For ages, mothers have been cautioning their children against playing with fire. But Wendy Curvin and Dawn McAdams of Pell City have recently changed that message — go ahead and play, just do it safely.

The duo has built an entertainment business off of their pyromania, and are preparing for their first public performance as Fyre Tribe on Saturday in Birmingham.

Their fiery fanaticism began while they were taking a hula hoop fitness class, and found out about the availability of a fire hooping class by SuperHooper, a previously Atlanta-based company. Curvin attended the workshop locally, while McAdams drove to Florida to take a different session.

And there, the fire bug bit them.

“When you first look at it, or when someone says they’re fire hooping, you think, ‘Yeah, you’ve lost your mind,’” McAdams said. “Then, once you do it, you’re like, ‘Uh, OK. I can do this. Now I need to go buy one. Next thing you know, you’ve got thousands of dollars invested in a business, and you’ve got people calling wanting you to come do their event.”

The duo performed publically for the first time last October, where they showed off their skills at Atrox Factory in Leeds each weekend throughout the month.

 “It took up to that first night of performance, and still standing out there holding that hoop, ‘Please, dear Lord, don’t let me catch myself or anyone else on fire out here,’” McAdams joked. “We were confident enough to get out there to do it, but there are a lot of variables. But after that first weekend, we were OK.”

So comfortable, in fact, that McAdams told Curvin after their first performance that she thought she’d be fire eating by the end of the month at Atrox Factory. By Oct. 31, she was doing just that.

After their reign at Atrox Factory, the duo formed their own company, Fyre Tribe, in January.

While they’ve mostly been performing at local charity events, Fyre Tribe will display their fiery feats of strength at the American Red Cross’ “Paint the Town Red” fundraiser Saturday in Birmingham. The duo is perfecting a tribal themed show set to middle-eastern music to provide an all-ages, family friendly show.

And for them, a large part of providing a family friendly show is the ability to keep audience members of all ages safe during a performance. At any given time, there are as many safety and security personnel watching for trouble as there are performers.

McAdams sits on the board of the North American Fire Arts Association, which help define stringent safety standards for fire performers across the country.

With backyard fire spinning becoming more predominant as it catches on in mainstream media and live performances become more commonplace, Fyre Tribe has also agreed to do safety training and classes in order to teacher people how to safely practice the art of fire spinning.

“The art of spinning fire is something you can either do or you can’t. It’s not one of those in between arts, like I can draw a little bit. It’s either you can do it and you can do it well, or you can just not do it,” McAdams added.

“If you kind of spin fire, you’re gonna get burned,” Curvin said, with a laugh.

Fore more information, visit www.fyretribe.com.