Hi everyone and welcome to your next installment of our Dancer’s Diaries. This week we hear from Lea about Cirque Éloize’s time in Southampton at the Mayflower Theatre.
Lea is the beautiful women in the red dress who circles the stage every night in her Cyr Wheel.
Born in Munich in Germany, Léa began her career with gymnastics when she was 5 years old. At the age of 11, she specialized in aerobic gymnastics. She subsequently joined the national team in this discipline and participated in the World Championship in 2010. Léa discovered the circus at the age of 14. Being an independent learner she even designed balancing and juggling acts herself. From 2011 to 2014, she studied at the National Circus School of Montréal specializing in Cyr wheel and duo Cyr wheel. During her studies she had the opportunity to perform at the Montréal Complètement Cirque Festival. She enjoys every moment spent on stage, sort of like a childhood dream coming true every time. Léa masters four languages and loves discovering new cultures and new people.
“We arrived in Southampton on sunday the 8th in the early afternoon. Since we had rehearsals the next two days, we tried to take the afternoon easy. A group of us met for dinner and a beer, but is was a pretty relaxed evening.
The next morning started with rehearsals. 3 artists had left us and 4 new ones arrived. The ones leaving were: Jerome who was replacing the straps and handstand performer Ugo; Nelson who was replacing the hand to hand flyer Reuben; and Sam, his porter, left, because his wife Myriam (the original contortion girl) is going to have their baby in the coming days.
Luckily Ugo one of the original performers, who had been recuperating from an injury of his shoulder for some weeks in Montreal, was able to come back on tour. He arrived with a hand-to-hand duo formed by Nicolas and Charlotte who were going to replace Sam and Reuben. The last new artist was Yann who came to take Sam’s track in the whole show. Yann is one of the original members of the creation of Cirkopolis and therefore knows the show very well.
We did two 6h sessions of training in the following two days where all of the newbies integrated into the show. To the pleasure for everyone the premiere (and the rest of the week’s shows) went very well.
Since there was not too much going on in the city we spent our night doing a “Harry Potter” marathon. Pyjamas and popcorn movie nights!
Lea x
