The Casino File
If you attend a performance of the current edition of “The Hook” at Caesars Atlantic City, you will see Miranda Menzies hanging around. Literally.
The 34-year-old Edinburgh, Scotland native who recently joined the cast of the R-rated variety show, practices the ancient art of hair hanging; that is, she performs acrobatics suspended in the air by her hair.
While many hair hangers are traditional circus artists who carry on generations-long family traditions, Menzies’ father works in finance, and though her mother has served as a radio weather forecaster and a local-level producer, it was more fate than family that put her on her unusual career path.
Not that she was unfamiliar with off-the-ground performing. Menzies started out acting, but soon found she had a talent for performing aerial stunts: “If you did a production of [Shakespeare’s] ‘A Midsummers Night Dream,’ let’s have Puck fly,” is how she explained it during a recent pre-show chat.
Menzies soon enough abandoned straight acting and developed an aerial act that had her performing with a hoop above the stage. While gigging in Berlin, Germany, she went to see a show that included a hair hanger. “I immediately connected to it,” she recalled. “And became obsessed.”
The reason, she continued, is that “It’s pure movement and it’s entirely body work. And to see the center-point of someone’s body being their head, you can almost feel what that must feel like for your spine, how everything hangs in a different place. In my opinion, it’s as close to flying or being free in the air as you can get.”
Not that making the transition from hoops to hair was quick or easy. As Menzies explained, it, the key to hair hanging is the knot into which a performer’s hair is tied. Traditionally, those who perform it are, as a rule, reluctant to share their hair-knotting secrets. As such, “For two years I was kind of annoying and just asked and asked and asked. It took me two years to find a teacher who would share the knot with me.”
To those on the ground, hair hanging can appear to be a particularly painful way to make a living: After all, think of how much it hurts to have your hair pulled. But Menzies has figured out how to minimize the pain and discomfort.
“It can hurt,” she allowed, “but I was a yoga and Pilates teacher, so I had done loads of breath work and loads of work like with fascia and with the nervous system. You also find a lot of contortionists that have already kind of worked with their parasympathetic nervous system to dull their ‘fight-or-flight’ [reflex]. You don’t panic; your body is always fine, but your mind is not. And pain is kind of in our mind.”
Menzies, who noted that she has to keep her hair at shoulder-length in order to perform, suggested her style of aerial work poses dangers other forms of the craft don’t present.
“It does have a kind of different safety risk involved because your apparatus literally is your head and your backup is your neck muscles and your [trapezius muscles],” she reasoned. “And so, you need to be overly cautious with hair-hang. I think it’s just kind of like working out what your levels are every day. Every knot is like having a new rope or a new silk.”
Menzies who started in the show about a month ago, is scheduled to perform in “The Hook” through the end of July (she’ll rejoin the cast in October). As such, she’s a temporary Atlantic City resident– something she described as an unexpected bonus.
While she said she’s aware that Atlantic City has its “big-city” issues—and she understands what is needed to remain safe, especially after dark–she described her temporary residency as an unexpectedly delightful job perk.
“The beaches are spotless, so peaceful in the mornings,” she said. “It’s beautiful to go out for walks. And everyone is very friendly.
“I wasn’t expecting the beaches and everything to be so lovely. I think summer here will be great!”
For tickets and show info, go spiegelworld.com/shows/the-hook.
Time to drop the balls
If it’s Memorial Day weekend, it’s time to get the summer party started with the 11th annual Beach Ball Drop on the Boardwalk in front of Resorts Casino-Hotel.
At 5 p.m. Friday, TV sitcom legend Kelsey Grammer (“Cheers,” “Fraiser”) will preside over the gravity-induced release of 5,000 beach balls onto the Great Wood Way.
The festivities begin at noon with the traditional Opening of the Sea ceremony followed by an afternoon-long slate of activities including live-model painting, contests and giveaways and music from the popular cover band Sidestory.
After the balls are dropped, the party moves inside to the new Let’s Glow pop-up bar on the casino floor, which is hosting a “Wear White” after-party.
Expanded menu at Coastal Craft Kitchen
Coastal Craft Kitchen, the breakfast-and-lunch outlet at Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City, has upped the ante by adding several items to its menu.
The new offerings include:
Tacos (choice of chicken or pork); Coastal Burger (dry-aged beef burger, pepper jack cheese, smokehouse barbecue sauce, onion ring, lettuce, tomato, pickle); Cantonese Roasted Duck Noodle Soup (roasted duck, scallions, cabbage, egg noodles, chicken broth) and Chicken & Penne Alla Vodka (chicken, asparagus, pink vodka sauce).
Chuck Darrow has spent more than 40 years writing about Atlantic City casinos.
