Esmeralda Nikolajeff, flyer and acrobat, Barely Methodical Troupe: Shift
Swedish circus artist Esmeralda Nikolajeff – who comes from Stockholm – knew she wanted to be an acrobat from the age of two. She started circus as a tiny child with Circus Cirkör, and at 14 took part in Monte Carlo’s 20th Première Rampe festival. She went on to train at DOCH School of Dance and Circus in Stockholm and, since graduating in 2014, has appeared all over the world, working mostly in duos or trios and “learning new ways of being thrown and getting caught”.
Esmeralda chats to Liz Arratoon before her appearance in Barely Methodical Troupe’s third show, Shift, which also features Elihú Vázquez and BMT co-founders Charlie Wheeller and Louis Gift. It was commissioned by the Norfolk and Norwich Festival – which co-produced it with DREAM – as part of the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the birth of British circus. Shift has its world premiere at the Spiegeltent in Chapelfield Gardens in Norwich. It runs from 16-27 May 2018.
The Widow Stanton: Is Stockholm your home?
Esmeralda Nikolajeff: More or less. I have a home there but I’ve been renting it out for two years, so I’m more or less living on the road. It’s a love/hate relationship… it’s complex… it’s great and it’s nice to not have to pay rent. It allows me to travel more. But little by little I’m getting a bit worn out by it. I’m starting to miss my home and my own things and my own space, but it’s fine. It’s still working out.
Had you seen any circus at two to put the idea in your head?
That’s such a good question that my parents also ask themselves. They don’t really know. I guess I must have seen something, like picked something up from somewhere. But it wasn’t like we went to a circus show and then I knew. When I told them I wanted to be ‘aerial acrobat’ they were like: “How does she even know those words? Where did it come from?” No one knows.
Is there any showbusiness in your family?
Yes, when I was a kid my dad was doing theatre and my mum was creating and producing music. When I was around seven my dad actually got into circus himself because he got quite inspired by me doing it. Then he was out of work and he got an opportunity to work in this Swedish circus, Cirkus Cirkör, in the offices and teaching kids how to do forward rolls and cartwheels and stuff like that. Then he got into the circus scene and he thought it was way more fun than doing theatre. So he just started to practise and now he’s a knife-thrower and a chainsaw juggler. He’s called Jesper.
Where is your name from?
My dad’s father was from Russia. He came to Sweden by train when he was four years old during World War II. He was a child in the middle of the war zone so he was evacuated and went into a foster family in Sweden.
Do you do any other disciplines?
I do a bunch of different things. At DOCH my main discipline was duo trapeze, so trapeze flyer is what I do the most. And then lately, the past two years, I’ve been doing a lot of flying in Icarian Games [Risley], basically flipping on people’s feet. As my side discipline I’ve always been an acrobat. I love doing floor acrobatics and movements, and as I’m quite a tiny person I’ve always been a flyer in all kinds of scenarios… banquine and hand to hand and things like that.
Before you went to DOCH, how did you start doing circus?
First I went to a circus course in Stockholm at Cirkus Cirkör. I started when I was four years old in this little kids’ circus place. Then when I was around seven I told my dad that it was frustrating for me to just train because I wanted to perform. He was like, “Ooh, OK,” and he found a bunch of other kids who also wanted to perform, and we created a youth circus group. So it was like, me and between 10 and 15 other kids who were the youth circus group of Cirkus Cirkör, for some years. Then we kept on growing as a youth circus. My dad was in charge of it and we were training like two or three times a week, and then we did quite a lot of shows. All the money we pulled in with the shows went to the teachers and the facilities at Cirkör, so on Sundays we had the whole training space to ourselves. For the kids it was free to go to the circus classes but we performed a lot.
I did that from when I was seven to about 15, and then I did Circus Cirkör’s circus high school as well. My trapeze catcher is three years older than me and I was a bit tired of normal school so I really wanted to start the circus university with her. But at most circus universities you need a degree from high school, so I was thinking, ‘Maybe I can do it faster?’. I asked my school if I could just go faster and they were like: “We don’t really know but I guess you can try.” [Laughs] So then I did four years of school in two years, and yeah, I graduated early and started DOCH when I was 17.
With your trapeze partner?
Yes, Mira Leonard.
Were you with her at the Première Rampe?
Yes, it was the youth version of the Monte Carlo circus festival, which happens a month before the adult one. We didn't win gold, silver or bronze, but we did receive some kind of trophy. I think they gave everyone one as a prize just for taking part. I don't really remember how it went, I was so young [laughs] but it was a very interesting experience; all these Chinese, Russian and Mongolian children, and us! We were amazed by how heavily drilled all those tiny kids were, because we just did circus for the fun of it.
Was it because you were tiny that you became flyer or what made you choose it?
Being tiny helped a lot. I was always the smallest and lightest person in my class, so I was just used to climbing on people. But then I was also just this little reckless child. I would stand on the highest furniture and jump off and be like, ‘CATCH ME!’. And my parents would have to run through the apartment and slide on the floor and save me from dying. [Laughs] So I guess I had like the adrenaline-rush-addictive part of me already as a child.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to take up flying? You have to be brave…
For sure, you have to be brave but more so you have to be a very trusting person. What I see with a lot of people who aren’t that good at flying is that if someone says: “It’s fine, I’ll catch you,” they don’t believe them. But for me, if someone says that, I trust them to have the good judgment of knowing that they can catch me; maybe not perfectly but so that I don’t injure myself gravely. So [laughs] it’s a lot about just believing in what people say. Hearing: “Yeah, I think this is safe to try,” I go, ‘You think so? OK, then I think so, too’. That’s a very big part of it.
We’ve noticed that DOCH produces really excellent artists; why do you think that is?
When I was going to choose circus schools I was really doubting whether I wanted to do DOCH, because in one way I wanted to move aboard and experience a school in a different country. But in the end I chose DOCH because there’s something about the vibe there that is very welcoming; it’s kind of a light, happy vibe that I get from that place, and my coach in trapeze – Christian Vippen Vilppola – was very positive and very encouraging, whereas a lot of coaches… because we auditioned and we got into other schools and other coaches were a bit more Russian style, never say that anything’s good. If someone’s more or less OK, then you know you did it really well. I don’t really believe in that method of learning things, and that’s one thing that really helps at DOCH that in general it’s quite a positive vibe.
Then it has good reputation so the people applying there are already quite good, and the level of the students has to be pretty good before they start. And then we had quite intensive training. We’d have a lot of different ways of doing things and the school is constantly adapting to each year. They don’t have one way of doing things. For example, our class was really into movement and dance, and we had a lot of ideas about different dance teachers and choreographers that we’d like to have as guest teachers. So we students could suggest: “Oh, this person, from this country is really cool, could we maybe have a workshop with them?” The school would be like: “We’ll look into it,” and after that it would happen. Then we’d have a block of two weeks with this teacher, and I think that’s something that’s really special about DOCH that they do listen to their students’ feedback a lot. They constantly try to adapt to the students’ needs. The year below us was more into theatre and stage acting so they had more of that.
We also had a lot of discipline hours, I think two hours a day of our main discipline and then – I don’t remember – some hours a week with our second discipline, and everyone had acrobatics and I, as a flyer, had two hours a week of trampoline for a year or two to practise the different things I do in the air. Also what we did a lot, we had a lot of presentations. Basically we’d have presentations every other Friday, and we’d get different tasks each time, so we learnt that we had to produce material and ideas. Of course, it cannot always become something good if you have to do it every other week and you’re always tired from training all the time. So then it forces us to learn to fail, and it’s OK and that you can learn a lot from failure. I think that’s such an important thing for artists in general, to not be afraid of trying out ideas that could fail. That’s something they really encourage us to do as well; to not always succeed.
What sort of things have you done since graduating?
I graduated almost four year ago and since then I’ve been doing so many different things. Like, each project has been quite a new experience, so I’ve done everything from… the year I graduated I was working quite a lot in Sweden at Cirkus Cirkör, with the Christmas show, and then I did a show called Borders with them, which celebrated their 20-year anniversary. But also they thought: “We can’t only celebrate in times like this,” so it was a show about borders and refugees. There were 19 people on stage and it was a mix between actors, circus artists and musicians. It was a sort of WOW project that lasted four months and then it was over.
Then I did a site-specific show on an island in Denmark. It’s an island that was man-made to build ships on, so we were exploring it. We did a bit of acrobatics but there wasn’t much circus; it was a dance choreographer who made the work. It was really interesting and we learnt a lot about how to take in different environments and how to relate to them. It was a promenade show. Then I did a show in Berlin for six months…
At the Chamäleon?
Yes exactly. It was called Roots with the Czech company Cirq La Putyka. We played it in Prague maybe 50 times as well. Last year I had more of a year doing my own projects with my friends. We did one show that we performed a bit in Berlin and a bit in Oregon. We were called The Leftover Company. It was something that happened after performing a lot in Berlin and seeing all these leftover people everywhere so we took inspiration from that. We thought how can we make Icarian Games more leftover-y; we created a lot of crash acro, basically, and wobbly acro.
Wobbly is a bit of a trend…
Yeah, I feel it has to do with people being a bit tired of being so rigid and perfect. They just want to be a bit more loose. It’s fun because there are so many different ways of doing it. We have a trapeze act where I’m kind of all limp, which we did in Roots, but this crash acro is really more explosive, like, kind of aggressive crashes. [Laughs]
How did you get involved with Barely Methodical Troupe?
I met those guys at the wedding of some friends of ours in Australia. It was Dan and Rhiannon Cave-Walker’s wedding, who were in my year in DOCH. After the wedding we hung out for a bit and were acro-jamming on the beach. Then BMT contacted me and asked if I might be interested in joining their next show. I was like, ‘Yeah!’.
Have you seen their other shows?
No, I haven’t but as the circus world is so small, and so many friends of mine have, it seems like I have and I can imagine what they were like. I’d really like to see them. They are very fun to work with, very easy to work with and very encouraging and motivated. In general there’s this positive, fun, playful vibe going around, which, without seeing their shows, I can imagine translates to the stage.
Are you able to you tell us anything about the new show?
I won’t say too much. We’ve been inventing new acts and working a lot with elastic bands, Thera-bands, the kind they usually use for rehab. So we have quite a lot of them in the show and in general we’ve been working a lot with elasticity. Throughout this process I actually learnt how to say that word because for me it was a very hard word to say [laughs] so I’m very proud every time I manage it.
Can you pick out some highlights from your career so far?
Yes, a lot of things, but I must say the Chamäleon contract in Berlin was a really life-changing experience, also because I got to stay in one city for half a year and have stable work and do 180 shows in a row. That’s a quite insane thing to do. I don’t know if I could it again but I’m very glad I did it. So that was one highlight and then this past year I’ve been doing a show – Knekke Greine – together with my friends in the forest. It’s a show where we encourage people to remember that we have go out into nature and explore the woods even though you live in the city. It’s a very interactive performance and it’s more of a forest/nature guided walk with a lot of crazy interactions happening all around. The creation was just in the woods in Sweden so that’s been really fun.
Esmeralda appears in the world premiere of Barely Methodical Troupe’s Shift at the Spiegeltent in Chapelfield Gardens during the Norfok and Norwich Festival from 16-27 May 2018.
Picture credits: Headshot, Di Robson; Shift, Chris Nash; wobbly trapeze, Einar Kling-Odencrants
For Shift tickets click here
Esmeralda on Facebook and Barely Methodical Troupe’s website
Twitter: @BMTroupe @NNFest
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Read our archive interviews with BMT’s Charlie Wheeller and Louis Gift
