ST Petersburg-born aerialist Masha Terentieva has spent her life on tour.
“My dad is a clown and I basically grew up backstage travelling the world with him,” Terentieva said.
“He used to be a clown in Cirque du Soleil show Alegria. I grew up with Cirque du Soleil, training a little bit backstage, and then I started doing circus more seriously and went to circus school in Montreal; then I joined Cirque du Soleil too.”
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READ NOWThe 29-year-old spent five years in Cirque du Soleil’s Dralion and Zarkana before deciding to leave to try something different.
“I’m so grateful for the experience and everything I have now partly comes from being with them,” she said.
“But Cirque du Soleil goes for big crowds and I sometimes like the intimacy of a cabaret performance space of 200 to 300 people where the audience gets to hear your every breath and see you sweat up close.”
The decision has seen Terentieva perform in a range of cabaret and variety shows and Broadway musicals in New York.
She is in Perth for Strut and Fret’s production Blanc de Blanc at Regal Theatre, where the saucy champagne-inspired circus show bubbles with cabaret and acrobatic talent.
More: Blanc de Blanc pops at Subiaco’s Regal Theatre
Audiences can watch her perform a hula hoop act and flaunting her aerialist ability in a mesmerising piece on a hotel luggage cart while dressed as a bell boy.
“I had the idea for years and wanted to do something that wasn’t what someone else had told me to do but what I wanted to do,” Terentieva said.
“I was inspired from waiting around in hotels with friends; when you’re always on tour, you play around on the hotel cart and then it hit me it might be a good idea.
“I had someone custom-make it for me from a sketch I drew on a piece of paper.
“It’s an apparatus no one has ever done before and somehow abstractly the image of a hotel bell boy on a hotel luggage cart fits into this Blanc de Blanc world.
“Aerial is the feeling of freedom and weightlessness and it’s just really fun to be flying in the air, swinging and spinning; I guess it’s like escaping and defying gravity.”
THE ESSENTIALS
What: Blanc de Blanc
Where: Regal Theatre
When: until October 23
Tickets: www.ticketek.com.au