Weather conditions were never a problem for DynaMike. Be it in the heat of Oman or icy Canada, he would still go out and juggle sharp knives sitting on the top of his 16-foot-high unicycle. He didn’t take the St. Jude storm seriously and, of course, never thought to cancel his performance in Covent Garden. It was a special day for him; his last performance in the UK.
Michael Anthony Bonnici, 33, from Toronto, Canada, is a street performer going by the name of “DynaMike”. Mike has performed on the streets of 14 different countries, busked since the age of 16 and never had an ordinary job. However, he is well dressed, good-looking, self-confident and enjoys life as he puts it “doing shows for the good people of the earth”.
Mike was sitting in a yard of St. Paul’s Church also known as Actors’ Church in Covent Garden. The crowd was cheering to the other busker performing with his music at the square in front of the church.
Mike was going to be next. He was joking about “the pseudo hurricane, which could at worst cause the fear-mongering” and he was taking videos with the smart-phone of the bright sky saying he could see an aeroplane there.
Mike was doing gymnastics from a young age. He liked the attention when he was doing the tricks most children couldn’t do.
“When I was a kid it was like a drug; I was hungry for it. You get all this energy from all sorts of people. Every little baby loves attention and as we grow up some of us become more or less dependent on attention and I was pretty dependent”
After 17 years the reason Mike was performing slightly changed. He thought that street performing was bringing people together. He turned his head and looked at the church, which emanated music from the other performance: “You see, the people are clapping and having fun. On Sunday this church is much less busy than it would have been 20 years ago or one hundred years ago. When that happens you forget about your troubles with the energy around you. It’s a really uplifting cathartic experience”.
Strangers are drawn to Mike; he smiled and asked two young lads passing along the yard how they were doing followed by “Ciao”. He learnt Arabic, Spanish and French while performing in other countries. This definitely helped in his personal life. He giggled: “I had a Spanish girlfriend Maria Cascales, a French girlfriend Monique Cosmique. And I had an Arabic boyfriend Mohammed Nazir Michelle Actabar… Just joking”.
“Well, street performing is not secure but security seems to be an illusion anyway”, this doesn’t seem to worry DynaMike. He considers street performing as his future.
“You know, you can work for 30 years at some job and lose your job two years before retirement, or the company goes under or this happens or that happens or the war, bomb drops, or you are in a car accident. Life is not secure.”
Mike doesn’t think about life in terms of job and free time, career and personal life. For him it’s all life: “I was born, I will die in the end and in between I am just alive”. Street performing for DynaMike is the part of who he is. It makes him happy.
“I recognise myself as an artist who creates an experience that otherwise won’t take place”.
Tonight is just another show of thousands in Mike’s career; because he’s done it forever it seems easy for him.
”When you are nervous you can’t hide it and the crowd feels it but if you do it several times you will realise there is nothing to lose. You can screw up, people will forget about it and never think about it again. So do it a bunch of times”.
Mike starts his show and a big crowd is gathering in excitement. He is interacting with people in the crowd and making everyone laugh, juggling with a powered and working chainsaw while making jokes that, hopefully, with any luck he won’t cut half of his face. When he is already sitting on the top of his unicycle, the wind is getting stronger and plastic bags are flying everywhere. The rain starts and the hurricane doesn’t seem so “pseudo” anymore. But Mike juggles on.
Out of my comfort zone 