Earning a crust at the circus

A performer from Cirque du Soleil's Dralion. Photo / Supplied

Uuve and Hampus Jansson (Sweden)
AERIAL PAS DE DEUX

As they swing and sway delicately, wrapped in silk tissue, this brother and sister team are the most poignant act in Dralion's colourful line up.

They play lovers on stage, which they admit is a bit weird, but the pair have each other to thank for their circus careers.

Uuve was the first to embark on a big top dream, when she was 16, enlisting at a local circus school in Stockholm. She had never done gymnastics or acrobats but thought it might be a bit of fun.

"I tried it and fell in love with it. I decided when I started to train that I wanted to become professional."

Her older brother went to work at the school as a cleaner and began watching the other performers. Soon, he too decided he wanted to become a circus performer.

"We decided to go to Montreal together and apply for circus school there," explains Uuve, who never planned to work with her brother on stage.

"[Cirque du Soleil] needed a guy and they asked my brother. They knew he had a sister so they asked me to join. We had never worked together before but it's good. We're far away from the rest of the world but we still have a little bit of family with us so it's nice."

Neither performer specialises in aerial tissue - Uuve trained as a swinging trapeze artist and Hampus in aerial straps - but the chance to join Cirque was worth retraining for. Even if it does mean playing star-crossed lovers.

"At first it was weird but at the same time, we are performers. When we put on our makeup and our costume and we touch the stage, we forget that we are brother and sister and do what we've been told. We're artists on the stage."

Billy Chang (Taiwan)
YAO (FIRE)

Billy Chang first got the call to join Cirque du Soleil in 2005 but the classically trained dancer was still at university.

A year later, he received another call from Cirque, to join the show Zaia. Again, he said no as he was in the army, performing his military service in Taiwan.

After a third phone call, he finally said yes and joined the Dralion troupe in Australia last December.

"I was so surprised because I don't know any circus tricks. I'm just a dancer."

With martial arts and classical and contemporary dance training, Billy filled a vital role in the show, as one of the four elements - fire.

"I'm really proud of being a part of Dralion because our senior artistic director, Michael Smith, he told me they were looking for me for a long time.

"My training in Chinese dance and Tai Chi is really mixed. I have ballet and Tai Chi, I have contemporary dance and King Fu. I am the Dralion."

Billy had never considered joining the circus as a dancer and found his way into Cirque by mistake.

"I saw the notice on the board in my university. I didn't know it was for Cirque du Soleil. Even during the audition, I just thought it was an audition for a dance company."

But now he is here, he wouldn't change it for the world.

"Cirque du Soleil is a dream factory. They make everything impossible look possible."

Hayden Spencer (Australia)
CLOWN

The average Cirque performer spends six months training in Montreal before they join a troupe on tour. Hayden Spencer spent 11 days. In Canberra.

The Australian performer joined Dralion eight months ago, as one of the troupe's four resident clowns.

"The person who was playing my role went on leave and I was very fortunate, because of the remoteness of Australia and New Zealand, they would have had to ship someone over and it takes six months by cargo," he quips.

With a background in street theatre, improvisation and stage combat, Hayden had all the necessary skills to become a clown - he just didn't realise it.

"As an actor, you don't really make the link. But the link was made by a colleague of mine, who was a theatre director, who said 'man, you'd be perfect for this'.

"I think the term clown is actually the sum total of my parts in a way. When I was a theatre practitioner, I'd either play the killer or the clown. Or the killer clown," he giggles.

Oksana Pochynok (Ukraine)
TRAMPOLINE

Oksana Pochynok grew up jumping. For 20 years, she jumped every day, becoming one of the world's leading trampolinists - winning the 2001 World Championship and host of other titles.

Competition was her life and the idea of joining the circus was beyond ridiculous.

"I would never imagine myself to be an artist," she says, sitting in the warm up tent behind Cirque's signature Grand Chapiteau. When Cirque du Soleil invited her to join its new trampoline routine, she wasn't interested.

"One day I woke up and in my head I go, 'whatever, let's try it.' One day I will need to stop with the competition so let's do it now."

That was nearly five years ago, and now Oksana leads the team of champion trampolinists who defy gravity each night to walk up walls and bounce metres into the air in Dralion's breath-taking trampo act.

"It's completely different [to competitive trampolining]. To compete, you have some rules. All the time you are under stress and know you are not able to make a mistake. If you make a mistake, you are not going to another competition.

"Here, you know anything can happen. We are human, we are able to make a mistake. We are able to recover."

Jumping off a two-storey rig and catapulting between trampolines is also more dangerous than traditional trampolining, but Oksana isn't fazed by it.

"Personally, I am not getting nervous. I have fun. For sure, you know it's dangerous. Especially when there are a lot of new people coming into the trampoline. But to go on stage, to perform, I am not nervous."