"When people see us on the trapeze, they can tell we actually have a real connection," Latter-day Saint trapeze artist Mary Wolfe-Nielsen said about her and her husband's performances. "We’re not acting. There’s a lot of really good trapeze acts out there, they’re so good, but I think people can sense that they don’t have that real connection. And that’s actually why we get hired for lots of shows. . . . One word (people) use to describe us is 'authentic.'”
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Deseret News: How did you two meet?
Tyce Nielsen: We met at a restaurant called The Mayan in Salt Lake City. If you’ve ever been to the Rainforest Cafe, imagine that but three times the size and with a huge rock cliff with a pool at the bottom of it. While people would eat their food, (we’d) dive off the cliff. We just put on a whole show. It was in our hometown, and neither Mary or I were divers, but we knew about the restaurant and they were searching for entertainment. So she went in to try out and they basically told her that if she would have the guts to jump off the cliff, they’d hire her. They basically told me that I wasn’t very good, but they could teach me to be good. An actual dive coach worked there and he taught us both how to do it.
DN: When did you form Duo Transcend?
TN: It started at The Mayan, and then the restaurant closed in 2011. So we had to make a choice: Keep performing or put the performing off and just get normal jobs.
Story by Lottie Peterson Johnson, Deseret News. Lead image by Trae Patton/NBC, Episodic; retrieved from the Deseret News
