A circus troupe at the Exhibition Centre during the Summer Festival
is offering children, adults a chance to be circus performers
By Umer Nangiana
The ring only lifts them. It does not hold them up there. Free to float, they form hard-to-imagine postures that make them astronauts travelling space, not airborne acrobats.
Making possible the seemingly impossible, all with their speed and accuracy, is the art with which these circus performers generate awe in their audience. Hearts speed up and slow down with every single move they make.
They are masters of their art, whether up there in the rings or down on the floor teaching children keen to learn their techniques. Yes, the Circus School is here this summer to take you on a journey of wonders.
Found at the Exhibition Centre during the Summer Festival organised by Qatar Tourism Authority, the circus acrobats will let you have a taste of the otherwise dangerous-looking stunts allowing you to learn in the safety of professional hands.
“Circus is obviously very good for confidence, strength, balance and co-ordination. People experience new activities and gain new interests,” said Yannis Michalandos, the Director and the Owner of the JumpZone Academy of circus performers while speaking to Community about the idea of the Circus School.
“All the skills and activities that we have here have been specially adapted to be able to allow children to [perform],” he said.
The group of gymnasts in the troupe that is part of the school teach children ground-based elements like hand-balance, acrobatics, mini-trampoline, juggling through to aerial elements such as aerial rings, static and flying trapeze. They have a few other surprises in store as well.
Besides enthralling the audiences with their performances, the circus performers hold training sessions for anyone wanting to learn the techniques. Michalandos said they have a variety of elements and different sessions.
“We have open sessions where we have something like the flying trapezes and anyone can come along and have a swing and learn in one go how to fly or they can join a 90-minute session. [To teach] circus elements, generally we hold 15 to 30-minute sessions,” said the academy owner.
He said the aspiring students of circus are given courses in basic acrobatics. They get a chance to go pup in the silks or the rings depending on their ability. “We set levels of difficulty that a child can achieve so that they are constantly faced with more challenges, but [designed so that] they learn and develop the necessary skills,” said Michalandos.
He added that they are not going into in-depth training at the Summer School courses. He likened the approach to taking talents at various levels and giving them a chance to be a part of the experience.
The master acrobat said they intend to take a lot of children and create a show with them. “So it is their chance to come and join the circus,” he added.
He said there is no age restriction and they intend to feature everyone. He added they already have children aged as young as 3-4 years and adults signed up for the circus.
The show featuring the children, he said, was still to be confirmed and will be planned once a few “stars” joint the show. After training, they will make it a weekly show on Thursdays or Fridays, he said.
Michalandos said the response from Doha has been “phenomenal” so far. “Initially people thought that it was just a performance that they could watch and the moment they realised they could join us [they signed up in large numbers]; we have too many children now,” he said. For now, they are limiting class sizes to 30, but that may change depending on the demand.
The group of performers is made up of acrobats from Poland, Russia and in the Ukraine, where Michalandos operates the academies, besides a number of Brazilian and French gymnasts who are performing on flying trapeze.
These artists have performed all around the world while some of them have been to Doha before when they came to perform at the Asian Games and the opening of Aspire Academy in 2005.