1. Tell us about your background and journey.
At the age of 4, I've started ballet and made it my home for a few years. Although I liked being on stage, ballet quickly became unchallenging for the little girl I was. I started artistic gymnastics and loved the high-adrenaline acrobatic part of it, but I did miss the creative part.
Finally, at 11 years old, my best friend at gymnastics invited me to practice with a circus troupe she was training with weekly. That was my first contact with the contemporary circus Art form, and I instantly fell in love with it. I never went back to gymnastics and dedicated my entire life to this new passion.
2. What inspired you to become a dancer?
The movement has always been in my DNA and artistic expression; something vital. The fact I dedicated my life to a form of visual expression involving physicality makes enormous sense.
I don't know if I can pinpoint the very event that led me to create Physical Poetry and became so positively obsessed by pushing its boundaries. I like to think we lead our destiny and creating without physical limits had to be part of mine.
3. How do you ensure you stay strong and fit enough to perform?
Discipline and consistency. The show we put on stage is the mirror of decades of daily training and a ridiculously healthy lifestyle. I think anything meaningful can only be calculated in terms of years or decades of devotion. I plan long-term and rarely go out of my dedicated plan for success. Some call it discipline, but to me, it's only common sense.
The thousands of days I trained 8 hours a day, always keeping space for inspiration and artistic evolution, eventually paid off. I have to be at the best of my form to maintain the physical skills I display on stage. Additionally, and most importantly, there is a risky component to working 30 meters in the air, and I make sure I don't take it lightly by always making sure I can trust my strength and capabilities.
4. Tell us something about the dance genre Physical Poetry.
Physical Poetry is the Art form I've created out of a passion. A physical language that speaks to the souls and not only the heads of those who see it. It was born from the fusion between acrobatics, aerial arts, dance, and theatre, but I like to think it doesn't really matter. What matters is the message of hope and marvel it allows to share. Physical Poetry is only its messenger.
5. Tell us about your experience while writing 'Almost Perfect' and what is it about?
For nearly two decades, I've studied the very actions that would let me become world-class in my field. I found ways to enhance this ability and lengthen the small window of years that allows physical performers to become and remain elite. I've documented, challenged, and reassessed every single theory numerous times.
Through this fine-tuning methodology, as a guinea pig, I wrote the life guide to create your own success story. Almost Perfect is the result of decades of notes, tests, studies, and experience in the highest spheres of performance, punctuated with my life story. I dissected the DNA of efficiency, discipline, passion, and success. I previously thought I'd write this book at a much later stage in my life and career, but unexpected events accelerated the course of life.
Almost Perfect explains the methodology behind the success stories. With precise parameters, tips, and tricks, it is the guide to a pain-free life. It explains how I maintain physical conditions to Olympic-athlete level. It demonstrates how everyone can achieve the extraordinary not by magical thinking but by designing a precise set of habits that can open doors to what most think is only accessible to the few.
Almost Perfect is ideal for anyone who aspires to exceptional health, an extraordinary life, a head-turning physique, and an enviable career. A carefully crafted methodology for excelling at specific goals is laid bare for the world to see. Nothing comes for free: a detail-oriented and elite mindset is the key to the most incredible life-changing path. Throughout Almost Perfect, readers learn to be the incarnation of coherence through iron discipline and unshakeable self-worth.
Sylvie Guillem is flawless perfection incarnate. The last time I saw her on stage, she was 49 and looked like a creature of perfection from another world. I love innovators and those who create to touch the hearts. It's a rare power just a few performers possess.
Most execute, and a handful of them sincerely feel with the audience while performing. Choreographer Juliano Nunes is an example; his choreographies breathe novelty. Lately, I have found myself fully immersed in the movement journal of Megan Castro; a completely different repertoire and style but all her own. I think it's admirable.
7. What message would you give to aspiring aerial performers?
You are not held back by the social or genetic luggage you inherited but by the limits you impose on yourself. Be unapologetic, think bigger and higher, and don't let others define you.
Like in life, you are alone on stage and unless you take full responsibility for your actions, you won't make it to the summit. And most importantly: Enjoy the process. It sounds so cliché, but it changes your life; there is no genuine happy-ending in the process is sufferance.
8. Which is your favorite book and why?
I have a thousand! It would be unfair to point out one. I am particularly affectionate to Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. One can read it at different stages of life and absorb a different meaning. Through what can be read as strict commandments, I find incredible freedom of thought. The book keeps evolving whilst the reader does. That's what Art should always do.
Interviewed By - Anshika Maurya
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