performance personas couldn’t be any more different from one another,” she says as we catch-up about what it’s like to be performing at this year’s Glastonbury Festival.
On one side there’s Missy Fortune, “a burlesque badass, wickedly funny seductive sideshow sweetheart with fierce fire skills and boasts the title of Ireland’s only female sword swallower delighting it all things fetish with a Bettie Paige-inspired aesthetic,” as Fortune describes her.
The other is Missy Impossible, the polar opposite. “[It’s] my family circle show character. She is bright, confident and endearing. Her goal is to be a positive strong woman and an inspiration to young girls, letting them know that they can do anything and that nothing is Impossible!”
Fortune herself started performing at a young age. “As a wee’un I was always putting on shows for my family after watch the ‘Generation Game’ on TV of a Saturday evening so I don’t think there was any other option for me but performance as a career.
“I joined every dance class I could afford as well as a community circus group and as many local theatre groups I could find. I then went on as an adult to study Drama at university but then took a break from performing for a few years.” After that she “came back with a bang – and I [hasn’t] looked back since.”
The fact that she’s performing at the festival is “kind of incredible and to be honest I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,” she says.
“Last time I came, I was the guest of my partner who is another performer and I was so enamoured and overwhelmed by the incredible performances and eclectic atmosphere.”
By day you’ll be able to catch Missy Impossible across the festival’s Theatre & Circus fields while Missy Fortune will appear by night in Maverick’s – T&C’s eclectic late-night venue.
“To be back and performing [both shows] is pretty damn awesome!” she says.
On her plans for the shows, we should “expect lots of fire, lots of danger and sharp shit and lots of laughs,” she says. “Because I am doing two very different style shows, packing and prepping for the festival was a lot of hard work. I will have just come from travelling Europe with my show so will have been going for a month straight. What I do to my body is very strenuous and dangerous. It includes swords, nails and fire.”
Preparation, then, is key. “I need to rest and relax as much as possible to enable my body to heal after each show to ensure that every audience member goes away knowing that they have had the best experience I could have given them.”
But she’s also keen to make the most of the experience. “I am very excited to see a lot of the headlining acts but also I love finding the weird and wonderful stuff that you don’t expect to find. I also plan on checking out a lot of my friends who are performing and have come from all over the world in the Theatre & Circus field.”
As for specific acts, she plans to catch Taskmaster in the Cabaret tent, “and I love going to ‘Power Ballad Yoga’ because it is the best craic to wake you up in the morning,” she adds.
