No Circus Runaway

“When I was about ten years old I saw a circus show and I said to my mum, 'That's what I want to do,'” says Britannie Portelli, who has formerly represented Australia in Synchronised Swimming at the Commonwealth Games and was in the National Aerobic Gymnastics team, her conviction all the more obvious as she speaks down the line from Western Australia, where she is currently on tour with circus outfit Circa.

“So all through my sporting career I was saying that I wanted to join the circus and with NICA (National Institute of Circus Arts) being in Melbourne, and being that that was where I was from, I knew that it was viable to get a degree in circus arts and to have three years of quality training. Straight after Year 12 I got accepted into the National Institute of Circus Arts in Melbourne and spent three years there training and developing all my different circus skills and developing foundations of all the different circus skills from basic acrobatics to aerials, tumbling and handstands and flexibility and then from there, a week before I graduated, I got a full-time contract with Circa, so I took it and finished NICA on a very big high, moved to Brisbane Christmas night and started training with them in January of 2011. You couldn't have written it any better!”

Portelli is right about that, her childhood dreams of circus life gradually took more definite form and she was steadfast in her desire to see them realised, Circa offered the perfect opportunity.

“I'd seen a few of the clips on YouTube and then they were performing at the Sydney Opera House halfway through my third year at NICA and I thought you know what? I'm just going to fly up. So a few of us actually flew up and saw the show and ended up meeting a couple of people afterwards and from that moment on I just tried to shape as much as I could towards the Circa style and from there I saw another show at the Brisbane Festival in September of that year, and January of the following year  I was working them and I've now performed both of those shows in the past eighteen months, so it's pretty thrilling and just an incredible company to work for.”

The 'Circa style' that Portelli refers to is the company's unique, stripped-back approach to circus performance, one that dispenses with the razzle dazzle to emphasise just how impressive the feats performed are.

“When someone says circus and it comes to mind usually people think of sparkly costumes and really big productions, Circa completely strips that back and we try and find a new way to contact the audience. Whether that's through an emotional thing or whether that's just through pure skill, but we try and show them what the human is able to do, rather than a character or rather than something that is put out there to be superhuman. We strip back all the 'ta-das' in a way, and just inject it with total thrill and delight in places that audiences wouldn't expect it. Through the combination between the music and the lights and the seven acrobats in the show we create something that generally leaves the audience not quite knowing what they've seen but loving it and wanting to see more.”

For all the serendipity in Portelli's circus story it's also clear that none of it would have happened without the hard work, something that her sporting career had her well and truly prepared for.

“From sport to circus, it was definitely the early mornings,” laughs Portelli. “I was able to just get up in the middle of winter and know that this is what you have to do if you want to get somewhere, so knowing that you have to just keep pushing through that pain. With aerobics there's such a combination of strength, flexibility, performance, strange presence, confidence and cardiovascular fitness that translates so well into circus, so that transition for me wasn't too hard and because I always had wanted to do circus I had done a couple of trapeze classes before I got there and a few different acrobatic classes when I was younger so I was just so willing to learn.

“I guess it was the same when coming to Circa because now my skill set has totally grown in such a different way that I've always wanted to know more and be able to do more with my body and so learning all this different style of circus here at Circa has really just opened my mind and opened by body up to what's it's capable of.”

WHAT: Circa
WHERE & WHEN: Tuesday 13 November to Saturday 24, Judith Wright Centre Of Contemporary Arts