Net Rescue

Ever wonder what happens when there's a circus accident in the circus? The following video demonstrates (if not a little over dramatically) how a net rescue is executed by Cirque du Soeil.

New Records!

Is there anything more satisfying that breaking a record? That all depends on the record, I suppose.

We've been  breaking all kinds of records in the past few days, mostly of the heat related variety. Although I also broke my German wheel shoe lace record, the previous record being six uses before the damn thing broke. The new record being the very first use. Yippee!

But back to the heat records...

For a long time, the hottest the tent had been for a performance was 33°C. We broke that with 34°C only to break that record the following day with 35°C. The hot hot heat has also created a new record for consecutive performances in a tent above 30°C. We're at five in a row and counting! Even the night shows offered no relief. The temperature only dropped to 31°C.

Needless to say, we're all pretty miserable at the moment. Bring on the mountains! Bring on the fall!

Little Old Ladies

I love little old ladies. Love ‘em. The vast majority of the time, if there’s a member of the public that is incredibly generous and invigorating with the energy they give, it’s a little old lady.

Lately, there have been some pretty spectacular elderly members of the audience. The woman in the polk-a-dot blouse, the super generous clapper, the happy man in the wheelchair... Once, when the opportunity presented itself, I found the courage to go up to one of these gems of the public and thanked them for their generosity and enthusiasm. Nothing makes getting through your act easier than having a shining beacon of a face beaming at you. When it’s stinking hot, or you really just didn’t feel like going on stage that day, a member of the audience like that just carries you. And on those rare occasions where you can make your appreciation known, well that just goes straight to the heart.

The other night, we had two little old ladies sitting in the front row on the right. They were very close to my trapeze and after my first drop, I literally saw them jump in their seats and clutch their chests. I smiled at the sight of it and knew they would be wonderful.

When it came to my wheel act, they did not disappoint. And a good thing too as my act got off to quite the rocky start. But they had the most luminous smiles and had their hands clasped in front of them right below their chins, completely enthralled.

At the end of my act I always look centre, left right, then back to centre and whisper a little thank you to the crowd. But that night was centre, left, right, the two little old ladies for a special thank you just to them. They nodded back and whispered something of their own, and I swear, I floated off that stage.

Fashion, Faut Pas

When you're on a tour in the circus, a rhythm sets in and things can sometimes get to be a little monotonous. But every so often, an exciting side gig or special event comes along and shakes things up a bit. I was lucky enough to be chosen for just such a special event when I was asked if I wouldn't mind being part of a photo shoot for one of Switzerland's most widely circulated magazines!

At first, I was really excited. I was the only one in the troupe who would be featured in the shoot, and they were even flying in a model from New York for one day only, just for one shoot at our little circus! I would be in my wheel in full costume and make-up and I was told that as a main feature in the magazine, the photo would take up at least a quarter of the page, maybe more.

But my excitement quickly turned into some serious feelings of insecurity.

The model was stunning. She was exactly what you would imagine if someone told you to picture a fashion model in your head. Tall, slender, blonde, cheekbones to die for... and when the camera started clicking, she easily maneuvered from one sultry pose to the next with barely a second in between positions.

Me? Well, at first they wanted me upside down. But then they decided I was "so cute" that I could stand upright behind the model. Yipee... where she is tall, I am quite short. Where she is slender, I am muscular, almost boxy by comparison. I swear, in the photos I saw afterward, I looked like a squat little dwarf...

Moreover, no one told me what to do or where I should look. So sometimes I looked at the model, sometimes the camera. I had a very limited range of movement because I was standing in the wheel and any shift in weight would have caused it to roll out of the position desired for the shot. I had no idea why I was even there.

In the photos I saw afterward, I mostly look like I hate the model and maybe want to murder her. In the ones that I thought I looked good, the model was typically shifting from one pose to another. In the ones where she looked good, I looked like I was going to do her bodily harm.

When I pointed this out to the photographer, he insisted I just looked proud. I'm not so sure about that. Fortunately, he said he could just take her from one photo and me from another to make one super photo. I really hope he does.

The entire thing left me feeling terribly self-conscious and unattractive. I know that people have different standards of beauty, and many people at the circus reassured me that they like the way I look way more than the model looked, but my self-worth seemed to have decreased considerably from when I got up in the morning.

One thing I really like about circus is that very often it shows women of many different body types. They range from the petite and fit hand-to-hand flyer, the strong and slender aerialist, the muscular firecracker acrobat, and everything in between. Circus showcases every kind of woman, for the most part*, healthy and strong, each and every one of them beautiful.

I know this to be true. But when all was said and done, I certainly didn't feel that way. And the blow was that much harder as it came at me from inside my own home. The entire thing shook me in ways that I can't express. They were made all the more confusing by events that would occur the following evening...



* Like many fields (or just plain life) where the body is subject public scrutiny, eating disorders lurk. Luckily, I haven't encountered it much in my career. But that is not a subject I wish to address at this time.

From Russia with Love

One night after a show, a man came up to me speaking a language I didn’t understand. Seeing as my German is pretty weak, this is not surprising. Only this man wasn’t speaking German, he was speaking Russian.

Naturally, the first thing he asked me was if I was Russian.

I swear, they always know… “Niet Ruski, my family… Ukrainski.”

After a nod of understanding he took my both my hands in his and kissed them. Then he kissed his own hands in a gesture that is universally understood to mean “magnificent”. He went on trying to express a few more things but then simply settled on taking my hands again, offering a small bow, and then kissing them one last time.

Needless to say, I was a little overwhelmed. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone bow to me and kiss my hands before.

I guess he liked my act.

EXCUSE ME?!

While performing, it's really annoying and distracting to have cameras going off in front of you. Flashes can be dangerous, and that little red light is just plain aggravating. My circus is very anti-photography which has really rubbed off on me and made me far more protective, although I suppose that a photo taken on someone's phone probably shouldn't worry me. Even still, when I see cameras going off in the public, I immediately call up to the booth and tell them to go kick some ass.

Then, of course, there's the far more sinister act of filming...

We were performing a matinee with a relatively small crowd. The seats directly on the ring curb were all but empty. All but one. There was one man in a white t-shirt with no one sitting on either side of him. This alone would have made him stand out, but the fact that he spent my entire act pointing his phone at me kind of made the alarm bells sound.

You can bet I gave him dirty looks. I'm sure they didn't register with him, though they made me feel a little better in the moment. I was in a rage when I got off stage. What possible reason could a person have to film an entire act? I immediately thought of this.

One of my cast mates tried to reassure me that he was probably just filming it so he could show his family later that evening, but that seemed unlikely. I didn't have much time to talk about it though. I was working concessions that intermission and had only a few minutes to get ready.

I arrived in the buffet tent and began to share my story of the evil act filmer when the man in question came speeding out of the main tent. Not sure what to do, I somehow found the courage to confront him.

I asked him why he filmed my act. There was some language issues but then a colleague to the rescue and there was no more beating around the bush. The words that then came out of his mouth were like a smack in the face and left me too numb to move.

"I work for Circus Nock. I'm filming it for work."

EXCUSE ME?!

YOU WERE FILMING IT FOR WORK?!?

My colleague made sure the video of my act, as well as the number of other videos he had taken of our show, was deleted from his phone.

I couldn't, and still can't, believe it. When I think about it now, I still feel like the only thing I can do is shake my head in disbelief and slow burning fury.

A bunch of us ended up going to see the show at Nock that very night and, to be fair, I don't think I had very much to worry about. But that's still pretty unacceptable behaviour and seeing as act theft is a very real thing, you can't really blame an artist for being protective of their years of work and research.

In the end, I had the morally questionable satisfaction of seeing my would-be thief shovel camel poop during their show. Petty though that may be, it made me feel better.

Weather Forecast

Approximate temperature inside of a circus tent in the middle of summer?

A million billion degrees.

Ugh.