6 minute read
33 Bianca Ruyssenaers
from Cove magazine
FLYING HIGH
Performing in Cirque du Soleil was a career highlight for Gold Coast gymnast and acrobat Bianca Ruyssenaers.
– Bianca Ruyssenaers
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 WORDS RHONDA OXNAM
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.
“They have a meeting two hours before the show every day called the Tapis Bleu, which translates to Blue Carpet, where they go through each act and what went well and what didn’t from the night before,” Bianca explains.
“Two days after I arrived, they got to one of the acts and I heard ‘blah, blah, blah, Bianca, blah, blah, blah’ and everyone turned to me and started clapping.
“I was wondering what was happening and the girl next to me said in broken English ‘You’re in tonight’s show doing trampolining’.
“I hadn’t tried the costume on, I didn’t know the make-up, but all of a sudden I was on stage that night, three days after arriving to Canada and about 10 days since the initial email asking me to join the show.”
After Cavalia, Bianca worked on three of the 4 largest cruise ships in the world before getting that all important invite from Cirque du Soleil.
“I got a call from Cirque while I was on the cruise ships asking if I could start straightaway but it didn’t sit right with me to break the ship contract.
“Luckily another opportunity came up and I was able to join them.”
Then followed a whirlwind of travelling and performing.
“It was a world tour so we went to a new city/country every week including three months in China and two months in Russia.
“We were doing arena tours which could hold around 10,000 people, so we would come in early on a Wednesday to check all the equipment and run through the acts, then we would perform Wednesday to Sunday,
“On Sunday evening we would travel to the next location, sometimes by bus, sometimes by train and sometimes by private plane, which was an amazing experience.
“Typically we would arrive in the next location around 3am and check in to the hotel, Monday you would sleep, then you would see the sights Monday afternoon, Tuesday you would go out and explore and then start all over again.
“I was initially hired to learn many parts of different roles to help reduce to the overall workload for other performers which meant the cognitive load was huge.
“And on top of that I was the backup for the handstand soloist.
“It was a huge privilege to be able to have a solo act but it was a lot of pressure as well because it was a single spotlight with very intense music.
“The first time I did it I only found out about 10 minutes before but all up I got to do that act 36 times in Toruk.”
Over the course of her career, Bianca accepted 14 international contracts, worked in 27 countries and travelled to a total of 57, but eventually the constant touring took its toll so she decided to head home to regroup.
“In this industry you need to respect your mind and your body and I really felt I needed a break,” Bianca says.
“When you are in a show like Cirque, each cast becomes a family because you eat with them, you live with them, you work with them, but to have ‘your’ family around is so different.
“Mum and Dad have been an enormous support over my entire career and it’s nice to be able to spend more time with them and just be in one place for a while.”
Never one to waste a minute, Bianca has starting studying, fast tracking two degrees in Sports Psychology and International Business.
“There’s so much pressure on athletes and artists at this level, so I saw a real niche opportunity for me in that field.”
As for a return to the spotlight …
“I’m undecided if I’ll go back,” Bianca admits.
“I’m really fortunate that I got a lot of my performing done before COVID and I feel like anything else is a bonus.”
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