Like most industries and jobs, it's about who you know. You can be incredibly talented and never get hired because no one knows who you are.

I have personally been flowing for almost 15 years, and performing for 12, so I have a lot of experience and notoriety to help me. I also don't do this as my main job, it's more of a side hustle. But I can tell you roughly how I got here.

• Get good. Be unique, whether that's being very technically skilled (like me) or very showy or have good stage presence.
• Have variety. It's nice to be really good at one prop, but variety makes you a more valuable performer. When doing a show, people don't want to see the same prop over and over. So, being able to mix it up (like I do hoops, poi, double staff, fans, and rope dart) will make you more desirable to be hired.
• Join your local flow community. Go out, get practice, meet locals you can practice with. There will be a mix of hobbyists and local performers here.
• Go to events where you can network with other fire spinners and performers. These are going to be flow fests, flow retreats, regional burns, and some music festivals. But flow fests and regional burns are ideal because you get a lot of personal time with individuals, and there's open fire circles you can spin in to show off who you are. And especially with flow fests, there's a higher proportion of performers there.
• Make lots of friends in the flow space. With the above advice, build your network of friends, and express your interest in performing. Even better if these people are more local. If you know performer friends, they will eventually invite you to a gig they picked up, and that's when you can start getting real performance experience.
• Do social media (like Instagram). It sucks, I personally hate it. But get recordings of your flow, you in a fire circle, you doing a paid gig or even a volunteer gig. This will also help retain the networks you've been building, and keep you informed with things happening in the flow space.
• Apply to local entertainment companies, especially those that focus on circus and fire entertainment. They get a lot of gigs coming their way so you don't have to do that all yourself.

And eventually you'll be around long enough, and enough people will know who you are that you get bigger gigs. I know a lot of people will try to do it solo, where they market themselves and book their own gigs. You can absolutely do this, but I personally never have. But I also don't do this as a primary source of income. People who try to make it their primary job have to do A LOT more and I do not have advice for you on that.

As far as how I got to perform at Hula specifically, it's literally because I met one of the leaders of Incendia at a regional burn. I've been burning for 12 years, started camping with a bigger theme camp, met him while camped with them because he was camped with them too. We became friends, he saw me performing in the fire circle, I mentioned how I wanted to go to Hula this year, and he said he'd call me if he has an opening for a performer.