One rung at a time for veteran circus performer

GILBERT WONG meets a circus performer who has spent years mastering his balancing act.

Daniel Cyr has every reason to believe in fate. The performer for Cirque Eloize spends much of his time on stage balanced on a ladder.

"When I was little," he says, in his French Canadian-accented English, "my mother told me about how my grandfather could take his old wooden ladder and climb up it [while it was unsupported]."

The young Cyr tried to master the trick but always failed. So when he was accepted into the Montreal circus school and saw, on his first day, an acrobat doing handstands while balancing on a ladder, Cyr knew that he had found another home.

"From there I stick to the ladder. It was a funny thing. From where I come from nobody barely knows what the circus is."

Where Cyr hails from is also home for the founders of the small human-centred circus. Cyr and seven others from the small island of Magdalen, east of Montreal, formed the troupe to show their friends and family what they were on about after they graduated from the Montreal circus school.

"We were just trying to have fun and make a living out of what we do and that's how we created the work."

Their name came from the island's dialect of French. Eloize is how the islanders refer to the phenomenon they call "heat lightning," lightning that crashes spontaneously in humid conditions without accompanying rain.

They saw the phrase as symbolic of what they aimed to do, jolt the usual conventions of theatre with circus skills.

That first tour of Magdalen took place in 1991. By 1993, they realised they had a viable production after they received standing ovations in Philadelphia.

They have since proved themselves a hit at the Edinburgh Festival and have the effusive praise from three continents to show for the success of their production Excentricus.

The subject Cyr is less keen to dwell on is the other "cirque" that has loomed large this year - Cirque du Soleil. He says there is no link at all between the two productions, though the Eloize troupe of 14 performers does include a few veterans of their bigger French Canadian cousin.

Certainly the circus tradition is similar. There are no animals and both productions blend theatre and circus.

Like Soleil, Eloize's performers inhabit characters who interact with each other in a loose and elliptical narrative.

Cyr finally articulates the difference, "Eloize is a more intimate experience. We perform in theatres, close to our audience who remain in front." It's easy to imagine a gallic shrug.

He has no grand philosophic objection to the use of animals to entertain.

"I'm not opposed to animals in circus, it's part of a tradition and for me it comes down to how well the animals are treated. If they are not well treated, then the circus should not use them. It is just that our tradition, French Canadian, does not use animals."

Cyr, 34, was a welder when he tried out for circus school. He had been a good athlete and gymnast at school and was growing tired of the dirty and unhealthy work. He auditioned and gained entry. Nor does this veteran performer have too many romantic notions about the circus.

"A hard trick might take you five years to learn. Then you arrive in front of the audience and there's no reaction. This happens ... it happens a lot."

His own ladder act took years to master. "It takes me three years, five hours a day, five days a week, for five minutes on stage. That's basically what the circus is."

* Cirque Eloize performs at the Aotea Centre from Friday April 6 to April 11.