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Hunter Grimm is the sole Texas artist in Cirque du Soleil’s current cast of “Crystal.” The Flower Mound native first learned to skate at Grapevine Mills mall. (Courtesy photo | Olivier Brajon, Cirque du Soleil)
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North Texan Hunter Grimm soars through the air, flipping forward, backward and doing full layouts, in Cirque du Soleil’s “Crystal” — and he does it all in hockey skates.North Texans will have a chance to see the production during its six-show run Feb. 15-18 at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth.The show tells the story of a troubled teenage girl named Crystal who feels disconnected from her family and friends. To clear her mind, she goes skating on a frozen lake but falls through the ice.“It sends her into an alternate reality where … her imagination (is) being brought to life,” Grimm said. “This show actually tells a story all the way through, and then at the end, she has found herself again and reconnects with her family. … It’s really incredible.”Though the story is set on the ice, the trapeze acts, aerial artists, lifts and flips that people have come to expect from a Cirque show are all still present. 

Grimm’s path to becoming a professional performer started at Grapevine Mills mall.He remembers walking around the mall with his mom at age 5, seeing the rink and begging to try it out.“I didn’t have a pair of socks on because it was 100 degrees or something in Texas, so we went and bought a pair of socks at the mall,” he said. “Then I went and rented a pair of skates and just started skating around, and that just became my hobby and thing to do with my mom.”After that, he spent as much time as possible wearing skates, whether he was traveling with his hockey team or rollerblading outside.

“Rollerblading is kind of an underground kind of industry, and it’s really hard to make a full-time career and a living within it,” he said. “That was always my goal to try to do that, but I never thought that I would end up with Cirque.” 

If you go

What: Cirque du Soleil’s “Crystal”When: 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday; 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 15-18Where: Dickies Arena            1911 Montgomery St.Tickets: Starting at $59. Find seats here.

He had seen a few shows as a child, but it wasn’t until he had graduated from high school and gone to see a friend perform that he started to consider it as a career.As luck would have it, another performer was about to leave the show, and Grimm was asked to submit an audition reel and invited to Montreal for eight weeks of training.“They liked me and sent me straight to the show after that. That was in 2018, and I haven’t looked back since,” he said. “In all of my rollerblading days, I never thought I would end up here. And I’m really happy that I have.”Getting to perform in front of a hometown crowd is a bonus. 

“For me, it’s really nostalgic, and I’m really proud to bring this production back to my hometown to show everyone what we’ve been working on,” Grimm said. “You really have to see it to believe it.” 

Marcheta Fornoff covers the arts for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at marcheta.fornoff@fortworthreport.org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.