The National Circus of Ukraine

This season Kyiv Circus will host troupes from Russia, Kazakhstan, and faraway Kenya, each with an exotic, inventive, at times hazardous repertoire.

THE LOVE OF FLIGHT

Try to picture someone in a 13.5-meter free fall that lasts a second or two. This is something you just have to see, even if the sight of it gives you the shivers, especially if it is the death-defying feat performed by Baku Circus corde volante gymnasts Allakhverdi Israfilov and Galina Golovacheva. Doubtlessly their number tops Baku Circus’s repertoire as the most spectacular and lyrical one. The story is simple: loving and being loved in return. A closer look, however, reveals more than just another circus piece. It has true feelings. And so the aerial gymnast couple’s faultless technique and death-defying feats caused many in the audience to gasp and then dab their eyes with a handkerchief.

Allakhverdi and Galina are husband and wife, and have a three-year-old daughter.

“If I were asked to do this number, in total darkness, with just the ropes in my hands, I’d think twice,” says Allakhverdi, grinning, “you see, the main thing about free fall is your sense of distance. You must timely draw yourself up and spare your shoulders the gravity shock — over 800 kilos, enough to shatter them. An aerial acrobat, especially when about to perform a death-defying feat, has to concentrate, muster his/her physical and mental reserves, and leave room for simple fear, because losing this concentration, even if for an instant, costs dearly. If you have no fear, you tend to get careless. Once I did just that, I enjoyed my flight. It cost me a serious injury and a year of recuperation,” says Allakhverdi — or Alik as his colleagues and friends call him.

He started as a circus performer at the age of two. He was born to a family of aerialists in Baku, and went on tours with his parents across the world. He joined the Young Pioneers in Donetsk [in Soviet times]. Long training sessions allowed him to do his aerial numbers without the mechanic and net, starting by leaping five meters. Now he can jump 13.5 meters, a world circus record distance. Galina comes from a choreographers’ family. Her inborn flexibility helps her work wonders in the circus ring. Thus, she can be lifted to an altitude of 25 meters with her left leg helped by the mechanic and her right one serving as support for Alik’s ascent.

The aerialists do a stunning number called “Vertical Flight,” directed by Nikolai Sarychev. With the spotlights dimmed, their figures sparkling in the ultraviolet light due to the specially designed costumes, looking like Spielberg’s aliens, they defy gravity and make vertical leaps look almost natural.

ANIMAL PERFORMERS

A circus performance without trained animals is unthinkable. Here the trick is not so much the degree of training as that of discerning every animal’s character. A perfect example is the monkey number done by Nadia Krasovskaya and Andrey Tepligin. Niura, the cheerful chimpanzee of the troupe, is the invariable children audience’s delight. She does all the acrobatic stunts with a natural ease, as though playing a game. In fact, she does stunts of her own, like gripping a long steel bar, held on the handler’s head, with her front paws and standing upside down with a big smile, prompting her handlers to add them to the circus repertoire. The troupe includes four monkeys of varying species.

“Professor” Yermakov’s doggies of various breeds can bark mama and do simple arithmetic sitting at classroom desks. They do arithmetic, receive A’s, and leave the children in the audience thrilled and enchanted.

There are also graceful horses, colorful parrots, and... goats. This circus season stars the Russian circus artist Irina Levitskaya, the only person in world circus history to put together a troupe of 20 goats (including eight from Cameroon).

“Although the goat is a widespread domesticated animal, no one actually knows its character. I’ve been training goats for 37 years and I’ve never stopped wondering about the easiness of training them. Believe me, they have stage presence and are clever enough to learn circus numbers. Just to add some zest I make them wear hats and glasses, then they start actually playing their roles on stage. Quite often I let young goats on stage and they quickly adjust to the scenario.

Irina Levitskaya and her husband Gennadiy Spiridonov have been training goats for 15 years. Irina says the main problem is the animals’ fear: “Goats are victims by nature; fear runs in their blood. You can’t hurt their feelings in any way. A harsh word, a threatening gesture, and you can forget the number. I treat my goats as equals. They are so kind-hearted, all they need is your love. They’re very much like children. There is that sad look in their eyes, so when we visit a village to buy a couple of goats, we end up buying all six.”

Levitskaya is a fourth-generation circus artist. Her grandfather, David Levitsky, founded a circus in Zaporizhia and saved the performers by transporting them to the Urals during the Holodomor. Boris Zaitsev, former Kyiv Circus manager, was the first to come up with the goat-training idea. He had herded goats as a boy and goats had helped his family survive the post-WWII famine. Zaitsev told Irina’s father that goats could be used to make an interesting circus number. In 1974, Levitskaya did her first “Trained Goats” number at Baku Circus.

While Kyiv Circus devotees enjoy guest star performances, the national troupe, including Volodymyr Shevchenko and his tigers, is touring Simferopol.