Sitting in the audience of a circus can be a humbling experience. The performers are only a few feet away from you, but their physical abilities are miles beyond those of the average spectator. That, at least, is the impression you’ll be left with after seeing the curious crew on display in La Soirée at London’s Roundhouse Theatre. Gravity-defying acrobats, pole-dancing strongmen and loose-limbed contortionists (who can dislocate on demand) twist and shimmy through a traditional circus act that has been shot through with steroids. Graciously, the performers decided to show me just how demanding their jobs are by teaching me some of their secrets shortly before the show began.
This was how I found myself suspended metres above the small, spot-lit stage of the Roundhouse, straddling metal bars that were rotating at great speed and emitting to the banks of empty seats beneath me a scream that could only be described as unearthly.
I was being guided by Hugo Desmarais and Katharine Arnold, who had assured me there was no need to be scared. Gripping the contraption with their legs or hands, they perform an elaborate aerial acrobatics routine as it swivels at speed some 30ft above the arena. Wearing jeans and leggings and seeming disarmingly normal in their off-duty mode, they chatted easily about their act as though it was something anybody could do.
Physically superior Hugo Desmarais looks down on the audience. Image: Matilda Temperley
‘The concept is that we’re colleagues sneaking home naughtily for a wild night together, after getting drunk at an office party’, says Katharine. Their illicit encounter occurs in the spinning cage where they move around each other with incredible athletic ability; she wears a sparkling red minidress, he a shirt and dinner jacket which is gradually, seductively, shed to the floor.
Hugo used to work in the cage alone, but since inviting Katharine to join him the act has evolved. The structure they use is unique to their performance, so most people in the audience will have never seen anything like it before. It’s an electrifying spectacle, with the duo conveying the most intense chemistry imaginable.
They look so natural while performing something so difficult, that I ask if they ever make mistakes. My hope is that their response will reassure me that my nauseously ungraceful attempt to emulate them was normal. “I think you poked me once,” says Hugo, as they cast their minds over the months of intense training required to be able to hang by your feet upside down on a rotating piece of metal. It’s clear I should leave it to them; they tell me it would take two years of hard graft for a novice like me to reach their level.
Another of La Soirée’s long-term performers is Ukranian Yulia Pykhtina, a woman who turns the humble hula hoop into an instrument of sultry mystery. She commands a series of giant hoops simultaneously, looping them round her arms, legs and the tips of her toes in an impossibly well-coordinated act.
“Just start with swinging the hoop around your knees,” she tells me encouragingly. I try, and fail. I have more success with the standard round-the-waist loop, but this is child’s play for Yulia. Continuing to smile and chat, she casually swings four hoops in alternating directions around her arms, a skill that she says took three months to perfect.
But for the performers, three months is nothing really. Training to reach their level of physical dexterity is followed by years of training to maintain it. La Soirée’s other cast members include ‘The English Gents’ who use their hands to spiral up lampposts while their bodies remain completely rigid and parallel to the ground, and Captain Frodo, who contorts his whole body through a tennis racket.
It’s gripping stuff, and with the audience enveloping the circular stage there’s no hiding from any mistakes. So they just don’t make them. I dropped one of the hoops off the side of the stage - as it clattered to the floor Yulia seemed pained by the unfamiliar sound. The pressure to perform perfectly could be tiring, she admitted, but not a single audience member watching the elegant acrobat sending her hoops into ecstatic spins later would have guessed it.
Yulia performs her routine.
My small attempts to experience what she, Hugo and Katharine can do brings home the extent of their dedication to their craft. They work without safety nets and harnesses so the performers have to know they can trust their bodies 100 per cent to stay safe.
We don’t have much time to discuss the potential impact of a sudden slip or loosened grip as the acts have to rush off to prepare for that night’s show. Once they leave I’m left inside the arena waiting for the doors to open. From somewhere offstage I smell a trace of warm, buttery popcorn, the technicians are just putting the final touches to the lights, and the circus music has started up. The great mechanism that brings us an insight into the strange realm of the circus is oiling its engines as a collection of incomparable individuals prepare to take the stage.