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 'It's so much fun at circus camp' August 7, 2003 By Lois Legge / Features Writer Halifax Herald Kids get to hone trapeze skills and more COME fly with me - let's fly, let's fly away, the music beckons from the boom box. But the teenagers - swinging, flipping or gliding in the air - need little encouragement. Pulled along by ropes or propelled by their own energy, they sway through the air with ease. Bodies dangle from a flying trapeze, shinny up aerial curtains, or curl around the cerceau, a circle-shaped structure sometimes called an aerial hoop, which is suspended from the ceiling. Others on the ground balance plastic plates on a stick, walk on stilts or manoeuvre so-called devil sticks, which are used to balance a baton-like instrument. For many, this is a dream come true: they get to run off to the circus while still living at home. In this case the big tent is actually a small gymnasium at Halifax's Shambhala Middle School, the rented home of Atlantic Cirque, which owner Anais Guimond bills as Atlantic Canada's first and only school of circus arts. The gymnast-turned-circus performer trained at the famous Cirque du Soleil studios in Las Vegas for a year and has performed circus feats in more then 700 cabaret shows in Upper Canada. She owned a circus school in Quebec before coming to Halifax, after a stint co-hosting TSN's Caribbean Workout. The Quebec City native met her boyfriend, cameraman Patrick Doyle, on the show, and came to visit him for a summer in Halifax. She says she fell in love with the city and stayed. Halifax's annual buskers festival spurred her to open a school here. "I thought, wait a sec, people come from all over Canada to see the buskers fest, the buskers festival has been here for a long, long time, the busker fest has circus performers (but) nobody is local, except for a couple of jugglers. How come there's no school?" Guimond was hoping for an initial 48 students, or four groups of 12, when she opened the school last September. But five weeks later, 75 eager participants had signed up. To date, she says, about 250 people have taken the 12-week sessions in fall and spring or signed up for the one-week summer camps (the remaining two camps are Aug. 11-15 and Aug. 18-22). It's "exhilarating," says camp student Jennifer VanSickle, 14, of Dartmouth, after swinging, hanging upside down and stretching her legs into a Y on the cerceau. Jennifer was the first student to sign up for the school last year after seeing a newspaper advertisement. She keeps coming back for fun and to improve her skills, even if some of her friends like to joke. "They call me a carny," she says with a laugh. Hardly. The kids here - ages range from 7-17 with the younger children in a separate group - wouldn't dream of taking it that easy. "It's quite fun but it's really like hard to get the hang of it," says nine-year-old Julia Chapman of Halifax, on her second day at the school. "At first I couldn't do anything and the teacher showed me some stuff and I learned how to do like different things on the trapeze, I learned how to do the devil sticks." Julia offers to demonstrate the "bug" - a move on the stationary trapeze in which she hangs upside down and contorts her body to look like, well, a bug. "It's really fun and it works on strength and flexibility and it works on creativity also," notes 14-year-old Kerry Lawrence, who's just finished flying high on the flying trapeze. The school's flexible, too, says Guimond, stressing kids don't need a gymnastics background to attend and are never pressured to do something they don't like. "A little boy comes here and doesn't want to do trapeze, he's not going to do trapeze. . . . Why force them to do something they don't like? It's recreation anyway. Parents are paying for something that they want their kids to enjoy 100 per cent, not 50 per cent." The school charges $225 plus tax per camp or $252 plus tax for the 12-week sessions, which included an adult class during its first year. Another adult session is planned for the fall. No matter their age, says Guimond, participants don't have to worry about being the best or falling behind. "There's no competition whatsoever, none. Everybody is doing their own thing. "If you can't do trapeze and you don't like it and you're not forced to do it, nobody's going to know. You can be the best circus performer doing stuff on the floor and never go up and nobody's going to know. Everybody has respect for everybody here and that's what parents like. We never do line up, everybody doing the same thing." Some students, though, do get to show off their skills. Recently they performed at the Nova Scotia International Tattoo and the Halifax Jazz Festival. Emily Faulkner, 11, isn't quite ready for that yet. But on just her second day at camp, the Halifax girl has already tried out the cerceau and flying trapeze. "It's the best camp I've ever been to," she gushes. "It's so much fun."
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