AS A youngster, Emma Serjeant was an elite gymnast, but freely admits that after her family moved from England to Australia, she started going off the rails. What saved her was running away to join the circus.
"I'd been teaching a circus performer to tumble at a gym club and he said I should train at the circus school. "Every day for weeks, I'd been walking past a poster advertising auditions for the National Institute of Circus Arts and when I decided to do it, realised I was too late. But I rang them anyway and they said 'come along' - and I aced the audition."
Six months later she joined the National Institute of Circus Arts in Brisbane and from that moment, Serjeant says, she blossomed.
"Circus is an art form that's not biased. There are so many things you can be. You'll find one that suits your body type and natural talents. If you work with the body and the mind, the thing you love will find you."
In 2011, Serjeant and three others founded Casus circus company - and then sold an unmade show to a festival. Three frantic weeks later, Knee Deep debuted and went on to tour Europe before wowing audiences at the 2013 Tauranga Arts Festival. The show was last month awarded Best Circus Show at the Avignon Festival in France, a real accolade Serjeant says, because circus is a living part of French culture.
"At 10.40am in Avignon, the ticket queue for Knee Deep was out the door and we were selling seats in the aisles - and that was before the award was announced. For a little company from Australia, that was a very proud moment."
Casus now has four touring shows, including Finding the Silence, which premiered last year and is coming to this year's Tauranga Arts Festival in October.