High learning has demands

By ROSALEEN MACBRAYNE

A troupe of Australian teenagers with the Flying Fruit Fly Circus adeptly juggle performances with schoolwork.

The Fruities, as they are affectionately called, belong to a full-time school-circus where they mix academic education with learning the flying trapeze, tightrope walking, pole-climbing and other agile feats.

Six of the 19 performers, in New Zealand for the Tauranga Arts Festival, are Year 12 students who have to fit in their state higher school certificate examinations this week with daily shows.

Even their appearance in The Gift, which runs until tomorrow at Tauranga's Queen Elizabeth Youth Centre, involves school.

An exuberant blend of circus, dance, theatre and fun, the performance is based on a student's first day at school. He soon catches on when his energetic and mischievous classmates fly through the air, vault off desks and turn the playground into a fantastical big top.

The cleverly choreographed chaos, accompanied by funky music, premiered last year at New York's New Victory Theatre.

Ryan Hicks, who plays the new boy, Daniel, dreamed of joining the circus from an early age.

The gymnastics-mad youngster set about making it happen, spending every Saturday morning for two years learning to juggle, tumble, fly and clown around.

His hard work paid off when he was selected for the Fruities last year - and took part in the performance of Fusion at the opening of last year's Sydney Olympics.

With an older brother who is "into basketball and stuff" and an athletic younger sister, Ryan lives at home and goes to the Flying Fruit Fly Circus school at Albury-Wodonga, on the Murray River on the border of New South Wales and Victoria.

The 86-member circus, aged between 10 and 18, tour as selected, one year within Australia, the next overseas.

It's a difficult and often scary occupation.

"You need to believe that you can do it," said Ryan, who is small for his 14 years but, like the other performers, has a strong "can-do" attitude.

He is regularly apprehensive at trying new stunts but does them anyway and finds the fear disappears.

"I think, 'Wow, I love it. I can't believe I did that'. You have to stretch your limits."

Ryan is unsure of his future but enjoying the present, "having fun doing weird things".

Artistic director Kim Walker, a former principal dancer with the Sydney Dance company, says some Fruities go on to other areas of theatre, while others end up in more regular professions.

The circus is not just about creating elite performers, he says. It is about boys and girls working together doing extraordinary things and learning to rely on and trust each other.

And the title? Formed 22 years ago, the circus got its name from its location - where anyone crossing the Victoria state border had to be screened for fruit fly.