Metro

High-wire artist Wallenda will perform at Darien Lake this summer

Nik Wallenda, who walked a high wire over Niagara Falls in 2012, said Wednesday he will return to western New York for a summer-long series of amusement park shows.

The aerialist will produce and perform in a 60-minute show to be staged twice a day at Darien Lake, east of Buffalo, from June 23 through Sept. 1. The finale will be a pyramid 60 feet above the audience featuring Wallenda, his wife, Erendira, and other members of the daredevil family known as the “Flying Wallendas.”

“My family and I are thrilled to be back in the area and spending our summer at Darien Lake,” said Wallenda, who made history when he became the first person to walk on a tightrope directly over the precipice of Niagara Falls. Last year, he walked across the Grand Canyon.

Other plans for his summer engagement include an interactive tight-rope training academy, street performances and a May 26 high-wire stunt.

Wallenda, who lives in Sarasota, Fla., is a seventh-generation daredevil. His family traces its roots to 1780 Austria-Hungary, when ancestors traveled as a band of acrobats, aerialists, jugglers, animal trainers and a bit later, trapeze artists.

Nik Wallenda’s great-grandfather and the family patriarch, Karl Wallenda, fell to his death during a walk in 1978 in Puerto Rico.