Primary Times magazine, asked Karen to be their roving reporter last week and experience the thrills of the big top for herself! She went along to the Big Top in Cardiff’s oval basin to meet Adie Delaney, the No Fit State Circus’s trapeze artist. Here’s what happened…
My guide and mentor Adie went to circus uni in Australia for 3 years and has been performing ever since. I, on the other hand, was pulled up onto the trapeze bar (no net!) after 3 seconds! The bar is 8 meters off the ground, which I promise you is a very long way and seems even higher when you stand on it and start to swing. I’m not really sure how to put this experience into words. I could feel the adrenaline course through my veins as I began to swing higher and higher. Time for a trick! Now it’s essential this happens at the high end of the swing as apparently it is there that one is weightless… get the timing wrong and you weigh twice as much! So I swing….. let go with the hands and now I’m upside down and flying backwards. Air rushes past me, I’m not sure which way is up… but now I have to get back upright. Remember, weightless at the ends, so how come it took all my strength to climb back up to sitting? Needless to say after half an hour I was sweating, shaking and my arms looked like Popeye after a can of spinach! Afterward I lay collapsed on a big crash mat and gazed in awe as Adie went through her rehearsal routine. Now that looked effortless, graceful and having had a taste of how immensely physically challenging the trapeze is, was jaw droppingly impressive.
Enjoy the photos, but my recommendation is see the show. Tabu by the No Fit State Circus is on in Cardiff bay from 11th – 27th September, call the box office or visit the website
- Roald Dahl Plas
- Cardiff
- Box Office: Wales Millenium Centre
- 08700 402000