Interview with Toni Smith from Circus Oz, March 16, 1994

 CIRCUS - ARTICLE

Interview with Toni Smith from Circus Oz

Writer: Kate Herbert March 16, 1994

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after March 16, 1994

 

"I'm doing a double head trapeze" says Toni Smith blithely. "Lu balances on his head and I hang off him." Lu is Chinese master acrobat Lu Guong Rong and Smith is describing her work in the Circus Oz show opening in the Melbourne City Square on April Fool's Day.

 

This acrobat is no April Fool. Her circus career began in 1979 at the age of seven as a member of the Flying Fruit Fly Circus in Albury. She performed in their second season and stayed until 1988. She joined the Oz in December '93 just in time for successful seasons at the Sydney Festival and in Hobart and just after its tours to Columbia, Northern Territory and Queensland. Almost in her acrobatic dotage at twenty-two, Smith has had a fifteen-year circus career.

 

According to Smith, most acrobats in Australia begin their careers as adults when they no longer have the requisite flexibility or strength.  Smith believes that early training, as well as harnessing the obvious physical assets of youth, implants positive behavioural habits in the mind. "It's like learning to ride bike." The skills will be automatic.

 

Training of our acrobats is not as rigorous as the Chinese who have visited here to teach. "We are nowhere near as disciplined. It's not in our nature," she quips. "The Chinese start at some ungodly hour in the morning. Their first hand-stand is for thirty minutes. The longest we would do would be four or five minutes." Evidently, the Chinese rather hedonistically break for a nap in the afternoon then continue into the evening.

 

Smith and other local acrobats have learnt a great deal from Lu Guong Rong who came here with the Nanking Acrobats in 1983 to teach in Albury. The visit was a remarkable artistic and cultural experience for our performers, the locals, the Fruit Flies and the Chinese. The Australians learnt something about rigour and the Chinese about laying back.

 

After the Chinese visitors left, our circus training improved considerably. In addition to their skills, the Chinese had brought volumes of equipment. With increased funds, the Fruit Flies could purchase mats and safety equipment which, in this industry, are imperative.

 

The profile of Circus has changed dramatically with the rise of Circus Oz. Its parent group of the 70's, Soapbox Circus, was big on entertainment, music and politics, but light on skills. These days the more radical, political Circus Oz has been superseded by a younger more physically skilful company with members graduating from the Fruit Flies.

 

Circus Oz, after years in an inadequate space in Flemington, has found a new home - an ironic thought for an institution which one imagines lives on the road in tents and caravans. "It's fantastic," Smith effuses over the Port Melbourne building. "It's huge. Really high ceilings so we can rig everything in the one room. Everybody's in the same building," which was evidently impossible in Flemington.

 

Smith prefers Oz to traditional circus like Sonelli’s with whom she toured for 18 months. "They (trad circuses) thrive on spontaneity” which is a characteristic of Australian entertainment. Routines and running order are constantly changing which Smith says keeps things interesting.

 

 "It tends to get a bit tedious after a while, doing the same thing day after day." The Chinese combine both skill and glamour. "They work a lot on their presentation."

 

In addition to the enormous working space, the Bay Street building has a second rehearsal room and props store upstairs with an additional music room and workshop. It is owned by the Department of Defence and you can bet your U-Boats this old Navy Drill Hall has never seen such a peaceful purpose.

 

The company will visit Washington DC in October this year as part of a group of Australian performance groups including the Australian Ballet.

 

We have a new breed of circus performer in Australia now. They are younger, stronger and more flexible, perhaps with less broad theatrical experience but nonetheless skilful. Circus Oz is in the vanguard of the new wave of Physical Performance which is defining Australian companies overseas.

 

Washington will love them. LA did in the 80's.

By Kate Herbert 16 March 1994