We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Karine Gomez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Karine below.
Karine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?
Been adaptive! You have to adapt yourself. Adapt to your clients, to the venue, to the weather, to your employees. To the new things, we had to be creative during Covid.
Been a good leader. Managing with respect but been firm. Been open minded and knowing the limits.
Always analyzing what we did wrong so we can improve and also what we did good to keep doing it. Keep learning from others that are inspiring me.
Not been afraid of changing things to keep moving forward.
Always be kind and humble.
Work with pleasure and keep loving what I do.
Karine, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I was born in Montreal, Canada. I am a former synchronized swimmer. I was on the Canadian National team and I have participated to the Junior World Championship in Moscow, Russia in 1997.
Few weeks after I was joining Cirque du Soleil for the creation of the show O who is still in Las Vegas since 1998.
I never performed the show because I have asthma and I could not get my certification in scuba diving in the United State because of asthma so they had to end my contract.
Luckily, I had done another casting almost at the same time for water show in Disneyland Paris, France and they wanted me to join the show. I still needed to do scuba diving but it wasn’t a problem in France.
I was 18 years when I moved to Paris to be part of the water show. Few months before that I was able to train at a Circus school in Montreal in order to get more skills for the show in Disney Village in Paris.
Aerial was what I liked the most so I became aerialist while training in my main discipline, synchronized swimming.
During the training for the show Crescend’O, I learned how to spit fire, juggling, buggees and got better at aerial hoop, trapeze, rope.
At the end of my 6 months contract they asked me if I wanted to renew it and I said yes.
When the show ended I got an offered an aerial position in one of the show inside Disneyland and also a synchronized swimming with aerial trapeze in Parc Asterix, another theme park. I was able to do both, working 10 days a month in Disneyland and 15 in Asterix.
In Asterix they offer me the opportunity to be trained in another show, it was a Stunt Show.
I was also working for the company Les Farfadais, being part of an Ice skating show, as an aerialist, touring al over Europe. I was also coaching synchronized swimming and doing water show events in France where I was now living but also in Europe and Africa.
About 10 years have passed, I was always working a lot, did a theater school in Paris, I was always training on aerial then I got injured badly during a rehearsal because of a technical error that was not my fault. Doctors told me I could never perform again, I should just be happy that I could still walk.
I don’t never gave up even if it was hard, physically, financially and mentally. I was well surrounded by friends and an amazing therapist. I was not going to give up, I wasn’t done performing! It took me a year and I was back on the stunt show.
Few months later I received a call. Someone gave my name to be the stunt double of Zoe Saldaña in the movie Colombiana. Funny fact is that they hired me as a stunt but they didn’t know I was also a synchronized swimmer. I remember someone calling me at 11pm to ask how comfortable I was in the water, they really needed someone with good skills. I told them I was probably better in the water than at doing stunts. They said: it’s a production of millions of dollars, we can’t take the risk, would you mind to go to the studios tomorrow so we can make sure.
I had to swim under windows without breathing for about 40 seconds and I had scuba divers to do my safety so it was not hard since I’ve trained 35h a week for years.
After 10 minutes they approved me as the water stunt as well.
This movie changed my life because I had to quit the theme park I was working with since 10 years in order to do the movie. I took a big risk. Doing 1 movie versus I don’t know how many more years of a solid contract in the theme park.
After the movie I had no more yearly contract, I had to find a new show for the first time in years. Few months later I see one of my synchronized swimming coach posting a casting call on Facebook for Sea World San Antonio.
I sent my resume and videos and few days after they sent me a contract for one year as aerialist and synchronized swimmer. There’s very few girls in the world that can do both, I guess that it was one of the reason they hired me.
So in January 2011 I moved to San Antonio. First I did not like Texas, or let’s say I was missing Paris a lot. In June 2011 they asked me to renew for 2012 but I declined, I was ready to go back to Paris even if swimming with the whales daily was an incredible experience.
July 2011 a new diver joined the cast, Saul Gomez. He was on the diving Mexican National team for 10 years and had done shows in Europe. South America and Asia for about 10 years.
Very fast, Saul and I fell in love with each other and luckily the production was still looking to fill out my position so the happily renewed my contract.
In 2014 I got pregnant so I stop performing and was only in charge of the synchro part in the show.
I loved managing a team and I was ready for more.
Saul also had the experience of being a manager in different shows in Germany, Taiwan and Sweden.
One day we were at a festival and we were talking how it would be awesome to have some performers. We talked about what we would do for the entire evening. Few months later Aqua Acro Entertainment was born, in August 2016.
We started with mermaids, synchronized swimmers, aerialists and divers.
We didn’t have a lot of costumes. None would be more accurate! I never took any sewing courses but I saw my mom sewing a lot so I bought a machine and start to make our mermaid tails.
I did not know about invoices, contracts, insurance. I was learning as we were going. Then clients wanted stilt walkers, I didn’t know any so I bought stilts and my husband and I started to train on it. It wasn’t easy but we figured it out. Then we trained others, sometimes so well that other companies reached out to them. I am always proud when this happens, it means we are doing a good job! Little by little we added new characters, new costumes, we offer new skills. Clients were calling us back, and we constantly got new clients.
In 2019 we moved to Mexico, it was supposed to be for less than a year. We got the opportunity to produce our own show, Los Cuatros Elementos, in Acapulco. The delay was short, I had to write the show, choreograph, choose the music, perform in it, design the costumes, while continuing to have Aqua Acro running in Texas and
more importantly been a mom.
My husband was taking care of all the technical part and the Spanish part as I start to learn it only few months before when we moved.
We did it and I am very proud of the results.
We had the time to play it twice then the pandemic hit.
For us it meant no more income. Nothing was happening in the US and nothing in Mexico.
We were in Mexico to wait for our green cards but the immigration was also shutdown during Covid.
No school, no events, no sports… I just decided to enjoy having a break. I learned how to surf, work on myself, think about the after, set new goals.
There’s nothing else I could do beside been happy while waiting.
August 2022 my husband and I got our green cards approved and October 1, 2022 we were back in Texas.
Lots of people told us: poor you, having to move from a country to another one but we don’t see this as an hassle. While in Mexico I learned Spanish, our son got to see my husband’s family more often, we learned how to live differently, we need less material stuff to be happy.
Often people ask me if I speak in Spanish to my husband now but no, we met in English so it remains our language between him and I even if I only speak French to my son and my husband only speak Spanish to him.
Our son was born in Texas and lived here 4 years before moving to Mexico so he speaks perfectly english. He went to school in Spanish while we were in Mexico and he is back to school in english.
Is it hard? Not really, it’s a life style but it’s beyond this, we adapt and we change if when we need to.. And for my company I do the same, adapt and don’t be afraid to change. Keep creating, keep moving, adapting, changing. For me it is the most important things, in my personal life but also professionally, I apply the same thing.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
My husband is my business partner. When he got to Sea World he was supposed to be there only for few weeks to help the other divers during the high season. I won’t say it was love at first sight but we got together pretty fast. Then he was looking at my Facebook and he realized we met years before in the backstage from the theme park. The show he was in in Germany came to our theme park to see our shows because it’s always important to see what other people do, to get inspired.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
I created our LLC when we had enough savings to do so. Then from there I made costumes to save money, and every events we kept the money to buy new equipment, costumes and everything we need.
Contact Info:
- Website: Aquaacroentertainment.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/aquaacro?igshid=NzZhOTFlYzFmZQ==
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aquaacroentertainment?mibextid=LQQJ4d
Image Credits
Mermaid picture: Ken Kiefer Aerial silks pictures: Larry Johnson