“I work with another woman and I do all the throwing her around and she stands on my head and on my shoulders and does handstands on me,” Elena Kirschbaum says matter-of-factly about her full time job. When growing up in Canberra, her parents would often take her to see the circus and she has grown up to literally, run away and join one herself.
She started training 12 years ago, which the 27-year-old says is fairly late compared to a lot of other physical performers, but she’s now performing acts you’ll rarely see other women do. “I’m kind of a circus strong woman, stunt woman,” she says of her form of acrobatics, known as adagio. Adagio is performed in pairs and involves acrobalance poses and movements, with one (the ‘base’) remaining in contact with the floor, while the other (the ‘flier’) balances on them.
“I really love being strong and doing things that people don’t expect to see from a woman, so that’s one of the really exciting things about our show: there really aren’t female duos doing the things my partner and I do, the high level, hand to hand acrobatics that you see a handful of duos doing all over the world but there’s almost none of us who are actually pairs of women. There’s only a couple around the world. That’s something that really excites me, to do something a bit different that people don’t really expect,” she says of working with partner Amy Nightingale-Olsen.
The pair are two of the six performers who will feature in the circus-cabaret show Papillon. The five night season, being held at the Wonderland Spiegeltent in the Docklands, straddles both the Melbourne Fringe Festival and the Docklands Arts Laughs & Blues Festival and marks its world premiere. Acrobat Kirschbaum, who along with clown Idris Stanton, are also the co-Creative Producers of Papillon, and plan to tour the show to international arts festivals and the Spiegel circuit for the next six months. “With the Wonderland Spiegeltent in the Docklands, we knew we had found the perfect place for a premiere, in a city that is close to our hearts, and our spiritual artistic home,” says Kirschbaum.
Filling out the cast of Papillon are Joshua Phillips, Claire Andrews and Vincent van Berkel. The show title in French means butterfly. “One of the driving forces behind the show is it’s about transitions and all sorts of transitions, so as simple as doing quick changes of costumes, or changes of character or emotion throughout the act. So it’s a circus cabaret show, primarily circus with an element of music and singing,” says Kirschbaum.
She says the aesthetic of the show, costuming in particular, will pay homage to their influences, primarily the “glamour age of live entertainment” of the ’20s and ‘30s when the touring vaudeville circuit flourished. “That was the golden age of carnival and variety entertainment, that was when people came out in droves and that was the most popular form of entertainment. So we love all those elements that really helped shaped the world that we live in now in terms of variety and circus but it is a contemporary show,” she says. To that end, the show will feature acrobatic stunts, comedy acts, soulful melodies and a memorable finale. But they’re also hoping to make a deeper connection with the audience as well.
“It’s made to be really entertaining the whole way through but also with some really touching emotional moments within the show, which I think circus is so great for because circus is pushing human bodies to the absolute limit of what they can do,” she elaborates. “It’s doing things that ordinary people can’t do with their bodies, so the tension and spectacle you can put into an act through just the tricks and the stunts that circus performers are doing, then layered with beautiful music and lighting. We’ve worked really hard to have those production values on it to create a really immersive experience that will hopefully touch people at the same time as being entertaining.”
BY JOANNE BROOKFIELD
Venue: Wonderland Spiegeltent, 120 Pearl River Rd, Docklands
Dates: October 1 – 5
Times: 7pm
Tickets: $18 – $25 from the Fringe.
