Bekah Burke Dances "En-Pointe" on Glass Bottles

Bekah Burke steps onto the neck of a champagne bottle. Then another. Then a third.

She's on her toes, in pointe shoes, on glass... and nothing wobbles.

Believe It or Not!, Bekah is a ballet dancer who also performs circus arts. Bottle walking wasn't in her training. It all came from a photograph.

A Dream, a Cat Costume, and a Row of Wine Bottles

The photo was taken in Hamburg in June 1958. It shows a 17-year-old named Bianca Passarge balanced on the necks of wine bottles, dressed as a cat, furry tail and all. According to the caption, the routine came to her in a dream, and she practiced eight hours a day to pull it off.

Bekah saw it and was inspired!

Hundreds of Hours Later

She could, eventually. It took hundreds of hours of practice on real glass.

Today, Bekah has a whole vocabulary of en-pointe bottle skills. She can walk from bottle to bottle without knocking a single one over. She can lift into a one-legged ballerina pose and hold it. She can stand on two bottles, crouch all the way down to pick something up off the floor, and rise back up like it's nothing.

She's also made it harder on purpose. Smaller bottles give her less to stabilize on, so she uses those, too.

The secret isn't perfect stillness. It's the opposite, a constant, tiny negotiation with a surface that never stops moving. Bekah just does the negotiating faster than you can see it.

An Act That Almost Disappeared

Bottle walking isn't new. It was a variety hall and cabaret skill, and photos of performers balanced on bottle necks go back to the early 1900s. Bianca Passarge was carrying on a tradition when that camera found her in 1958.

Then the act faded out. Very few performers do it today, which makes Bekah's version something closer to a rescue, an old, unstable, gloriously impractical skill pulled back onto the stage.

Believe it or not, it started with one person seeing a picture and deciding not to let it stay a picture.

See It in Wired Into Weird

Bekah Burke is one of the many incredible people featured in Ripley's brand-new annual book, Ripley's Believe It or Not! Wired Into Weird , packed cover to cover with unbelievable stories, jaw-dropping photos, and artifacts you have to see to believe.

It's available for pre-order now . Get your copy before it hits shelves this fall, and find out what else made the cut.