Conversations with Great Teachers

4. Teaching the Creators and Performers

Teaching the Creators and Performers 4 “There is a magical change [in the students].” Alexandre Sacha Pavlata teacher, circus arts Sacha Pavlata is a fifth-generation circus artist. He grew up traveling Europe and North Africa with his family in a wooden circus wagon. His Hungarianborn mother came from a family of Risley act performers (the acrobatic foot juggling of people), and his Czech-born father descended from a long line of aerialists. Sacha himself became a master aerialist, and he has performed in a wide range of venues, including the Cirque Bouglione in France and the Big Apple Circus based in New York. In 1998, he joined the Flying Wallendas to help recreate their famous seven-person pyramid on the high wire, a feat for which they won the Silver Clown at the Monte Carlo Festival du Cirque in 2003. Sacha has taught circus arts at the Conservatoire National du Cirque in Paris and the New York School of Circus Arts. He currently lives in Massachusetts, where he performs in his own circus company, Cirque Passion. When we spoke he had just returned from teaching a circus arts class to children at the Center for Creative Arts in St. Louis. He speaks with great exuberance in heavily accented English. Can you tell me about the class you just finished teaching in St. Louis? It’s a summer camp. The kids in the circus arts class are from eight years old to eleven or twelve. I set up a lot of circus equipment. We have a flying trapeze. There is a globe [a large ball on which a person walks]. They can walk on it, run on it, juggle on it, use the hula hoop on it. They do that for three or four days to learn balance, and they have a rope to hold on to so they don’t fall down. Then I have a cloud swing that is my specialty—it’s a soft rope in a V-shape. You swing on it and do all kinds of crazy tricks on it. Kids love it. Also we have a lyra, a round metal aerial hoop about a meter in diameter. Also the unicycle. The classes go for two weeks and at the end we put on a show. I have been teaching the children in summer in St. Louis for sixteen years. 84 | Conversations with Great Teachers What effect does the two weeks have on the children? Oh, gosh. My classes have become so popular because it’s challenging for the kids. They like to be challenged. They feel it’s frightening, and I help them do it. Of course, safety ropes or my hands are always around them for safety. After one week, it’s like they are my kids. They love me. When their parents come to pick them up, they want to stay. They are happy, and they have such confidence. We have lunch, and sitting around me, they ask me questions: Where you come from? What have you done? And of course, I give them all the stories, how I grew up—because I’m five generations in the circus world. There is a magical change in them. There is a joy—it’s just fantastic. I see it is difficult with the children these days because they go to school, and it is a lot of pressure. From the moment we start our course, there is a magical change on them because it is fun. There is a joy to circus activities. It is just fantastic. I have a great time with them. I love to do it. What do you do if a child simply balks at something and feels too afraid to try? OK, that’s a very simple thing. The children are different sizes. Some of them are a little bit heavy, some are skinny, some of them like to be in the air, some not. So after a few days I start to know them and I know which kids are good on this little thing and which are good on that little thing. Some of them don’t like to be in the air, so I put them on juggling or on the unicycle or on the globe. It’s divided so that everyone feels comfortable. There’s also tumbling. We have a pyramid so the stronger kids can be on the bottom, the lighter...