Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Block.
Hi Dan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m actually having a much harder time with this than I thought I would.
I’m a circus sideshow performer, a comedian, a really bad magician, and an okay musician, among other roles, hobbies, and jobs. I could tell you about the first time I went to the circus as a kid, one of my earliest memories, and how when they rounded the wagons all the sideshow performers jumped up. The snake charmer, the showed swallower, knife thrower, the contortionist, and how that memory planted a seed way deeper than I ever thought.
Or how my mom put me on the Oprah Winfrey show in the third grade for being an obese kid, and how that would create anxiety but also oddly a weird desire to be on a stage, and how that would follow me for my teenage years.
I’m from the south suburbs of Chicago, a small town whose claims to fame are the place Al Capone would weekend, where Diablo Cody (author of Juno) is from, and one of the last active KKK clubhouses in America. Just kidding, I don’t actually know if the Diablo Cody thing is true, but the other two are so lookout. And finding myself at 20, aimless and seeing a glimpse of what my life was going to be in ten years, I moved to Asheville, North Carolina, where I knew no one, into a house with an eccentric oil painter as a landlord, and a house that was a grocery store in the 1950’s.
I spent the next four years dressing in bright colors, reciting sad poetry and writing sad music, running around doing silly things, like everyone should do in their early 20s. After four years and lessons learned, I decided to try out a new city and follow my dreams of being a musician out in Austin, Texas.
Alongside the music and the poetry, one day in the mountains of West Virginia, a man asked me if I wanted to learn how to hammer a nail into my face, and I ecstatically said yes, while he and his friends crowded around me and egged me onto snapping a mousetrap on my tongue. These people were “The Stray Cat Sideshow” and “Safety Third Theater”, both out of North Carolina, and I’d keep pushing myself further and they’d happily show me more and more.
One day, they came over and asked me if I wanted to take a stun gun and hit the nail with it while I had it in, I said yes, and I didn’t die. This becomes important in a second.
One day, four months into living in Texas, I went on a date to a place called “The Museum of the Weird”, and I told her to please not tell anyone who worked there that I could do some stunts. She said “sure” and then after we got our tickets asked “Are you guys hiring?” And then stared at me while they told us both “Yes, a performer, why?”.
This led to an interview with the owner, Steve Busti, and I showed him the stun gun blockhead, and I was hired on the spot.
For the next three years, I would do 60-75 shows a week. After the first year, I added hanging a disco ball from hooks in my eyes, putting out a propane torch on my tongue, and my favorite, flossing a balloon through my sinus cavity and making a balloon animal. That one has become my bread and butter and has taken me much further than I thought I ever would.
As a performer, I have gotten to perform for massive audiences, family-friendly shows and the grossest bars you can imagine, gotten to meet my favorite comedian and be on their podcast, featured in books that have been on the New York Times, had documentaries made about me, and been called “the weirdest thing at Burning Man”.
Alongside that, a mixture of massive social anxiety and a desire for friends led to turning the show into a production company specializing in burlesque, variety acts, and vaudeville shows. In the before times, sponsored by The Alamo Drafthouse, in the after times online shows, as well as weeklies, sold-out burlesque, and more.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
First off, I’m a mostly straight white man, and challenges I’ve faced are probably nothing in the face of adversity that most others are going to have to face.
Second, had you asked me five years ago, I am certain I could have lamented for a long time about how hard life is, about heartache and grief, and blah blah blah. At 30, with a lot of therapy behind me and a slew of stability? Not so much.
Things were hard at times, financially, emotionally, take your pick. But I always had community and friends around to help, to pick up the slack and push me, and show up when I needed them to. I owe a lot of my success to that and them.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Circus sideshow, comedy, and terrible magic.
I’m known for two things mostly, hammering a nail into my sinus cavity and hitting it with a stun gun, which at the time of me learning it, only three others had done. The second being the sinus cavity balloon animal floss, which was the first thing I ever did that people went “huh, neat”.
I’m proud that I’ve been doing this for 5+ years and my shows hasn’t been about the stunts as much as it become about me as person, the jokes, interacting with people, telling stories, and then peppering in the shock and awe.
The same thing sets me apart. As scary as it sounds, anyone can hammer a nail into their face. Making people laugh while doing it? Much more difficult.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
People always ask me what it’s like to live in Austin, and I always tell them they are asking the wrong person.
People move here for the music, the comedy scene, the beer, the tech sector. Hell, I even moved here to be a musician.
But Austin has a massive underground scene for vaudeville. Some of the best burlesque performers in the country are here, and this city has a huge history of circus arts (from famous magicians in the 80s to punk rock sideshow in the 90s). I love getting to see things that you’d normally need to fly to Vegas for and how there is a community-centered around it, so every event feels like seeing good friends.
What I like the least is the same thing I love. People have such a focus on music and comedy there is no spaces dedicated to what we do. I saw a woman get cut in half on stage, but people want to be down the street for the open mics. Ups and downs.
Contact Info:
- Email: ThreeLeggedDogSideshow@gmail.com
- Website: ThreeLeggedDogSideshow.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/threeleggeddogsideshow/?hl=en
Image Credits
Blackheart Media Productions and Sean Sic Images
