Balancing acts

FRANCES GRANT talks to a member of an Australian circus about tumbling, aerial tricks and falling on your head.

Nyree Hildred didn't have to run away from home to join the circus. When the prospective high school student was struck by a longing for the big top and the thrill of performing high above a crowd, she had only to cross the road.

Hildred lives virtually on the doorstep of Australia's innovative Flying Fruit Fly Circus training school, based in the twin towns of Albury-Wodonga, straddling the border between Victoria and New South Wales.

Now 18 and an accomplished circus performer specialising in aerial tricks, Hildred applied for a place at the school when she was 12.

Training in gymnastics and dance stood her in good stead for a circus which features dazzling tumbling displays and feats of balance and contortion.

"I've always loved performing in front of people and I was getting a bit bored in gymnastics ... I was looking for something a bit more exciting. And the opportunity to travel round the world is excellent," Hildred says.

The Flying Fruit Fly Circus is one of the headline acts of the Tauranga Arts Festival, starting on October 24. This is the circus' second visit to New Zealand - the troupe performed in the Wellington Arts Festival in 1998.

The Fruit Flies' credentials also include taking part in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Sydney last year - a pole and trampoline act - and an act called Fusion, a co-performance with members of the Shanghai Circus School for the Olympics Arts Festival.

On their second visit to New Zealand the group will bring a different act, a show called The Gift, which artistic director Kim Walker created for a sell-out tour to New York two years ago.

The Gift is the story of a boy's first day at the circus school and his astonishment at the antics of his schoolmates. The second half of the show portrays his dreams and aspirations as a performer, says Walker. "When we got the gig to go to New York we decided they know nothing about us, the Fruit Flies - so let's do a show about where we're from."

Tauranga audiences can expect a "really high level of circus skills", he says. "Everything from tumbling to juggling, to balancing on cylinders, to trapeze and aerial ring - it's a very fast, action-packed show."

The Flying Fruit Flies take their name, Walker says, from a common pest in the region, the cause of tight state and international border controls on its favourite vehicle, travelling fruit. "That's where the name came from, an annoying little pest that gets into everything."

The circus school has been training young performers for 22 years, well before contemporary circus acts such as the hugely successful Cirque du Soleil became household names and changed people's perceptions of circuses from showcasing lion tamers and dancing bears to acts of human agility, daring and theatricality.

The competition is fierce but it's the age of the young Fruit Flies which makes them special, Walker says. "It's a certain kind of free-ness that they have as young performers. They're very confident within themselves when they're performing. And I think it's a kind of Australian-ness, a kind of larrikinism that they have, that shows up in their performances."

Hildred certainly seems to embody those carefree qualities: "I fell on my head the other week which was a bit scary, but that was okay, I'm fine."

When she isn't doing tricks from a ring suspended high above the ground - "one year I did it off a freeway in Sydney, in Darling Harbour" - the teenager also contorts her way through an act in which she "rolls around" balancing glasses on her head, hands and feet.

A final-year Fruit Fly student, Hildred is planning to take wing next year and continue her dance studies at university or perhaps apply to join Nica, the newly established National Institute of Circus Acts in Melbourne.

Meanwhile, she's looking forward to performing for the New Zealand side of her family in Tauranga. Is she expecting to stun and amaze them? "Last time I toured New Zealand I was able to do that."

The festival also features an Australian troupe, ERTH, whose performance, The Garden, inspired by the ancient continent Gondwana, features giant stilt-walking insects and an aerial redback spider.

International acts on the music programme include the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra, conducted by Palle Mikkelborg (see below), American jazz duo Corey Harris and Henry Butler, Australian jazz singer Vince Jones and French string quartet Quatuor Ysaye. Local artists range from the New Zealand Chamber Orchestra to the Pink Floyd Experience.

The festival also offers a feast of local drama, including the New Zealand premiere of Mahy Madness, a work celebrating one of the country's best-loved authors, and literary and dance programmes.

* The Tauranga Arts Festival runs from October 24 to November 4. Festival office, ph 07 577-6862. Programme and booking information are available at Tauranga Festival