Candy Cane Girl Performer Falls at Beverly Center

Los Angeles - An aerial performer in a holiday show at the Beverly Center mall was hospitalized after falling from the third level of the shopping center while hanging upside down from a metal hoop, it was reported today.

The 26-year-old woman slipped from the hoop, which was suspended from the ceiling, during the finale of " Hunky Santa and the Candy Cane Girls," a show featuring aerial performers in sparkly red outfits suspended about 80 feet up in the Beverly Center, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles firefighters responded to the mall, in the 8500 block of West Beverly Boulevard, regarding a woman having fallen around 6:15 p.m. Saturday, said Shawn Lentz of the Los Angeles Fire Department. She was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in unknown condition, Lentz said.

The woman, who was not wearing a harness, managed to turn herself right side up before she fell into a video projection cube and injured her wrist and pelvis, The Times reported.

There were no nets to break her fall.

"She's a total pro," Ray Pierce, owner of Hollywood Aerial Arts, the firm putting on the performance, told The Times. "For some reason she slipped in this one move."

Pierce said the woman had been with the company for five years and had performed around the world for 15 years, according to The Times.

Performances were expected to resume next Friday. 

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