Meet the Australian’s who ran away and joined Cirque du Soleil
In advance of the Australian premiere of their breathtaking new show in Melbourne this month, a group of Australian Cirque du Soleil performers and backstage crew reflect on their dreams of being part of the world’s biggest circus.
The sun rises, a new day dawns, and a running woman begins to spread her wings. This is the opening scene of Luzia, Cirque du Soleil’s latest awe-inspiring production, a performance dedicated to visions of a fantastical Mexico.
And that running woman, who takes flight across the stage with a pair of gauzy monarch butterfly wings measuring six metres long, alongside a towering metallic prop horse, is Helena Merten, a performer from the Gold Coast, who ran away from home and joined the circus in 2017.
“I always dreamt about being in Cirque du Soleil,” shares Merten, backstage at the big top in Seoul, South Korea, where Luzia has been stationed for a pit stop en route to its Australian premiere in Melbourne this month. (Afterwards, Luzia will travel the country for the rest of the year, venturing to Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney.) “I saw my first show when I was seven years old in Brisbane,” Merten continues.
As a child, she had a passion for gymnastics, and when she finished school, decided to pursue her dream. “I didn’t know what I wanted to study, but I thought I would go for this,” she muses. “Here I am! I still don’t know what I want to study and I am loving every moment.”
Merten is one of two Australian performers in Luzia; she is joined by the hoop diver Nelson Smyles. (And yes, his friends have made every possible joke about his last name. “Especially because I’m also the understudy for the clown in the show,” he laughs. “Very fitting.”) Smyles also joined Cirque du Soleil in 2017, which has seen him travel across the US and Canada and through Europe to Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Austria and Germany.
Bringing Luzia to Australia, though, carries special resonance. “I’m really, really excited,” he admits. Smyles, who hails from Port Macquarie, studied gymnastics and parkour before training in hoop diving and acrobatics at Melbourne’s National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA). “It will be awesome for the coaches who coached me at NICA to see what I’m up to, for my grandma to come and see it finally,” he shares. “’Cos it’s what took me away [from Australia], so to bring it home is kind of surreal.”
Cirque du Soleil began with a troupe of just 20 street performers in 1984, and four decades later is the most famous circus production in the world. And Cirque du Soleil is truly a global company: Luzia’s 120 members hail from 26 different countries, including Australia. Alongside Merten and Smyles are crew including Ethan Westland from Tasmania, a plumber by trade who is now assistant head of aquatics – he’s the man who makes Luzia’s magical rain curtain possible – and Jacob Harding, from Perth, who joined Cirque du Soleil not long after he completed his apprenticeship as an electrician and now looks after the power for the entire production.
On the site operations team is Belinda Davidson, who swapped Brisbane for the travelling circus in 2017 and will never tire of working in such a dynamic industry. “The pinch-me moment happens every premiere,” she says. “Every time you watch the show, you take that step back and go, ‘This is why we’re here.’”
There’s also Daniel Fulloon, head of carpentry and props and his team member Gina Bianco. Fulloon hails from Toowoomba; he took a gap year after leaving school and ended up working for Cirque. That was in 2010. “I think I’m still on my gap year,” he admits. Fulloon and Bianco, who just celebrated her first anniversary with the company, are responsible for Luzia’s formidable props department, featuring several large puppets including the opening horse. Bianco remembers seeing Luzia at London’s Royal Albert Hall and watching the showstopping prop make its debut. “I rode horses for 10 years,” Bianco says, “I saw the horse and I was like, ‘I want to work on props in this
show.’ Somehow it manifested.”
For the Australians working on Luzia, no two Cirque du Soleil days are the same. For Merten, there’s endless training: she does up to three hours a day solo, along with the mandatory full company routines that take place on stage. “And doing the show so often helps,” she adds. “We’re doing eight to 10 shows a week, so we stay in shape pretty well because of that.”
For Bianco, it might involve troubleshooting a broken prop. Once, she shares, she had 40 minutes to fix a problem inside the horse. “It is challenging, the days can be long, and the work can be a lot, but we always get it done because the place is so supportive.”
For the Australians spending their lives on this travelling circus, being able to share their work with those back home this year, the first time Cirque du Soleil has ventured to the country since the pandemic, is a gift. “You tell your friends and family what you do, but they just have no idea,” jokes Westland. “It would mean the world to me for my friends and family to see the show,” adds Harding. But, as Merten explains, Cirque du Soleil is also a “big family” for its members. “Coming from a small beach town in Australia, I didn’t fit in, and it’s all like-minded people [on Luzia] and it’s very special,” shares Smyles. As Bianco puts it: “To be able to come to a place where we find people that are like us, and we all just get along … I’ve found my people.”
Cirque du Soleil’s Luzia premieres in Melbourne on March 24 before touring Australia for the rest of the year.
This article appeared in the March issue of Vogue Australia, on sale now.
