CITY ICONS
FLYING HIGH Performing in Cirque du Soleil was a career highlight for Gold Coast gymnast and acrobat Bianca Ruyssenaers.
“Cirque du Soleil is the pinnacle for any performer, it is performing art at the highest level and that’s what people aspire to.” – Bianca Ruyssenaers
WORDS RHONDA OXNAM DID YOU KNOW that that the renowned Cirque du Soleil receive more than 2,000 job applications a day? And that at any given time they only have around 1,300 artists performing in their shows worldwide? Given these statistics, it takes incredible hard work, determination and luck to be invited to join the cast. But that is exactly what happened to talented Gold Coast gymnast and acrobat Bianca Ruyssenaers. “Cirque du Soleil is the pinnacle for most performers, it is performing art at the highest level and that’s what I aspire to,” Bianca explains. “I did four contracts with them in a show called Toruk and it was so rewarding, so exhilarating and so exhausting … you constantly lived on an adrenalin high.” So what led her to pursue a career in such a challenging and competitive field? “I started gymnastics when I was three because my brother Zane was doing it and I
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always wanted to do what my big brother did,” she recalls. “He moved on to other things but I fell in love with it because it’s a sport where you can’t cheat, you have to put in the hard work. “I loved the feeling of almost flying as well, you are upside down, you are in the air and you are defying gravity.” Having trained as a gymnast for five years, Bianca took a break and tried sports acrobatics and aerial, before returning to gymnastics when she was eleven. “They told me I was too old to take it to a higher level but they let me join anyway and I think because there was no pressure on me, I really excelled,” Bianca says. “I always wanted to get to Level 10 because that is the highest level you can get as a gymnast and I’m super grateful I was able to achieve that ranking. “I also got to represent Queensland and Australia and I was the first person at my gym who had ever done that.”
Having won gold for Australia in the vault, Bianca decided to finish her gymnastics career on a high and concentrate on her Year 12 studies. Around that same time Bianca started performing in the Pirate Show at Sea World. Then, two weeks after turning 18 she was offered a role in Singapore performing fast track tumbling, aerial work, bungee and aerial hoop. “That was probably the highest calibre show I’ve ever done,” Bianca says. “I was one of the very few people in the cast who had not been to the Olympics or worked at Cirque du Soleil and I felt so out of my depth but I made sure that I was the first in and the last to leave every night and I learned so much.” The Singapore contract was quickly followed by another … this time with Cavalia, a large-scale performing arts company based in Montreal, Canada. “When I arrived everyone spoke French, all of the emails were in French, all of the meetings were in French, and I was one of three in a cast and crew of 125 who didn’t speak the language.
