#circus interview

Alexandra Royer, who comes from Quebec City, was inspired to take up circus after watching companies such as Cirque Eloize and Cirque du Soleil. Later, after living in Morocco, she trained at the Quebec Circus School and was approached by Cirque du Soleil to join its show Quidam on an aerial hoop contract when she was just 16. In 2008, Alex chose instead to further her studies at Montreal’s National Circus School. There she met her two American Russian bar bases, Eric Bates and Tristan Nielsen, and on graduating they began to perform worldwide with leading companies including The 7 Fingers, Cirque Eloize, Cirque du Soleil and La Soirée.

The trio were joined by Eve Bigel of Compagnie XY, and as Barcode Circus Company they have performed in Olympic ceremonies, on TV shows and at corporate events and cabarets, also in street and contemporary dance shows, as well as full-length circus creations. They have also won numerous awards, including silver and bronze medals at 2018’s Cirque de Demain Festival in Paris. Alex is now taking part in Barcode’s first full-length production, Sweat and Ink (De Sueur et d’Encre), which headlines at Hand to Hand: A FringeArts Circus Festival in Philadelphia, USA. The show runs from 31 May – 2 June 2018. She chats to Liz Arratoon.

The Widow Stanton: How old were you when you first became aware of circus? Alexandra Royer: Quite young. In Quebec City we were surrounded by Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Eloize… and I can’t remember exactly when I asked about it but I wanted to go to the circus. I wasn’t doing circus yet but I asked my parents to take me.

Do any shows stand out? I totally remember Nomade by Cirque Eloize. It was wonderful… Anton Carabinier was in it. He was, I think, 18 then and I had a big crush on him… and I wanted to do circus after seeing it. Guillaume Saladin was in it too, and he is so nice, just so nice. And also Cirque Eos, which was a circus from Quebec City. A lot of artists from Eos still do circus even though it was like, 20 years ago. Erika Lemay is like the queen of circus; she has long legs and she’s beautiful; she does handstands. She was with them.

Were you always an active kid? In school my mum registered me for theatre and dance classes but I was actually really, really shy so going onstage was never an option. But when I was seven we found a little class in a circus school. It was only half an hour a week but it was really fun.

Is anyone else in your family in showbusiness? I found out later on that I had some distant cousins – something like my grandparents were cousins of their grandparents – and they were also in Nomade. My cousin, Marie Michèle Faber, is beautiful and she sings and does aerial hoop and silks in Cirque du Soleil. Her brother is Jean-François Faber, and he does acrobatic bike, like, trial bike, manipulations and acrobatics. But they are not why I went into circus; they didn’t influence me.

Who or what did inspire you? After the year of circus I did when I was seven, my family moved to Morocco and I did horseback riding there. Once, the trapeze company Les Arts Sauts brought a huge show, Kayassine, to Marrakech. I was talking about circus then but I don’t remember why it affected me so much because I couldn’t do any acrobatics. My dad had bought a trampoline just to ease the move to another country but actually I was super happy to go. It was really nice to have a trampoline in the backyard but I was only doing simple moves… front drop, back drop… My mum is from France and she knows Danielle Le Pierrès’ sister really well. Danielle is the founder of Le P’tit Cirk, and when Les Arts Sauts came my mum’s friend was there to babysit Danielle’s young children.

My mum, of course, saw her friend, so we had a private visit to the tent. We climbed into the safety net, we saw the show, it was gorgeous – one of the best memories of a show I have. I think I was about nine. Then a lot of the cast came to our backyard for a barbecue. We had some wild boar in the freezer – a hunter had given us so much meat – so my mum was like: “Oh perfect, bring the whole cast.” Everybody was there and the trampoline was there, so some of the porters made people do backflips and I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is really fun. I want to join in with them’.

I think it was the first time I realised that I really wanted to do circus, not because of the show so much, but more because of the feeling backstage. It was really great; a great afternoon where we had fun and talked to the artists. After they left I carried on with my life in Morocco without circus but when we came back to Canada I went to the school in Quebec.

Why did you then choose aerial? Um… good question. To get into the school in Quebec I did a trapeze act. Jade Dussault, who is in FlipFabriQue, was my coach. I think she was 12 years old and I was ten. [Laughs] It’s really funny; I wasn’t ready to enter the programme so much but they were looking for people because it was a rather new programme. They said: “Oh, she’s super small and kind of strong and flexible,” so I did trapeze. I can still remember how stressed I was before doing my act. I couldn’t remember the music; I only had a CD and the guy said: “What is your music?” And I said, ‘I don’t know. My teacher is not here…’, or, ‘My teacher is 12 years old…’. but finally I did something and I was accepted. I was alone at home when they told me and I asked, ‘Is this person and this person also coming? I’ll come if they’re coming’. I had also been thinking of going to horseback riding school but I decided to do circus because I had so much fun in the audition and met lots of people.

How difficult a decision was it to turn down Cirque du Soleil’s offer? What’s interesting in Quebec you learn to do everything, and we were training quite hard. I saw The 7 Fingers’ show Traces, and we were all so pumped up when we came back, we wanted the school to open up, but it was the middle of the night; everybody was on a high. I was doing trampoline at the time… swinging trapeze, aerials, hand to hand, everything, and my aerial hoop coach was Marie-Eve Bisson from the hoop trio in Quidam. She was 27 and I was 16. I had about ten classes with her and she really showed me everything on hoop. She could spin so fast. She was the one I’d watched on the Quidam video.

But when I got the offer, I didn’t have many options. My mum just said: “No.” I did the audition at the National Circus School in Montreal and was accepted. The crew and vibe of our year was amazing. I also wanted to learn something else; I didn’t want to have just one act. I had the feeling that if I went to Quidam, I’d go to Montreal for six months, go on tour and then never be talked about again. It’s a bit like that in Cirque du Soleil; you just become a number. They take good care of you but at that age it was nice to keep learning stuff. My trampoline coach said: “Do you wanna be really good, or like, medium good?” I said, ‘I want to be really good’. So he said: “Go to the school.” They’d accepted me for aerial and acrobatics, so that was interesting. In Quebec I could change my schedule; I could ask for Cyr wheel or whatever but in Montreal, once you get your schedule it’s quite hard to change it. 

What made you add Russian bar to your skills? There was a Russian bar trio in Quebec City, and they made me try it. They were so chilled, like: “You really should do it.” They put the idea into my head and it’s something not so many people do. That was the idea behind it.

How much trust is needed between you and your bases? I was a bit unaware of how important the relationship with the porters is. I didn’t consider myself a flyer at all; I was doing aerial hoop as a specialist. But when I started to work with Eric and Tristan, we were really laughing a lot. They had their own specialties as well, so it was a good match because none of us were putting all our eggs in one basket. From the beginning, and it’s still the deal we have, that whenever it stops being fun, or one of us gets hurt, or we don’t believe in it, we won’t do it any more, because it’s quite dangerous.

What advice would you give to someone thinking of taking it up? A good level in trampoline is a good thing, even though I haven’t done it for years now because it’s really hard. The partners you work with are really important, because that’s how you could get hurt. You can learn on Russian bar quite fast but the relationship of trust afterwards becomes a bit complicated. You do the trick once and that’s great, but you have to keep doing it. We stopped for a while after Cirque de Demain because we had so many things to do but I needed to take myself in hand and say, ‘OK, let’s go; we’re doing it again’. For myself, I would not do it at all, but because we have this trio energy, we have to do it. It’s easier as well because we go through it together and have fun, and then we can travel so much with the Russian bar, because it’s such a rare discipline. If I’d only done aerial hoop, I would probably have done some flying thing but the Russian bar is special enough to make you a bit privileged with the contracts you have. So, that’s quite fun.

How wide is the bar and does it hurt your feet when you land? It’s maybe 15cm, but your body knows at some point… and the guys are so precise. That’s why it’s so important to choose your bases carefully. We pad it with a little bit of camping mat. Tristan is our Russian-bar maker, so he takes care of it.

You’ve brought some innovative moves to the discipline; how did that come about? We were watching other Russian bar acts when we started to make our acts, thinking: “Oh, we don’t like it when she has the moments of preparation; it’s too much, too long, too stiff and it’s only about the trick.” Also Eric and Tristan can handle being alone onstage; they don’t need the bar. Often the Russian bar porters only do Russian bar, so when we made one of our first acts the goal was, ‘What can we do that is not Russian bar-like?’. I think the act we did at Cirque de Demain was, ‘What can do that we’d like to see on Russian bar?’.  

So that was maybe the difference. And the fact that I’m not a crazy acrobat. I’m more like a mover in general; we use that. Especially when we were with The 7 Fingers, Shana Carroll was the instigator of the way I moved on the bar because before we did their show Sequence 8, we had never done a real Russian bar act; it was our minor discipline. I remember she put the music on and said: “Let yourself go.” We were working on that base of movement and then transferred it to the bar. It was really natural. It’s a strange movement that it gives you and I’m lucky to have boys who are good enough to catch me during that strange bit.

It’s almost like a rag doll; it’s lovely. I love your costumes as well. Who designed them? Camille Thibaud. We met her through The 7 Fingers. She really helped us a lot with the style. We didn’t really know what we wanted because we were creating the act at the same time. She was very open and at some point I realised that we needed movement in the costumes. I wanted something that flowed, but it was super challenging for a costume maker because there are so many technical requirements in making a Russian-bar costume that isn’t going to be dangerous. We worked with her last summer. I wanted rich fabrics, so it’s all silk, pure cotton or linen. She really understood what I was looking for, but you can’t just take linen and bend you legs so much, or take silk that will have to stretch, so she made it look like it’s good fabric but there are also stretchy parts that she made invisible. The costumes are really intelligently made. Camille Thibaud is a name to remember, I think.

What can you tell us about Sweat and Ink? Basically it has all the disciplines we do: aerial hoop, Russian bar, cigar-box juggling, hand to hand, and Eve is also a specialist in small teeterboard, when you land in columns and hand-to-hand positions. So the three of us are learning that right now. It’s quite fun for the four of us to do something acrobatically, and I catch in a three high; like, I’m a porter also [laughs]. It’s really good.

How long have you been working on the show? We started to work seriously on it last summer. We did a show together and it was really for Eve and Tristan to make sure they wanted to keep working together because their association was rather new. They didn’t want to rush anything so we did a summer contract to see, if they both liked it, then we’d do a quartet and make a show. But we were talking about it before that. Eve just arrived in Montreal in April last year and we pitched her the idea. Basically we wanted to talk about books, we wanted to talk about writing and that led to the topic of memory and oblivion. There were some readings I’d done that were addressing the questions, ‘What’s the duty of memory and what right do we have to forget things?’. It touched me a lot so I told the idea to the others and it brought up a lot of conversation, so we decided it could be a starting point of the creation.

It has been quite long and, I don’t want to say painful, but we’re not administrators; we want to be onstage, so for us it’s harder. Also we were preparing for Cirque de Demain. And in Canada if you’re not working, there’s no intermittance, you’re just spending money, so you need to work whenever you have free time. But I like that life. It’s quite hectic and crazy but that’s how it is right now… and we travel a lot so it’s really exciting.

You were very successful in Paris, did it bring you lots of opportunities? Yes, so many emails. Oh, my god! The goal in going to Paris was to have something that the four of us had done together. And because it went well for all of us at the same time, that has helped us a lot. With all the press we got we can ask for visas, that’s really helpful and so is having established something with the four of us, because we’d only done corpos or the show last summer with The 7 Fingers.

It wasn’t that stressful in the end and it was a small victory because I was always thinking, ‘If I go to a festival and do the Russian bar, I’m gonna do something wrong, for sure’. So most important was that we didn’t hurt ourselves. We were more stressed than usual so the first performance was a bit shaky. Russian bar needs to be super settled down and calm, so for me that was my medal. We did it and technically I was good. My coach, André St-Jean, was there too, and he’s somebody very important in our lives, so to see him happy was really nice. He’s the master of acrobatics in Montreal and teaches all the guys from teeterboard.

Can you pick out a few highlights from your career so far? The first time I left Montreal by myself and I went to do a circus festival, SOLyCirco in Germany, in 2011. I was doing my hoop act. There was a bunch of friends and it was all new for us. There were some well-known names taking part and I was like, ‘This is so awesome’. Finally I won the gold medal. There’s a picture of me when they said my name and I’m like… I still don’t realise it. I won because there was a storm at the same time as I was doing my act.

The act was about the Sisyphus myth. The music was by the Kronos Quartet and the composer was Peter Sculthorpe; it was super-contemporary. We’d felt the storm coming the whole day, the energy of the sky was super low and it was warm and had this windy thing. I started my act and the storm starts, but for real. The tent was shaking and the wind was everywhere, people had the shivers and I was just doing my act in the middle like a crazy horse; the movement was inspired a lot by horses. So, I was performing but honestly I had special effects doing my act. [Laughs] That was a great moment. I remember before I started I was, like, ‘Oh, my god, I’ve forgotten the act, I’ve forgotten the act’. [Laughs] It’s one of the best moments onstage I’ve had. It’s such a shame that festival doesn’t exist any more.

Afterwards I did Russian bar with Eric and Tristan at Flic Flac Circus, and that was also a great highlight because we had to do everything ourselves. It was traditional circus; nobody’s gonna check to see if I’ve rigged my hoop well, nobody’s gonna tell you: “Stand by.” There’s a clock so you should be on time. We learned a lot over there and that’s where we met the guys from XY. But whenever I work with friends it’s the best. After we did Sequence 8 with our best friends for three years – that was just a blast – we keep choosing projects on whatever they bring us artistically and who’s in the cast.

Alex appears in Barcode’s first full-length production, Sweat and Ink (De Sueur et d’Encre), which headlines at Hand to Hand: A FringeArts Circus Festival in Philadelphia, USA. The show runs from 31 May – 2 June 2018.

Picture credits: Caroline Dostie; Meredith Mullins; Sebastien Lozé

Barcode’s website and Facebook

Twitter: @FringeArts

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Romy Bauer was born in Blackpool to Kim and Max Bauer and is a seventh-generation circus artist. Having first appeared in the ring as a tiny child, she now specialises as an aerial contortionist and performs inside a clear perspex globe, while snowflakes fall from the cupola. She is currently taking a break from touring with Carol and Phillip Gandey’s Circus Starr, which has been providing free entertainment for disadvantaged and disabled children for 30 years, while also raising money for local charities.

Romy joins a huge line-up of international artists in Gandeys Circus Halloween Spooktacular show at Merry Hill Shopping Centre in Dudley from 20-29 October 2017, before returning to Circus Starr. She chats to Liz Arratoon.

The Widow Stanton: Tell us about your family background. I know your mum was a trapeze artist… Romy Bauer: I was born when mum and dad were working at Blackpool Tower Circus; my dad is Swiss and my mum is English. My grandmother on my mother’s side, Madge Summerfield [pictured below], used to do aerial as well; she did corde lisse, and was also a trapeze artist and did bareback horse riding. My grandfather, Holley Gray [also pictured], had the world record in plate-spinning and did juggling. Back in the day he was on quite a few TV adverts and things like that. My grandmother’s parents were tight-rope walkers.

On the other side of my family, my father did a Risley act with his sister and his mother, and she also did a foot-juggling act. That was my grandmother’s main act. My dad had done a few different acts with his sister; he did slack wire with the bouncy rope, and he did that with my mother as well after they met. His sister, Christine, did a cradle act with her husband and they actually have their own show now in Spain. It used to be Circus Tonelli and now it’s called Circus Las Vegas.

Have you got any siblings? I have a sister, who’s 14. She’s still at school at the moment so she hasn’t really started any training. She’s more into the singing side of stuff.

Do you remember your first time in the ring? Yes, I was about three or four, and it was in the foot-juggling act wth my grandmother. The whole family was in it; my dad, my mum, my dad’s mother, my auntie Christine, her husband, and her son, my cousin Tony, who’s in Spain with the rest of my family. So it was a really nice big act. At the end of it my grandmother used spin me and Tony round on her feet in little chairs at either end of a pole. We were so small; she used to do it with my dad and his sister but we were a lot lighter for her. [Laughs]

Did you go to an ordinary school? I first went to Brereton Primary School in Congleton for a few moths of the year when we weren’t working, and they used to set me coursework that I’d do through the year. It was lovely. They used to have a travelling teachers’ association and they’d come out to me every few months and check my progress, but it was very different with secondary school; they didn’t offer that. So I left the circus then and finished all my school stuff. I went to college for a little bit and studied fashion and textiles, I worked in Starbucks for a little bit but didn’t really enjoy it as much, and then I came back to the circus.

Do you make your own costumes? I like to as best as I can, and generally try to keep them unique. I adapt costumes that I buy, or my mum tends to make them for me. [Laughs]

Was it inevitable you’d follow your parents into the circus? Yes, but it was important that they gave me other options; I had paths to choose from. And when I was younger I also did a lot of training with contortionists and aerialists so I had the base of everything if I did decide I wanted to go back to the circus. I think I got the best of both worlds and I got to make my own mind up. I’m very happy with my choice. 

Who trained you in contortion? We had a Mongolian couple, called Zorig and Nima, who did an act on the show when we were young, and they used to train me. I’d go for two or three hours every day as well as doing my school work. As I got older, Said Debbach trained me in all the aerial stuff I do now.

Were you naturally flexible? I had a good base of flexibility but obviously as you get older, you don’t keep it forever; I had to keep it up. If you start before you’re 14, you tend to be very flexible and if that’s what you choose to do, you have to focus on it. Even when I was at school, I thought, ‘Oh, I still have to keep up my flexibility in case I do decide to go back’. It was something I had to work on.

I expect your schoolfriends were pretty impressed by you… Yeah, they were, [laughs]. I used to do cheerleading as well, just to keep me, you know, interested in all the physical side of stuff, because it does tend to slip away in secondary school. Your thoughts are of the future and you’re just kind of focused on school work and socialising. [Laughs]

Do you do any other aerial acts? Yes, I do aerial hoop and I’m training static trapeze at the moment. It’s gonna be a contortion static trapeze, so I’m really looking forward to that. It’s pretty; I’ve been looking at some tricks on the internet and just trying them out. I need to spend some time with Said to get it really good.

So what drew you to aerial initially? There was always something about it when I was young, I always wanted to… but obviously my mum and dad wouldn’t really… They’d let me have a look at it, but they wouldn’t let me go too high because of safety. You know what parents are like! But there’s always been something that’s just wowed me about it. We used to have a Russian artist on the show called Victoria Antipova, who does aerial rope… You just look like you’re flying and you’re a beautiful star in the sky… I just always wanted to do that.

What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to someone starting aerial? That they need strength, definitely, and not to be scared. If you’re scared then you will automatically get something wrong. You have to be positive all the time. If you think, ‘I’m gonna fall, I’m gonna fall’, you probably will, so don’t think about it. And don’t go ridiculously high if you’ve never done it before. Stay low, get the basics, get a feel of it, and then you can start to go higher.

Where is the main strength in your body? I have mainly core strength. Because of the contortion I can’t be overly strong because I have to remain supple. I got my muscles from my dad so my natural physique is quite muscular but they’re not that useful really. [Laughs]

You’re usually with Circus Starr; what can you tell us about it? It’s a non-profit charity organisation and we give disadvantaged and vulnerable children the chance to see a live show where they can feel comfortable in their environment. We have a lot of children with autism and we have an app called The Show and Tell App. It gives them like a preview of the show, so in their heads they can get an idea of where we’re going, what it looks like inside, what the people look like, what will actually happen.

And we’ve just started a thing called The Touch Tour and audio description in our shows. We open before the show for the partially sighted and blind children and bring out all the props and wear our costumes so they can come up close and feel what they are like. Some of them can see really close up so they can get an idea of what’s going on. During the live performance they have an audio describer from VocalEyes describing what’s going on and because they’ve just felt the props they can understand what things look like. It’s really lovely; really lovely, and a very important thing to do. Sometimes we visit the local children’s hospitals. Working for Circus Starr is amazing and makes you see everything differently.

Have you worked abroad at all? I’ve worked in Spain and I worked in Hong Kong with Gandeys for four months two Christmases ago with Royalles British Thrill Circus. That was amazing. It was such a different culture. I loved working there. It was very, very nice, but after four months I found the food very difficult. I was a vegetarian a few years ago and I’m a bit funny about meat. It’s not for me. [Laughs]

Did you ever appear in the Gandeys’ wonderful show, Cirque Surreal? Yes, we did it at the Lowry in Manchester two years ago.

You must like working for Gandeys having stayed so long… When I was four years old my parents started working for Gandeys so I’ve basically grown up here. My dad is still with the company and is the tent master and general manger of the shows. Sometimes he’s managing The Ladyboys of Bangkok, most recently he’s been on Gandeys Circus. Phillip and Carol are like my adopted parents; they’ve always looked after me and made me feel welcome. Carol frequently introduces me as her fourth daughter, so they’re family to me and I just love it here. There’s no reason for me to look anywhere else because everything I’ve needed is here.

If not circus, what else might you consider doing? I really haven’t thought about it but I think I’d enjoy doing fashion. I’d probably try to make some costumes and sell them on. I’d be interested in that and might do it when I retire from the ring. That would be lovely and I’d still feel involved in shiny stuff; it would be very shiny! [Laughs]

Can you pick out a few highlights from your lifetime in the circus? Well, when I was younger on the show, that was amazing! I got such great experience here and I had a friend with me, a young boy, and we used to play all day, in the fields or in the park and that was always fun. We’d go to so many different places, which was amazing. Hong Kong is another big highlight. And performing again after having such a long break at school was the best feeling as well; just to be back in the ring was amazing.

Romy will appear in Gandeys Circus Halloween Spooktacular at Merry Hill Shopping Centre car park in Dudley from 20-29 October 2017, before returning to Circus Starr.

For Merry Hill tickets click here

Circus Starr tour dates

Romy on Facebook

Twitter: @romybauer @gandeyscircus @CircusStarr

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Circus director Carol Gandey – of Gandeys Circus – was The Widow’s 2020 Person of the Year, chosen for her for sterling efforts to keep touring circus as a viable artform in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic, and also for the inspirational work she undertook in securing a large grant from the Arts Recovery Fund with what it termed an “exceptional” application. She has worked in what is a male-dominated industry for 45 years. Carol chats to Liz Arratoon about the problems Gandeys faced last year during the lockdown, and its plans for 2021. 

The Widow Stanton: Which shows did you have running or in the pipeline? Carol Gandey: Gandeys had produced three shows pre-lockdown – we had shows in Hong Kong and Singapore, but in December 2019 word was filtering in about Wuhan. Hong Kong closed early because of it. The third show, Gandeys Circus Unbelievable Tour, started touring in the UK in February and was closed two weeks later. The costs of these closures were substantial. At that time we also had Circus Starr in the UK, Gandeys in Malaysia and the theatre and cabaret tour of the UK with the Lady Boys of Bangkok in pre-production. These shows were never opened.

How did the virus most affect you? 2020 was a challenging year for everyone within circus all over the world. Anxiety over loved ones catching the disease – families could be anywhere worldwide when tours were cancelled – was utmost in people’s minds. Our tour in Hong Kong was cut short and lost money. We had to bring artists and equipment back to the UK, and repatriate overseas artists, all of which was challenging.

Production costs and losses ran into hundreds of thousands of pounds. In addition we refunded tens of thousands of pounds in advance ticket sales. Artists were stranded in the UK as flights home were cancelled and borders closed. They had no redress to public funds and so no income. Suppliers who were owed money included local authorities, who were owed rent for sites agreed for 2020. But we were grateful for the help given by the government for the furlough of PAYE staff and the local authority money for rated premises.

What happened to the artists who couldn’t get home? I’m fortunate to live in the countryside, and Phillip [Gandey] and I were able to provide accommodation, electricity and living expenses for them. Thirty-three people lived with us from March until July. They were exceptional, taking the lockdown very seriously and restricting visits to the ‘outside world’. They concentrated on rehearsing and practising new skills. We erected a tent in the fields with an outside trapeze rig. The weather was great and they made the best of their confinement. I would say that given the circumstances this was a happy time; not one they would have hoped for but they were amazingly good natured and positive.

How did you begin to consider the logistics of reopening your shows? We felt we were in a unique position to be in the vanguard of reopening events and so closely followed the science around the transmission of Covid and produced air-flow plans to submit to the Association of Circus Proprietors and the government. We worked alongside Butlins to produce a working model to allow the circus to trial an opening at its resort in Skegness. The test showed an air-flow pattern that gave the government the confidence to allow circus to open in reduced-seating-capacity circumstances. This meant we could engage our artists and others in the UK to perform at Butlins’ three resorts over the summer.

The government took a very long time to help the arts in general. Did you have a plan? Throughout this period I was lobbying the government and the Arts Council, and anyone on an email list, to support circus as a relevant artform that provides quality skills in performance, social and economic benefits along with a lot more. I had been collecting and collating statistics on this for some time to be able to produce fact sheets to support my claims. Other industry people had been simultaneously lobbying. We were thrilled to see circus included in the Arts Council Recovery Fund. I applied for Gandey Productions for a grant to cover the losses incurred during 2020 due to the Covid lockdown, plus a survival package to include some performances last autumn at reduced capacity, and the production costs for opening again this year.

Gandeys was awarded the biggest grant – £1.1million – of any UK circus company. Why do your think application stood out? I imagine because we are the largest operator in the UK and produce shows for export. We had invested heavily in productions pre-Covid and had commitments to third parties moving forward that benefitted the artform and many communities. We have a commitment to affordable ticket pricing and supporting social projects alongside fundraising for local and national charities. Further, and importantly for an Arts Council Fund, we produce to a very high standard, our artists are internationally acclaimed and our production values are significant. What does this recognition mean for the circus industry? I believe the support of circus by the Arts Council is a dynamic and profound change in funding that will bring circus as a performing art closer to the mainstream public in the UK. Circus is possibly the most accessible artform to the wider population geographically, socially and financially.

How might Brexit affect the industry? Who knows yet? There is still a lot of small print to be reviewed, and however it works there will be more bureaucracy and uncertainty. Additional issues for artists will be the import and export of props and vehicles and the rules around members of the EU driving in the UK, which will impact on them travelling with their own vehicles and caravans. In addition there will be changes to insurances and health cover, and not forgetting the changes to the exchange rate due to Brexit. We are uncertain of those consequences after a period of relative stability. Artists looking at these barriers may decide the paperwork and risks are too complicated and prefer to stay in Europe. All this will cost more and ultimately reflect on the ticket price. This is always a worry for touring circus in the UK as it tries hard to be an affordable form of art. Yet another issue for us is that we operate annually in Belfast and are expecting some challenges working there as different rules will apply even though it is part of the United Kingdom. We have factored Brexit into our strategy for 2021 and beyond. We cannot stress the financial difficulties and the maintaining of a high level of morale over this period. However, we are resilient and we will keep looking forward in positive ways. And when I say we, I mean the whole team here at Gandeys, which includes our office staff, financial support, engineering and technical teams, production teams to include lighting designer, choreographer, music production, set and prop designers, and all the artists who have been so supportive with their attitudes and ideas.

What can you tell us about your plans for 2021? We have taken this time of closure to look forward to this coming year; to reimagine our productions, researching acts and skills and production techniques, and to consider and test new ways of working; logistically, digitally and financially. We intend to continue to communicate with our circus audiences, to improve training, safety and security and Covid measures, and to review and re-target our environmental and social policies and charitable work. We are a flexible organisation and will respond to the Covid directives of the government as best suited to our company and our audiences, always with the safety of others at the core of our operations.

Scottish aerialist and acrobat Lauren Jamieson – who was born in Kilmarnock – holds a PhD in chemistry from Edinburgh University, but last year gave up her science career to pursue circus full time. She started as a gymnast when she was four, but later fell in love with trampolining while studying at St Andrew’s University. Lauren competed nationally and internationally, winning titles and awards. In 2009 she discovered circus while working at the French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts summer camp in New York.

Lauren worked for Spinal Chord for nine years, teaching and performing, and also with Paper Doll Militia on its aerial theatre piece, Warped. She performed in The Feathers of Daedalus Circus show Tarot, which ran at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and also at the Vault, and the Underbelly Festival in London. She teaches regularly for Aerial Edge and performs and delivers workshops throughout the UK. Lauren is now based in Glasgow, from where she chats to Liz Arratoon, before reprising her role in Tarot. It returns to the Vaults from 28 January – 1 February 2020 during the Vault Festival.

The Widow Stanton: What was your science job? Lauren Jamieson: After I did my PhD I worked as a postdoc in the University of Strathclyde for three years before I went full-time circus. I did raman spectroscopy, which is a vibrational spectroscopy. I looked at cancer research, basically, so it was analytical chemistry to try to help us understand more to do with that.

How hard was it to leave it? It was a hard decision to make because it’s kind of scary. I had been performing and teaching circus already but I was basically doing two jobs. [Laughs] So I’d do my science job during the day and teach or train at night, which became a lot to keep on top of. I’d kind of said for years, ‘Oh, I just wanna do the circus thing’, and I finally did it. But it was kind of scary because of money and all the other considerations that you have to take into account when you do that.

Let’s go back to the beginning; why did you start gymnastics? I didn’t really choose when I was little. It was just, like, “Here’s some activities for you to do.” I did acrobatic gymnastics, which is the partner stuff, so balancing on top of each other… acrobalance. My parents just sent me, and I wasn’t that good until I was probably about 12 or 13, and then I was more interested in it. I was competing as a base; mostly a base in a trio. We medalled at Scottish sportsacro championships, then I went into trampolining when I was 17 and won a lot of medals. I went to university; there wasn’t a gymnastics club but there was a trampolining club and I got really into that, and medalled at British competitions and won Scottish titles, as well as competing in Portugal.

So when you went to New York, was it just for a summer? Yes, it was after my first year at university, because we had long summer breaks, so I did… have you heard of Camp America-type things? Basically you go and work in a summer camp. I got a job teaching circus at the French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts. I hadn’t ever done it before but they kind of just went: “You’ve done a lot of gymnastics…” I kind of learnt the circus stuff as I went along. It was probably one of the best things I’ve done in my life. It was a great experience and I learnt a lot. They do a lot of theatre and dance, but they’ve got a really big circus department as well. It was apparently the biggest children’s circus in the world. We had all these facilities… we had all these kids coming through, and we made a show every three weeks with them.

Were you hooked on circus after that? Pretty much, yeah. I was still trampolining at the time, so that was most of my training. But I came back to Scotland, and found somewhere to train in circus. And I haven’t really stopped since.

Are your circus skills self-taught? Partly. I didn’t go to a circus school specifically. I worked for a company called Spinal Chord in Glasgow for a while and learnt a bit from there, trained a lot on my own over the last ten years and have been to workshops with various people around the UK and Europe to pick up stuff. 

Obviously the skills you already had would translate naturally but how did you take to working at heights? I’ve never been that bothered with the heights, and the way you learn aerial in circus feels quite safe because you start lower and then get used to being comfortable up higher.

I always have an urge if I’m somewhere up high to fling myself down! Yeah, I totally get that but I’d say I feel that with everyday things rather than I do in the circus. In circus if I’m on something high you have the urge to stay there. I don’t know, it’s weird, you don’t feel it as much in that context as you do… being on a bridge.

Was there always something inside you that wanted to perform rather than compete? I probably made the transition gradually. I did really like competing to a certain extent. With trampoline especially I liked having the goal of competing. I got very nervous… it was quite easy to mess it up, so it was like, ‘You’ve got his one chance. It takes 20 seconds and it’s really easy to make a mistake that would mess it up completely’. But with circus I enjoy more the fact that you can pretty much make mistakes and no one would know. It’s a lot freer and a lot more about performing and engaging the audience, which is a nice environment to be in.

And there are costumes! Costumes are good but they’re also interesting because you end up with lots of practical considerations when you’re performing in circus. But I do like the dressing-up and putting on a show. It is fun!

Are you mainly an aerialist now? I’m a bit of everything. I do a lot of different aerial disciplines, I do a lot of partner acrobatics as well. So, Joanna Vymeris, the director of Tarot, is also a performer. We met early last year and do a lot of acrobatics together as a duo.

Is it very uncomfortable to perform on chains? Yeah, but not much of the aerial stuff is comfortable. People always have that reaction to chains and they’re not the most comfortable. When I started performing on them I had a lot of bruises; you get used to it. [Laughs]

How long have you been working with The Feathers of Daedalus Circus? Just since last year. Joanna ended up in Glasgow for a bit and we started kind of training together, and then she had this show, Tarot, she was making, so she invited me to be part of it.

Does Glasgow have a quite strong circus scene? We have. I work at Aerial Edge now. We have really great facilities. We have pretty much anything you’d want. It’s a nice space to train, but I’d say Scotland in general the circus scene isn’t massive, but it is getting bigger.

Would you describe The Feather of Daedalus as a circus theatre company? I guess so. Joanna likes the storytelling aspect, and the tarot pack is quite a visual thing. 

Tell us about the show. Is it improvised? It’s not improvised. We’ve got a structure with set elements where people do their own acts. And then there’s tarot readings involved in the show. We’ll do two audience tarot readings; we’ll bring up an audience member. There are a lot of tarot cards, 78, in a full deck, with major and minor arcanas. We used the 22 cards of the major arcana before. We prepared something for those cards but we don’t know what’s going to come up on the night.

We drew three cards for each of the audience members and what they are is undetermined. It’s totally random and it’s quite an interesting one to perform because they’ll be some nights where you end up doing lots of things and others when you get an easy night. [Laughs] During the Fringe there tended to be one of us who was like, knackered after a show because all of the cards would relate to their acts. Then another night it would be someone else. This time we’re using the full pack.

Who else is in the show? We’ve got acrobats Josh Frazer and Tessa Blackman, and hand-balancer Imogen Huzel, so it’s the four of us this time. And we’ve got Yoshi, a four-man live band. They’ve made all the music and are really great. All the cards also have music associated with them so they play different music for each card that comes up.

So who does the readings? Tessa has done them in the show so far – she’s a psychic reader as well as a circus performer – but this time Ruby Wednesday, the new compere, is doing them.

Which skills are you performing? We have some choreographed group acrobatic acts in the opening and the finale. I was doing a rope act – rope is one my main disciplines – and the chains would sometimes come up depending on the cards. If The Devil comes up, I perform on chains, or I’ll do rope if The Hanged Man comes up, as well as the other rope act, which isn’t linked to the cards.

I imagine the Vaults lends itself nicely to this show’s subject matter… Yeah, it’s pretty perfect as a set for this kind of show. It’ll be really nice to be back because it’s the first place we did it.

What has been your circus highlight to date? Doing Tarot at the Edinburgh Fringe was one of them. Being Scottish it was nice to actually perform at the Fringe because I’d never performed there before. It’s a really fun, exciting show to be part of and as 2019 was my first year doing circus full time, it’s worked out well with things like that going on.

What advice would you give to someone else thinking of changing career? A lot of people hold back because they’re scared. I’d say, ‘Don’t be stupid, like, if you’ve got nothing else set up. It’s OK to just go for it because it’ll basically just work itself out’. And, ‘Follow your heart’, probably.

How did people react when you said, ‘I’m stopping now?’. Because of how much circus I’d done and how much I’d probably talked about it, they weren’t surprised. Most people were happy that I was doing what I wanted to do. Actually my parents even were OK with it. It’s the kind of thing you’d think they would be like, ‘Oh, my goodness!’. I still have a degree, which is good. My mum’s main thing especially was asking me: “Are ye making enough money? Are ye making enough money?”  

Have you got any particular ambitions or are you just seeing what comes? I’ve got a few different things; being part of shows like Tarot is great. Me and Joanna have actually started another company – Sonder Circus – with one of our friends, actress Ashley Smith. We made a show called Cailleach, which is a Scottish word. We made it very quickly and got a good response. And we’re looking to get funding. I’ve written the grant application, so we can work more on the show and take it further, possibly to the Fringe next year. So that’s quite an exciting adventure.

Lauren appears in Tarot, which runs at the Vaults in London from 28 January – 1 February 2020 during the Vault Festival.

For Tarot tickets, click here

Picture credit: Caryn Hughes; Federico Rojas, Sofi Lee-Henson; Nick Hampson

Lauren on Instagram

Twitter: @feathers_circus

Self-taught speed juggler Cylios Pytlak – who comes from Valenciennes in northern France – started practising when he was ten, using balls, clubs and hats. He gradually developed his skills through repetition, while also devising new juggling patterns. During his teenage years he performed in small cabarets, shows and festivals, at 15 winning the grand prize at the French festival Talents de Scene. At 17, he spent a season with Cirque Georget and has been performing ever since. His highlights include contracts with Cirque Alexandre Bouglione and Cirque Firmin Bouglione in Belgium, Zirkus des Horrors in Germany, and the Cuban circus festival Circuba.

But his dream was always to perform with Cirque du Soleil, and after auditioning in 2009, it took until 2017 for him to achieve it. Cylios has appeared in its Mexico-themed show LUZIA – which is directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca – since it opened. Having toured the United States, Mexico and Canada for two years, he now comes to London’s Royal Albert Hall, where the show runs from 12 January – 1 March 2020. He chats to Liz Arratoon via email.

The Widow Stanton: Cylios is an unusual name. Where is it from? Cylios Pytlak: My real name is Cyril. Cylios is my stage name. I chose it with my family when I went on stage for the first time when I was about 12 or 13 years old. My goal was to be the only juggler with this name. It was also easier to remember for the fans and the people from the industry.



Are you from a circus background? No, my father was a police officer – he is now retired – and my mum is a nurse. I had always been a circus fan. My grandparents often took me to a variety of shows by Cirque Arlette Gruss when I was little. As soon as a circus was in my town, I was taking my bike to go past it all the time. This is where I learned to set up a big top. I was also taking care of the animals, since it was mostly traditional circus. My family always supported me and helped me to reach my goals. I feel really lucky to have them. 



Why did you choose to be a juggler? When I was ten years old I really wanted to learn a circus discipline. However, there was no circus school near my home. So I tried to learn by myself what was most accessible to me: juggling. When my parents offered me my first three juggling balls I was able to do some catches right away. I fell in love with it and shortly became an addict. [Laughs]


Are there any other jugglers in your family? No, I am the only one.



Why did you decide to do speed juggling? Not so long after I first started juggling by myself I saw Mario Berousek, the really famous speed juggler, on TV; on Le Plus Grand Cabaret du Monde.

Oh yes, we saw him in Monte Carlo a couple of times. He is actually the pioneer of speed juggling. I was completely fascinated by him and told myself I wanted to be like him. As of that moment, he became my inspiration. What is so crazy is that I had a chance to juggle with him a couple years later. I gave the idea to the juggling equipment company Mister Babache – Jonglerie Diffusion to create a modern replica of his artisanal club. At that time, no club for speed jugglers were marketed. Incredibly, this is the club I use to perform in LUZIA. This club can now be bought anywhere around the world.


What is the most important advice you could give to someone wanting to learn it? It is important to learn to listen to your body and to your mind. You can’t impose an evolution rhythm on yourself. You need to learn to enjoy the good days where you progress well and you learn things. You also need to be able to adapt your training when it’s not going really well. It is a process of hit and miss and it is totally normal.

Are the clubs the same as for regular juggling? As for the length and the weight it is really similar. Overall, a speed juggling club is slimmer and the rotating point is more central. This allows you to have tighter juggling and allows you to accentuate the propeller effect and the rotation effect ‘on the spot’, which characterises speed juggling with clubs. It is however possible to do speed juggling with a classic club. I did it for many years.  



Are there any famous jugglers present or past you admire? There are a lot. I can’t mention all of them. Of course, there is Mario Berousek (pictured above), and the legend, Anthony Gatto. Even though he is not a juggler anymore, he is part of juggling history. Tony Frebourg is also a legend with the diabolos. Even though I don’t do diabolos he was a big example for me. He has such an amazing career. He motivated and guided me a lot when I first started. I always admired his work. He became a friend over time. I met him in 2006, the same year I met Mario. It’s when I saw him succeed with another Cirque du Soleil show, OVO, that I told myself that I could also do it.


Do you remember your first appearance juggling in a show or cabaret? Totally. It was in a Christmas gala in Quievrechain, a small town in northern France, in December 2004 when I was 13. Before that I did little shows in private events, but nothing big. I really see this gala as my first show since it was the first time I was on a real stage. I was in front of a crowd of several hundred people. There was stage lighting and a real curtain opening. A lot of things happened that night that gave me the motivation to continue to train to get better and to go back on stage as soon as possible: the adrenaline before the performance, the atmosphere around the show, the joy to perform in front an audience, the joy of sharing with the public and the feeling when you receive the crowd’s applause. The following morning, I was already working on my act to see how I could improve it. I was doing video sessions of my performance to see what elements on the technical and artistic side I could improve. Since my first ‘little shows’ and especially after this gala, being on stage was what I wanted to do for a living. I never imagined my life without it. I really wanted this to be my life on a daily basis. I put in all the hard work I needed to by myself. Therefore, I never went to a professional circus school. I started my professional juggling career at 17 after completing a sales degree… just in case!

You had a long wait to get into Cirque du Soleil. Did you ever give up hope? I did a casting with Cirque du Soleil in Paris in 2010. I was 19 and I had been dreaming about Cirque du Soleil for a while. To be part of this company was my biggest dream. I never gave up on my dream, but it’s when I started to think less about it that they first contacted me for LUZIA. 



Tell us about the show… LUZIA is a wonderful show. It allows you to discover the Mexican culture in a unique way. And you don’t need to be Mexican or to like Mexico to fall in love with this show. You will go through a diverse range of emotions. It’s a magnificent and breathtaking show. 


I see you have to run through the audience while juggling. Do you enjoy that close interaction? Yes, I love it! It is important for me to establish this contact with the audience. This was part of my routine before I joined LUZIA. I had the chance that the artistic director of the show, Gracie Valdez, gave me the freedom to continue to do it.


What do you like or dislike about touring? To be touring around the world is a great opportunity. A lot of people need to make sacrifices to be able to travel. For us it is the way we live. What I enjoy the most is to discover the landscapes and the lifestyles of people in all the places we visit. But the most difficult part is to be away from my friends and family in France.



Where have you liked the most? I liked a lot of different places, but I think my favourite was California. Especially Los Angeles, which was my first city on tour. It was unforgettable. I also really liked Orlando with all the attraction parks, shows and entertainment… without forgetting the nice weather and the palm trees!

Do you travel with your family? Yes, I’m married to Madeley. We were touring together in a traditional circus in France, La Piste aux Etoiles, when we met. She was part of Russian swing, Chinese pole and acrobatic jump rope acts then. She went to the National Circus School of Cuba where she trained as a foot juggler. After our wedding in 2012, she was performing foot juggling and aerial hoop as a soloist. We were performing our acts in the same shows before I joined LUZIA but she does not perform in the show. We now have a little girl who’s three years old named Cameron. My wife and daughter travel with me at all time. Cirque helps us a lot with that. It is great!


Cameron loves circus. She already knows LUZIA by heart. She loves to imitate me or Madeley. I think it is normal for her age, because it’s what she is surrounded by every day, which I think is a great experience for her. Madeley and I don’t want to influence her in any way. We want her to do want she loves when she grows up. We both were lucky to have parents who supported us in our passion, and we want the same for our daughter.  

How do you feel about coming to the Royal Albert Hall? I’m really excited to perform in this iconic venue. It will be a really important moment of LUZIA’s tour. I had the chance to visit the Royal Albert Hall when I was in London a few weeks ago for a PR trip. It is magnificent! I have goosebumps just thinking about it. 



Has being in Cirque du Soleil lived up to your expectations? Totally! I worked as a professional juggler for about ten years before joining the company. As soon as I got here I was able to notice the difference. Cirque du Soleil gives us a lot of support around the show. I’m so glad to be working for them. I work with a team that dedicate themselves 100 per cent to the show every day. They want the show to be at its best and also to have it evolve. All the teams: technicians, administration, marketing, artistic, everyone gives the best of themselves to this show and it is inspiring to see.  


Cylios performs in Cirque du Soleil’s LUZIA at London’s Royal Albert Hall from 12 January – 1 March 2020.

For tickets to LUZIA, click here 

Pictures: Courtesy of Cylios and Cirque du Soleil

Cylios on Facebook

Recognised as one of the most innovative jugglers ever, American Wes Peden – who comes from Rochester, New York – has been voted the world’s most popular juggler nine times. His father, Jeff Peden, taught him to juggle when he was five, and they started performing together when Wes was eleven. At 14, he won the gold medal in the International Juggling Association Juniors Championship. He went on to study at the Dance and Circus University in Stockholm from 2007-2010. Wes holds countless juggling world records, won a bronze medal at the 33rd Cirque de Demain festival in Paris, and has appeared internationally from Tokyo to Broadway, including before the King and Queen of Sweden, and at Perlan glacier museum in Iceland.

Based in Stockholm, Wes tours his solo shows and gives masterclasses. UK audiences may have seen him in Water on Mars by Plastic Boom – the company he formed with Tony Pezzo and Patrik Elmnert – and his sizzling guest spot in Gandini Juggling and Alexander Whitley’s Spring. He now returns to the UK, bringing his solo show, Zebra, to the 44th London International Mime Festival. It runs at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room from 24-26 January 2020. Wes chats to Liz Arratoon from Helsinki, while rehearsing for an opera.

The Widow Stanton: What is the opera you’re working on? Wes Peden: It’s a circus opera, CircOpera. They’ve written a story that uses some classic opera songs and lots of different circus disciplines to try to have, like, a fun way to introduce kids and families and people that might not necessarily go to see a traditional opera to the art form.

Do you find that your juggling work is combining more with other art forms now? Well, I definitely get inspired by other art forms and it’s very often when I’m in group shows it’s not just other jugglers, you know. Gandini has worked with many other types of dance, and I’ve been in shows that have theatre in them or other circus disciplines, and I definitely get inspired by the type of music in the show. For example, opera music, I’m performing to a soloist playing Flight of the Bumblebee on a tuba. That kind of inspires a different sort of juggling than I would ever do on my own. So, definitely.

Let’s go back to the beginning; is or was your dad a professional juggler? Yeah, he still does perform quite a bit. Before we were juggling together he was already doing about 100 shows a year. When I started getting more and more into juggling we created a duet show, and were performing that for a few years, with many shows around the east coast of the States.

Did it come naturally to you as a kid or was it just a lot of hard work? Kind of both. I felt like I had a natural talent for it in one way and it made it not feel like work. When you’re young and you learn some things, it doesn’t seem so surprising that you can’t… you don’t get embarrassed that you can’t do anything at all. You can’t juggle, but you can’t ride a bike either. It’s all normal. There are many things you can’t do at that age. Also I was dyslexic and asthmatic, so school was very difficult because of my dyslexia and sport was hard because of my asthma, but then juggling, I was like, ‘Oh, here I am at least on an equal playing field as everybody else’. Having limitations in those other areas kind of pushed me to follow my skill in the juggling world.

How would you describe your juggling style? The main thing that defines me is that the reason I juggle is to create new tricks, new forms of juggling and to try to make something that someone has never seen before within the juggling world. I want people to come out of my show thinking: “I’ve never seen anything like that. I didn’t know juggling could be like that. Those were some tricks I didn’t imagine would ever be possible.” Because I was lucky enough to juggle for many, many years – 24 years I’ve been practising – I had a lot of time to build a lot of technique. I had a lot of skill with many different props so I try to make these new ideas as technically advanced as I can, to use my full energy and my full skill to make as high-quality new ideas as possible. But what defines my style is creative and new shapes but still a really high skill level.

Were you inspired by any of the great jugglers from the past? Absolutely. I watch juggling constantly to get inspired by things that have happened already and by what elements I can see, like, ‘Oh, what made that trick so special? What’s important about this juggler’. There are a few jugglers of more recent years, because juggling is still quite young, so lots of the important jugglers are really not that old, they’re still alive. There’s Kris Kremo, who does incredible stuff with balls and hats that really inspires me, and another is Sean McKinney.

I saw him when I was nine years old at this competition where everyone was performing with, like, jazz music, in a vest [waistcoat], kind of in this Kris Kremo-type old-school way but at this time everything was a little stricter for no real reason, and then this guy comes skateboarding on to the stage in jeans and a T-shirt and does incredible new beautiful kind of punk juggling. I was like, ‘What is this guy?’ and he inspired me that juggling didn’t have to be done in just one way. It didn’t have to have a certain aesthetic, that it was broader than I’d ever imagined. So when I saw him at that young age I was like, ‘OK, juggling isn’t this, juggling is whatever you want it to be’.

When you’re creating intricate patterns and sequences how do you plan them? There are certain aspects of juggling that you can do best on paper, for me anyway, and certain aspects that you have to be literally trying it to see what works, where the momentum is and how fast you can move or what makes sense with the flow of where the catches are. So it’s a combination of both. It will often be that I’m working on a trick and then I realise something about it, ‘Oh, the momentum of this part makes me want to throw the ball round there’. I film it on my phone and next time I’m on a plane or a train I look at the videos and ‘OK, now I realise that new aspect of the trick’. I will write down many ideas of how to twist that or expand a new idea. Then next time I’m in training I’ll look at my notebook and try all those new things, film them, so it kind of bounces back and forth between literally work in the studio to see how you body and objects work best together and then more, like, academic work back in the office or while I’m travelling.

You have so many records; it’s not about numbers but how many of each prop do you juggle? [Laughs] I have some, but to tell you the truth, it gets a little bit tiring, like, trying to add just one more ball or one more club. I might have invented the most five-club tricks that have ever existed but I don’t juggle the greatest number of clubs that has ever been done. I perform seven clubs and seven balls but I try to… yeah… OK, to be able to juggle seven, eight, nine balls you need speed and accuracy and dedication, and how many hours would I need to put in to add one more ball? That would give one image and it would be amazing, but if I took all of those hours and that dedication and then added my creativity to it and instead used that time to try to make something that no one has ever gone for before.

Up until I was, like, 16 or 17, I was going after just the hardest trick, the biggest trick, the most clubs and after I went to circus university and had more classes in dance and composition I started banging my time and my skill more into composing things that are a little bit harder to put your finger on, because when someone says: “How many of this can you juggle,” it’s easier to compute than, ‘Well, I’ve developed this new technique where rings spiral around my arms in hundreds of different ways. By the time you see the end of the piece you’ll have a whole new vision of how things work. It’s a bit harder to envision, but you have to come to see the show’. [Laughs] 

Do you prefer one prop to another? It depends. When I was young I absolutely preferred clubs, like, clubs are the way to be, they can flip this way, the other, rotate, roll… there are many options with them. Then when I started to learn a bit more about how to move my body, I got more interested with balls because you can use them to go around your body, they’re easier going down to the floor and back up. And now I can kind see every prop for what they are good at and if I have an idea of one way of using juggling, like, ‘Oh, this new cross-armed behind-the-neck idea’, what prop will work in that idea best? So now my juggling is more about concepts and then I pull whichever object works with that concept the best. I see them all now like different colours for a painter, whatever is most suitable for this next painting.

What is the best tip you could give to a kid just starting to juggle? I would say to remember that you don’t need three balls to juggle, you can start with one, or any object and try to invent a trick that is fun; something that you think is cool to do. Maybe take your shoe and throw it up and clap behind your back and you catch it again. Or maybe you can set up some spoons on the table and flip one with the other… not to think that juggling is just getting three balls in the air. Juggling is just a relationship between you and objects and making fun tricks that express yourself. I’d say, make sure you’re having fun and, you know, keep going. You will teach yourself as you invent things and gradually build skill. But always make sure you’re having fun.

You mentioned circus university, why did you choose DOCH? I was watching lots of juggling videos and different jugglers from around the world and trying to figure out where they all came from and who taught them and where their different styles were developed, and I realised a lot of my favourite jugglers were from Sweden, or Denmark, or Finland. And then I found out that a bunch of them were going to this school, DOCH. The head teacher at the time was Jay Gilligan, who is a very great juggler; a very clever guy in the modern world of juggling. That was it, ‘I already know his work, I want to juggle like the other guys, so let’s go there and study’.

What did it add to your already considerable skills? When I got to the school Jay explained to me: “OK, we have three years to juggle. We're going to be spending the first year developing your technique and making sure you understand everything you can about literal juggling; the tossing, the throwing, making sure everything is clean. The second year we're gonna teach you how to compose, which will not necessarily have anything to do with throwing and catching.” There were certain things when I was supposed to make an interesting routine while holding a watering can, which I wasn't allowed to throw or catch. You have to forget about your skill as a juggler and just use your creativity to make something good without skill. So for a year I did many different composition exercises, like, 'OK, make 100 tricks in 15 minutes'. You’re like, ‘Uhh!’. It really works your brain in the same way that juggling in previous years had worked my muscles and my muscle memory.

And then in the third year you use your skills developed in the first two, you combine your juggling skill, your composition, you figure out what you want to express and put those skills to work in something from yourself. I think that is the main difference between juggling just on your own and going to a school and having someone make you do composition exercises that really got out the creative side of me and let me develop something that was unique to me. 

What happened to Plastic Boom? The trio performed quite a bit together and then had a contract working in Vegas on a show. The others have stayed there but I got a replacement for my part so I could continue to do my own full shows and live a more artistic career, so we've kind of split ways a little bit.

Are you affiliated with Gandini Juggling? When they first started to make Spring, me and the two other jugglers from Plastic Boom, all three of us were going to be in the show, but then when we got the offer for the show in Vegas, it kind of was hard to organise with the creation time period of Spring so we jumped out of the project. But then when I wanted to leave Vegas I was partially in the Spring show. I’m good friends with Sean [Gandini], we really share similar visions of why we like juggling, where it can go. We both have energy to develop the art form constantly and now they are my producers.

Did winning a medal in Paris help you? Yes, it did. In a way, my life is kind of a balance of performing in other group shows, like what I’m in now in Helsinki, and doing my own solo work. And after doing Cirque de Demain I got offers doing some varieté theatre in Germany, where I worked two months a year for a few years. Always while I was just doing an act in another show it gave me an opportunity to be in the same place for a couple of months and really work on the stuff that would be in my next show. In happenstance, after Paris, I got booked for one show in Germany, and I had a huge apartment for that show in the theatre, with a high ceiling, so every day I would spend six or seven hours working on all this new juggling that is now in Zebra. So everything kind of connects… win that, get a good space to juggle, make the juggling for the next show that starts to tour.

Tell us about Zebra. Zebra was kind of a balance based on a show I’d done previously called Volcano VS Palm Tree, which was very explosive and kind of chaotic, and I wanted something more precise where every place my arm was put, every step, every throw was perfectly organised and a bit more, yeah, very, very precise. So this show is about that, and composing juggling with normal juggling objects but in such a way that it doesn’t look like traditional juggling. Let me explain that a bit. For example, there’s a part where I juggle balls where the rule of the whole piece is that it has to be ball juggling where everything is bouncing off my arms. I’ve composed that and developed it over a few years so that by the time you’re a few minutes into the piece it stops to look like ball juggling and starts to look just like elbow bouncing and kind of this new family, this new language of ways of working… to keep it really specific like that.

There’s a piece with five clubs where I’m facing away from the audience and the light is just above my head, so I’ve made the juggling where the only part of it that matters is what’s in the air and you start to forget that I’m throwing and catching and there’s any skill involved because it’s made around watching these waves, or these triangles or these shapes transform into different constellations. So trying to remove the idea of you’re watching it to be impressed and more that you’re watching an idea unfold and evolve and focus more on the content of the ideas within the juggling. In the way you watch a dancer, you’re not, like, ‘Wow, look how high they jump’, but you’re following the idea of what the choreographer is making onstage.

It sounds fantastic! You’ve performed in London before, but how do you feel about being in the Mime Festival? I’m very excited to be there. Whenever I’m in a festival and can look at all the other shows in the programme and think, ‘I want to go to every single one of these’, I feel at home, and think, ‘Great! I’m in a like-minded space. I’m really happy that my juggling is fitting into a world that I made it for, and I know that the type of audience that goes to these types of shows will see the juggling in the same way that I do’. And I really think that’s it’s a good home for the show. I’m very happy to be part of it.

Can pick out, from your lengthy career, any particular highlights? I really remember the first time I performed Zebra was in Paris. I’d been working on it for a few years and I really wasn’t sure how it would go, because I was like, ‘Are the people going to respond to this? I’m trying to make something quite different. Is it going to work the same way for them as I see it?’, because sometimes when you’re in your own work for too long, you can’t see it anymore from someone’s eye that’s never seen it before and yeah, when I came offstage and everything had gone so well…

I was also very nervous because the show was all run on vinyl records; there are times when I’m like, throwing them, and bouncing them and if I break one, that’s it. That’s my little twist on the idea of jugging being dangerous, because it’s often dangerous for the juggler, juggling chainsaws or whatever, and now I try to work very closely with the objects and I want to do juggling that a ball would want to do. Or if I was a record, how would I like to be juggled? And now there is danger for the object [laughs]… it could break, and danger for the entire show. But it went OK, I didn’t get so nervous that I broke a record. It went great. That was one of the best feelings I’ve had.

I also make juggling films. I often work for a few years at a time making juggling films that are kind of like skate films, where I collect the coolest tricks and find themes to edit them around and I release those every couple of years for the juggling community. My most recent one is called Gumball, which people can see pieces of on YouTube. When I released that it had been in the works for almost three years and that was one of my highlights that I could make film-specific juggling and had a lot of tricks that I’d never seen done ever before. Yeah, it was like a big expression of who I am and this is how I believe it can be and, here we go, I hope you like it. Sending something like that out to the world feels great. 

Wes appears in Zebra at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room from 24-26 January 2020 during the London International Mime Festival

Picture credits: Headshot, Pierre Feniello. Zebra in order, Avi Pryntz-Nadworny; Brend Van Kerckhove; Florence Huet;  Luke Burrage; Sonia Sleurs

Wes’ website

For tickets to Zebra, click here

London International Mime Festival, what’s on

Twitter: @WesPeden; @MimeLondon; @southbankcentre

Kathryn O’Keeffe and her husband, Paul, are long-serving members of leading Australian circus troupe Circa. Kat first worked for the company in 2011 and became one of its ensemble members a year later. Paul joined the line-up in 2013 after performing with companies including Circus Oz, Circus Monoxide, Strut & Fret and Legs on the Wall. 

Kat trained as a gymnast and dancer before furthering her dance studies at the Victorian College of Arts in Melbourne. She worked as an independent artist performing and creating works that mixed dance, physical theatre and circus for theatre, festivals and events. Paul – also known as the Human Whippet – started in youth circus in 1991 as an after-school activity, while also doing gymnastics at the Australian Institute of Sport. After playing one of the leads in Company Skylark’s Wake Baby, he performed in circus, dance, puppetry, musicals and physical theatre. Kat worked with Strange Fruit, and in 2010 had a seven-month run in Airborne at the World Expo in Shanghai, whiel Paul co-founded circus company Kronik and a professional circus training studio in Melbourne, co-managed Warehouse Circus and ran independent circus troupes.

Having both appeared in a string of Circa’s shows – including How Like An Angel in London in 2012 – the Brisbane-based pair now have one all to themselves. Following a run in Wolfgang at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the show returns to the UK as Wolfgang’s Magical Musical Circus with dates at London’s Barbican Pit from 12-22 December 2018. Kat and Paul chat to Liz Arratoon while on tour in Western Australia with Circa’s Reclaimed Pianos.

The Widow Stanton: Where are you both from? Kat O’Keeffe: I was born in Canberra, Paul was born in Melbourne but moved to Canberra as a child, so we both grew up in Canberra with youth circus and youth dance companies. I grew up doing gymnastics and dancing and actually got into circus later on after meeting Paul. So I was in my twenties when I started circus.

Paul O’Keeffe: I started with a local youth circus in Canberra about three months after it had officially launched itself. I was doing gymnastics at the same time but it very quickly became obvious that circus was more the direction that I was wanting to head in, so I continued with it. When I finished school I was just picking up more and more tours and going from company to company. So, yeah, I grew up as a ten-year-old wanting to throw myself around. My older sister started at the same time and she was probably quite a good instigator of me wanting to somersault because she’d see things on the TV – like someone running up a wall and doing a somersault – and she’d be like: “Paul, why don’t you try that?” [Laughs] It went from there.

How did you meet? Kat: We met at a music festival in Canberra many, many moons ago. [Laughs] Paul: We were both doing dance in Canberra and initially we were meant to be in the same show but things didn’t pan out that way and we missed meeting each other then. It was a couple of years later we actually met. I was living in Melbourne and Kat came down to study at VCA doing a bachelor of dance. I was doing a lot more circus then and gradually we started getting Kat… Kat: [Laughs] Paul: … into doing more aerial performance work and circus work. By the time she finished her dance degree I think she was favouring circus. Kat: I did enjoy the circus. Because I grew up doing gymnastics as well, tumbling was normal for me and, at that stage, I was very young and bendy, and I already had a bit of a range with what I could do with ground-based movement from dancing. It seemed like a natural progression to get a bit more into circus and utilise both skills.

But to start doing aerial; that’s high! Was it a bit of a shock? Kat: Well, yes and no. I have a fear of heights so it adds to the challenge. [Laughs] But I just liked doing stuff, like I liked climbing and being physical. So being upside down and hanging off things the height didn’t faze me so much. I enjoy it. I love being upside down so hanging upside down in the air is just as much fun as being on my hands.

So what are your main circus skills? Kat: I do bits of everything as everyone does in Circa but I do enjoy handstands a lot. And especially in Wolfgang Paul does a lot of climbing on me, so I’m a bit more of a base in the show. But I just like moving. [Laughs] Paul: Kat was in Circa’s Beyond and did a handstand act where she was blindfolded. And then continued on doing handstands throughout the other shows. She does handstands in Wolfgang. Kat: Yes, but it’s more on the chairs; it’s a shorter act.

Paul, what’s your speciality? Most of my friends who have grown up through youth circus in Canberra generally have a broad range of skills. I kind of like to say I’m good at everything but not great at one particular thing. [Laughs] I’ve kind of spread my energy across the whole range, so I do juggling, unicycling, trapeze, balancing… all the kind of standard youth circus skills you’d find across Australia. I’ve dabbled in a lot of things but focused mainly on ground acrobatics… standing on people, being stood on, somersaulting… I used to do a lot of swinging trapeze but I haven’t performed any in Circa just because of the way the company travel, there’s not really the opportunity rigging-wise to get something like that into a show.

I used to work with a troupe with my sister and another friend. We set up a little warehouse in Melbourne, which was for training. We wanted to rehearse a show, which we had some funding for, and we wanted to branch out of Canberra, and Melbourne had a lot of circus opportunities. We fell in love with the area. We used to do a lot more group juggling and all the kind of classic things, which every now and then make their way into shows.

Do either of you have any showbiz in your backgrounds? Kat: Not that I know of. That would be lovely. [Laughs] My family are quite creative though; my dad does photography and my grandmother was a beautiful artist – painting and drawing and pottery and stuff – so I’ve been lucky to have a creative side to my family. But in terms of physical performing, not that I’m aware of.

Paul: For me, not really any performing interest – my sister is a mum now – and, initially, the idea of doing circus was really, from my parents’ point of view, just a hobby. It had no foreseeable future because around that time, coming from a non-entertainment-industry-based family, there wasn’t much knowledge around what this industry is or could be as a career choice. It wasn’t blocked as an idea but it was questioned a bit as to where it could lead. But I got an opportunity to be part of a production with Skylark, a quite well-known company in Canberra, during my last couple of years of schooling – it was puppetry mixed with acrobatics – and I think that was the turning point. My parents could actually see there was this interest in my type of work and that I could be suited for this particular role.

Kat, you joined Circa first. What do you like about the way the ensemble helps to create its shows? Kat: Yaron Lifschitz, Circa’s creative director, spends ages on his ideas for shows, so by the time he comes to the studio he’s got lots of ideas to work with and outlines for the show, but the one thing I really enjoy about working with him is that we have such an important part in the process of the work we make. So he’ll be like: “Oh, I would like a handstand act,” and because I do handstands, he’ll go: “Here’s a starting point. This is the idea for the show.” He allows us to really play with it and find what it means for us in the show.

So as a performer having that much involvement in the creation of it means that when you’re onstage, you’re really performing what you love to do. I do enjoy feeling that I’ve really made myself part of the show and the choices I’ve put into it are something I believe in. All the shows I’ve done with Yaron have been with this process. As challenging as it can be some days when, ‘I just can’t figure out what I’m meant to be doing right now’, I love it. Just being able to see the variants of shows I’ve done over the years and the avenues I’ve approached in my various acts, it’s really nice as an artist to be able to kind fo push yourself and keep playing with the ideas.

Another great thing about Circa is where we’ve started with a show is not always where we’ll end up finishing with the show. The journey the show has along the way and the challenges and the changes you can make means the show keeps building. I never feel like I’m just doing the same thing every day. That’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed so long… the mental challenges as well as the physical challenges I get in the company. What were your first Circa shows? Kat: The first one we did together was Beyond but I started originally on a show called Nocturne. It was a three-person show with Kimberley Rossi [now O’Brien] and Billie Wilson-Coffey. We went to South Korea. It was fun! Working with Yaron and Benjamin Knapton and the three of us for a couple of months was my first real experience with Circa. We had to dive in. It had that fun challenge of how do three new bodies create a work together.

Paul: Just before we did Beyond in Norwich we were also doing How Like An Angel. Those two shows were sent off on the same tour. And then from there it was a lot about Beyond touring because it had quite a lot of momentum in bookings. We had versions of Carnival of the Animals and a few new creations throughout that period but Beyond was an important part of the shows we both did.

Are you usually put in shows together? Paul: It’s worked out quite well for us actually. We’re both in the same ensemble. There are various ensembles within the company; one’s in Berlin at the moment, there’s another touring America and since Beyond finished up the group has got reconfigured. Then Yaron threw Kat and me this amazing opportunity to create this new show Wolfgang with just the two of us. And of course, we were going to say yes. Kat: [Laughs] I get to annoy Paul every day so it’s great. Paul: [Laughs] Kat: It’s a dream. It is nice to have others around, especially when you’re training, like to brainstorm ideas, but to have a show with just us two has also got its fun challenges.

Paul: For us, having worked together in other shows over the years, it was very different coming to this process where it was just the two of us. In other shows… Kat: … we were onstage together but we didn’t have acts that were just us. When we did Opus it was one of the first times where we had a duo that was just us two together. Before that we’d have bits of skills together in a group but… Paul: … some of those duos were sporadic throughout the show. They might be a minute-and-a-half or two minutes long but then the proposition to come and make a 50-minute or an hour full-length piece with just the two of us, we had to step back and say, ‘OK, so how does this work?’. [Both laugh]. As professional circus performers working together but also relationship-wise, how does that work? Touring-wise, how does it work? Things carried over from other ensembles and touring together but it sort of put it into a new kind of basket.

Tell us a bit about Wolfgang. Is it a kids’ show? Kat: It is a kids’ show. It’s designed for ages three-plus. We’ve had young children with their grandparents or their parents coming in, school groups, groups of adults as well. It’s a lovely show because it’s utilising Mozart’s music with circus; you don’t realise you’re spending an hour listening to classical music because there’s just so much happening. All of a sudden you get the melodies caught in your head and you’re like, ‘Wait a minute, I’m humming Mozart!’. It’s kind of a nice to have that multi-layer to it.

Paul: For me, the show brings together a few elements that I really like about Circa’s work. The word ‘authentic’ comes up a lot in all the work that we try to do and that’s what I really like about this show and all Circa shows that there is that real authenticity about it. We are the people on the stage who can connect with the audience and they can connect with us. This show, although we use Mozart’s music and it’s a bit more more narrative-driven than normal Circa works is a slightly different format to normal Circa shows. We have costumes that are quite elaborate; I wear an elaborate Mozart outfit and Kat is the birthday girl, but yeah, it’s still got that ‘us’ to it. We were heavily part of the creation for it. Yaron approached us with the idea and his outline for what he saw but as in every Circa show, we can then come into the rehearsal room and go, ‘What about this, what about that?’ and throw some ideas into the mix. I think being the two of us it really allowed us… Kat: … to voice our opinions and question things.

Paul: Beyond had little vignettes of these rabbit holes that you’d go down on these journeys, and I felt it was similar in that sense, that it was an opportunity for me to put a little bit of who I am and a little bit more texture to the work. I hope the audience feel a stronger connection with us onstage, especially the ones up close because they get… Kat: … the sweat! Paul: They can hear the breathing, they can sort of get to meet us a little bit. In Wolfgang, it’s the same although we’re wearing costumes, but hopefully they get to meet us as individuals. People come up afterwards going: “Oh, are you actually a couple?” That’s been really exciting because we don’t play on being a married couple but obviously the audience pick up on our strong connection.

So, Paul, you’re playing Mozart, but Kat, who is this girl? My character is a modern woman who is setting up for a birthday party and no one really attends. I get a bit upset about the situation. I bought myself my own present and it was a Mozart record. So I play the music and I get transfixed into this world. Mozart comes to life and I go on a journey with him. It’s small and intimate. The Barbican’s Pit will bring the audience close to us and because it’s kind of set in my character’s house, it’s nice to be in a smaller venue.

Is it usually performed in the round? Kat: We did Edinburgh recently and that was in a Spiegeltent, and then we’ve done little intimate black boxes and bigger stages. Paul: Initially the idea was that it was a design that would fit more the smaller venues, which would allow that more intimate space and connection with the show, and also it is not the scale of shows like Opus… Kat: … it’s bringing people into our little world.

Does Circa’s intense schedule substitute for training? Paul: It really depends on the tour schedule. Some tours allow room for training if there are few shows, and others are purely just show after show with travel. Kat: It also depends if you’re rehearsing for another show, because you’ll find time to do that. Paul: We’re usually in the space somewhere between two and three hours prior to a show going up, and that time is usually spent not only getting ready for the show but there are pockets within that that are open to developing skill range… Kat: … developing the show further… Paul: … or rehearsing for another show that might be appearing during the same tour. If there are gaps within the tour we might find a bit of grass, a park, or a beach to train.

Kat: For me, I actually like going to the gym. I like doing Pilates and stuff so I’ll generally find somewhere to do that. I find that a nice brain release. I don’t have to think about being to time on the music or having absolutely perfect technique. I can just go and train. I enjoy doing stuff like that after hours. It depends on the person really… Paul’s a bit different. [Laughs]

Paul: I don’t tend to go to the gym because I find I can pretty much get most of what I need out of the training sessions or the bodies that I can stand on or who stand on me. Most recently though I have been needing to do some different programmes that do require the gym, so there is a bit of a balance that always goes on with the touring schedule… and maybe age as well. I just turned 39 the other day. It’s the same with treatment as well. You can never have one person who’s going to accommodate every acrobat’s needs in terms of physiotherapy or osteo, or chiropractic or massage. Everyone has their slight differences in how they look after their bodies.

Circa women are often bases but Paul’s quite light… what do you think of this trend of seeing tiny women basing massive men? Kat: I’m not a tiny as some of the tiny little women who have blokes standing on them but I have done that in the past; a  bigger man standing on me. It’s nice just to be able to have that strength. I personally wouldn’t base someone bigger than me if I didn’t feel like I could. It’s as much me going, ‘This is who I am. I’m strong in this particular way’. Everything requires strength anyway so a base is really strong at what they do, a contortionist is really strong at what they do, so I just look at it as that you have to be so strong at what you choose to do.

I think that’s why I like Circa’s work, in particular because the performers onstage, they are themselves. They perform and do tricks that interest them as well, so if you happen to be female and you like lifting people then that’s great. And if you happen to be male and you like flying that’s great because you get to be who you are and push yourself in that direction. Women are strong in multiple ways and they can do the big tricks along with the men. We don’t have to be typecast into a certain role.

What are your best and worsts of touring? The travel versus living out of a suitcase… Kat: We’ve mastered minimalist living! But after many, many years of living out of suitcases, we’ve just bought an apartment in Brisbane. Paul: The suitcase living is a calculated one. We have a 20kg weight limit for our personal gear so everything that we do shopping-wise has to be really justified. It makes it really good for saving money but it also means if you are buying a new pair of shoes for instance, you have to really be happy to get rid of that other pair that are in that same spot in the suitcase. It does make you a very good shopper!

Can you pick out a few highlights from you careers? Paul: The current one for me has been able to tour with Kat. Kat: That’s a pretty good one! We worked hard for many years trying to figure out our schedules. At one point when we were working for different companies, we’d kind of catch up at airports and have a cup of coffee together.

How do you cope with the separations? Kat: It’s kind of us. We’ve always had coming and going and being performers that’s the lifestyle. It’s kind of funny, but when we got married I disappeared to China for seven months straight afterwards. Paul: We got married on a Friday, we had a barbecue with the family on the Saturday… Kat: … and drove to Melbourne on the Sunday. I did a show for week there, and on the weekend we flew to Adelaide and you did a show with Oz. Paul: I was in Adelaide for a month and then Kat left for China. Then she came back and I was already on the road with the next tour. So in the first year, I think we saw each other for two months.

Let’s go back to your highlights… Paul: It’s hard to pinpoint a particular moment because each place we go to has certain elements that are quite memorable, especially in Europe performing in old Roman ruins when you have 1,000 people sitting in the stonework. Kat: That was at the Teatro d’Annunzio in Pescara. Paul: It’s an amphitheatre, it’s a beautiful setting, but I can’t really compare that to performing on Broadway. It’s a completely different highlight.

Kat: I love the grand theatres and performing to thousands of people but I also get a lot of enjoyment from what we’re doing now. Reclaimed Pianos is a community show, so there’s stories from the community and we’re in old town halls doing a show with people just siting round the edges. There’s so much joy in that so it’s really hard to pick out one particular show or say, ‘I only like performing this way’. Every opportunity you’re given is amazing… outdoor free events are just as fun as well…

Paul: Reclaimed Pianos is a slightly unique show. It’s a venture that Circa’s doing trying to take work to smaller communities that have a town hall and an old piano and sort of drawing on the history behind that; the dances, the memories around what a piano might bring to people. Early in the process the musician goes to the town and records local people telling their stories and then that gets put into the soundtrack. So we do circus in a little town hall with maybe 80 people sitting around, just under the normal hall lights, nothing fancy. It makes it quite rich… Kat: … and raw; rich and raw.

Paul: Afterwards we all come out and eat Lamingtons together and have cups of tea and chat to the locals. Kat: The musician plays the piano and takes requests and people will come and talk to him and play as well. It’s just beautiful; a wholesome vibe. Paul: It’s completely different feel to some of the other shows but equally enjoyable in that we can connect with people. 

It’s lovely when the audience can meet you afterwards. It really inspires kids. Paul: That’s really relevant to my circus upbringing; the one thing that really sparked this flame to do circus was exactly that. I went to see a circus troupe and got to meet the performers afterwards. Kat: You realise they’re humans. Paul: Yeah… it started a connection and before I knew it it was, ‘I’d really like to come and see the show’. “Here’s a comp ticket, come along.” That in itself was a memorable occasion. I really like going out to chat with the audience because you never really know… it could be one tiny thing you say or one tiny connection you have that could spark something for them.

Do you have any particular ambitions for the future? Kat and Paul: Oh! Hmmm! It changes daily. Paul: For me, having just turned 39 and sort of acknowledging in my own body that there is a certain timeframe within acrobatics where people tend to sort of get too old, or too slightly bruised and damaged. But I don’t feel like I’m anyway near that yet but that’s something that has started to come into my conversations about where can this work take us?

For me Wolfgang is a really good opportunity to take circus more into the theatre side, the comedy, the playfulness around it. We’re definitely not trying to be that kind of kiddy or childish comedy. The work still needs to be rich and authentic but it does allow us to play a little bit more in performance qualities and that’s influencing where I see myself growing a bit more as a performer. Not changing direction necessarily but kind of opening up a little bit more than the heavier ground-based acrobatics. That’s really exciting for me and to have this opportunity from Yaron is really, really… I’m very grateful.

Kat: I’m similar; I love performing. I mean I wanted to be a gymnast when I was younger and then all of a sudden I wanted to be a ballet dancer. Since I was ten, performing has been my goal, so to do that every day is wonderful and acknowledging that and going, ‘Even if I can’t be the physical circus performer I once was, I’ll still look at the opportunities of what I can be as a performer’. As Paul said, it’s looking at the other elements of performing and developing them further and it’s something really exciting to push myself and become a new version of the performer that I am.

Kat and Paul O’Keeffe appear in the Circa production Wolfgang’s Magical Musical Circus at the Barbican Pit in London from 12-22 December 2018.

Picture credits: Kat and Paul’s headshot, Sam Boyd; Andy Phillipson; Chris Herzfeld; Damien Bredberg; Lisa Tomasetti; Dylan Evans

For tickets to Wolfgang’s Magical Musical Circus click here

Twitter: @CircaPresents @BarbicanCentre

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Swedish circus artist Esmeralda Nikolajeff – who comes from Stockholm – knew she wanted to be an acrobat from the age of two. She started circus as a tiny child with Circus Cirkör, and at 14 took part in Monte Carlo’s 20th Première Rampe festival. She went on to train at DOCH School of Dance and Circus in Stockholm and, since graduating in 2014, has appeared all over the world, working mostly in duos or trios and “learning new ways of being thrown and getting caught”.

Esmeralda chats to Liz Arratoon before her appearance in Barely Methodical Troupe’s third show, Shift, which also features Elihú Vázquez and BMT co-founders Charlie Wheeller and Louis Gift. It was commissioned by the Norfolk and Norwich Festival – which co-produced it with DREAM – as part of the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the birth of British circus. Shift has its world premiere at the Spiegeltent in Chapelfield Gardens in Norwich. It runs from 16-27 May 2018.

The Widow Stanton: Is Stockholm your home? Esmeralda Nikolajeff: More or less. I have a home there but I’ve been renting it out for two years, so I’m more or less living on the road. It’s a love/hate relationship… it’s complex… it’s great and it’s nice to not have to pay rent. It allows me to travel more. But little by little I’m getting a bit worn out by it. I’m starting to miss my home and my own things and my own space, but it’s fine. It’s still working out.

Had you seen any circus at two to put the idea in your head? That’s such a good question that my parents also ask themselves. They don’t really know. I guess I must have seen something, like picked something up from somewhere. But it wasn’t like we went to a circus show and then I knew. When I told them I wanted to be ‘aerial acrobat’ they were like: “How does she even know those words? Where did it come from?” No one knows.

Is there any showbusiness in your family? Yes, when I was a kid my dad was doing theatre and my mum was creating and producing music. When I was around seven my dad actually got into circus himself because he got quite inspired by me doing it. Then he was out of work and he got an opportunity to work in this Swedish circus, Cirkus Cirkör, in the offices and teaching kids how to do forward rolls and cartwheels and stuff like that. Then he got into the circus scene and he thought it was way more fun than doing theatre. So he just started to practise and now he’s a knife-thrower and a chainsaw juggler. He’s called Jesper.

Where is your name from? My dad’s father was from Russia. He came to Sweden by train when he was four years old during World War II. He was a child in the middle of the war zone so he was evacuated and went into a foster family in Sweden.

Do you do any other disciplines? I do a bunch of different things. At DOCH my main discipline was duo trapeze, so trapeze flyer is what I do the most. And then lately, the past two years, I’ve been doing a lot of flying in Icarian Games [Risley], basically flipping on people’s feet. As my side discipline I’ve always been an acrobat. I love doing floor acrobatics and movements, and as I’m quite a tiny person I’ve always been a flyer in all kinds of scenarios… banquine and hand to hand and things like that.

Before you went to DOCH, how did you start doing circus? First I went to a circus course in Stockholm at Cirkus Cirkör. I started when I was four years old in this little kids’ circus place. Then when I was around seven I told my dad that it was frustrating for me to just train because I wanted to perform. He was like, “Ooh, OK,” and he found a bunch of other kids who also wanted to perform, and we created a youth circus group. So it was like, me and between 10 and 15 other kids who were the youth circus group of Cirkus Cirkör, for some years. Then we kept on growing as a youth circus. My dad was in charge of it and we were training like two or three times a week, and then we did quite a lot of shows. All the money we pulled in with the shows went to the teachers and the facilities at Cirkör, so on Sundays we had the whole training space to ourselves. For the kids it was free to go to the circus classes but we performed a lot.

I did that from when I was seven to about 15, and then I did Circus Cirkör’s circus high school as well. My trapeze catcher is three years older than me and I was a bit tired of normal school so I really wanted to start the circus university with her. But at most circus universities you need a degree from high school, so I was thinking, ‘Maybe I can do it faster?’. I asked my school if I could just go faster and they were like: “We don’t really know but I guess you can try.” [Laughs] So then I did four years of school in two years, and yeah, I graduated early and started DOCH when I was 17.

With your trapeze partner? Yes, Mira Leonard.

Were you with her at the Première Rampe? Yes, it was the youth version of the Monte Carlo circus festival, which happens a month before the adult one. We didn't win gold, silver or bronze, but we did receive some kind of trophy. I think they gave everyone one as a prize just for taking part. I don't really remember how it went, I was so young [laughs] but it was a very interesting experience; all these Chinese, Russian and Mongolian children, and us! We were amazed by how heavily drilled all those tiny kids were, because we just did circus for the fun of it.

Was it because you were tiny that you became flyer or what made you choose it? Being tiny helped a lot. I was always the smallest and lightest person in my class, so I was just used to climbing on people. But then I was also just this little reckless child. I would stand on the highest furniture and jump off and be like, ‘CATCH ME!’. And my parents would have to run through the apartment and slide on the floor and save me from dying. [Laughs] So I guess I had like the adrenaline-rush-addictive part of me already as a child.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to take up flying? You have to be brave… For sure, you have to be brave but more so you have to be a very trusting person. What I see with a lot of people who aren’t that good at flying is that if someone says: “It’s fine, I’ll catch you,” they don’t believe them. But for me, if someone says that, I trust them to have the good judgment of knowing that they can catch me; maybe not perfectly but so that I don’t injure myself gravely. So [laughs] it’s a lot about just believing in what people say. Hearing: “Yeah, I think this is safe to try,” I go, ‘You think so? OK, then I think so, too’. That’s a very big part of it.

We’ve noticed that DOCH produces really excellent artists; why do you think that is? When I was going to choose circus schools I was really doubting whether I wanted to do DOCH, because in one way I wanted to move aboard and experience a school in a different country. But in the end I chose DOCH because there’s something about the vibe there that is very welcoming; it’s kind of a light, happy vibe that I get from that place, and my coach in trapeze – Christian Vippen Vilppola – was very positive and very encouraging, whereas a lot of coaches… because we auditioned and we got into other schools and other coaches were a bit more Russian style, never say that anything’s good. If someone’s more or less OK, then you know you did it really well. I don’t really believe in that method of learning things, and that’s one thing that really helps at DOCH that in general it’s quite a positive vibe.

Then it has good reputation so the people applying there are already quite good, and the level of the students has to be pretty good before they start. And then we had quite intensive training. We’d have a lot of different ways of doing things and the school is constantly adapting to each year. They don’t have one way of doing things. For example, our class was really into movement and dance, and we had a lot of ideas about different dance teachers and choreographers that we’d like to have as guest teachers. So we students could suggest: “Oh, this person, from this country is really cool, could we maybe have a workshop with them?” The school would be like: “We’ll look into it,” and after that it would happen. Then we’d have a block of two weeks with this teacher, and I think that’s something that’s really special about DOCH that they do listen to their students’ feedback a lot. They constantly try to adapt to the students’ needs. The year below us was more into theatre and stage acting so they had more of that.

We also had a lot of discipline hours, I think two hours a day of our main discipline and then – I don’t remember – some hours a week with our second discipline, and everyone had acrobatics and I, as a flyer, had two hours a week of trampoline for a year or two to practise the different things I do in the air. Also what we did a lot, we had a lot of presentations. Basically we’d have presentations every other Friday, and we’d get different tasks each time, so we learnt that we had to produce material and ideas. Of course, it cannot always become something good if you have to do it every other week and you’re always tired from training all the time. So then it forces us to learn to fail, and it’s OK and that you can learn a lot from failure. I think that’s such an important thing for artists in general, to not be afraid of trying out ideas that could fail. That’s something they really encourage us to do as well; to not always succeed.

What sort of things have you done since graduating? I graduated almost four year ago and since then I’ve been doing so many different things. Like, each project has been quite a new experience, so I’ve done everything from… the year I graduated I was working quite a lot in Sweden at Cirkus Cirkör, with the Christmas show, and then I did a show called Borders with them, which celebrated their 20-year anniversary. But also they thought: “We can’t only celebrate in times like this,” so it was a show about borders and refugees. There were 19 people on stage and it was a mix between actors, circus artists and musicians. It was a sort of WOW project that lasted four months and then it was over.

Then I did a site-specific show on an island in Denmark. It’s an island that was man-made to build ships on, so we were exploring it. We did a bit of acrobatics but there wasn’t much circus; it was a dance choreographer who made the work. It was really interesting and we learnt a lot about how to take in different environments and how to relate to them. It was a promenade show. Then I did a show in Berlin for six months…

At the Chamäleon? Yes exactly. It was called Roots with the Czech company Cirq La Putyka. We played it in Prague maybe 50 times as well. Last year I had more of a year doing my own projects with my friends. We did one show that we performed a bit in Berlin and a bit in Oregon. We were called The Leftover Company. It was something that happened after performing a lot in Berlin and seeing all these leftover people everywhere so we took inspiration from that. We thought how can we make Icarian Games more leftover-y; we created a lot of crash acro, basically, and wobbly acro.

Wobbly is a bit of a trend… Yeah, I feel it has to do with people being a bit tired of being so rigid and perfect. They just want to be a bit more loose. It’s fun because there are so many different ways of doing it. We have a trapeze act where I’m kind of all limp, which we did in Roots, but this crash acro is really more explosive, like, kind of aggressive crashes. [Laughs]  

How did you get involved with Barely Methodical Troupe? I met those guys at the wedding of some friends of ours in Australia. It was Dan and Rhiannon Cave-Walker’s wedding, who were in my year in DOCH. After the wedding we hung out for a bit and were acro-jamming on the beach. Then BMT contacted me and asked if I might be interested in joining their next show. I was like, ‘Yeah!’.

Have you seen their other shows? No, I haven’t but as the circus world is so small, and so many friends of mine have, it seems like I have and I can imagine what they were like. I’d really like to see them. They are very fun to work with, very easy to work with and very encouraging and motivated. In general there’s this positive, fun, playful vibe going around, which, without seeing their shows, I can imagine translates to the stage.

Are you able to you tell us anything about the new show? I won’t say too much. We’ve been inventing new acts and working a lot with elastic bands, Thera-bands, the kind they usually use for rehab. So we have quite a lot of them in the show and in general we’ve been working a lot with elasticity. Throughout this process I actually learnt how to say that word because for me it was a very hard word to say [laughs] so I’m very proud every time I manage it.

Can you pick out some highlights from your career so far? Yes, a lot of things, but I must say the Chamäleon contract in Berlin was a really life-changing experience, also because I got to stay in one city for half a year and have stable work and do 180 shows in a row. That’s a quite insane thing to do. I don’t know if I could it again but I’m very glad I did it. So that was one highlight and then this past year I’ve been doing a show – Knekke Greine – together with my friends in the forest. It’s a show where we encourage people to remember that we have go out into nature and explore the woods even though you live in the city. It’s a very interactive performance and it’s more of a forest/nature guided walk with a lot of crazy interactions happening all around. The creation was just in the woods in Sweden so that’s been really fun.

Esmeralda appears in the world premiere of Barely Methodical Troupe’s Shift at the Spiegeltent in Chapelfield Gardens during the Norfok and Norwich Festival from 16-27 May 2018.

Picture credits: Headshot, Di Robson; Shift, Chris Nash; wobbly trapeze, Einar Kling-Odencrants

For Shift tickets click here

Esmeralda on Facebook and Barely Methodical Troupe’s website

Twitter: @BMTroupe @NNFest

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