Difference between revisions of "Elena Serafimovich"

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== See Also ==
 
== See Also ==
  
* Video: [[Elena_Seafimovich_Video_(1997)|Elena Serafimovich, Aerial Hoop]], in the Big Apple Circus production of ''Twenty Years!'' (1997)
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* Video: [[Elena_Serafimovich_Video_(1997)|Elena Serafimovich, Aerial Hoop]], in the Big Apple Circus production of ''Twenty Years!'' (1997)
  
 
[[Category:Artists and Acts|Serafimovich Elena]][[Category:Aerialists|Serafimovich, Elena]]
 
[[Category:Artists and Acts|Serafimovich Elena]][[Category:Aerialists|Serafimovich, Elena]]

Revision as of 22:58, 30 November 2009

Aerial Hoop

Elena Serafimovich was born in Minsk, Belarus (then in the USSR), in a family that was not connected with the circus. As a child, the mixture of dance and acrobatics that rhythmic gymnastics offers attracted her, and she started training at age seven. She participated in many national and international competitions, and eventually obtained a Master degree in Sport-Gymnastics.

When she thought that her competing days were over, she did what many former gymnasts in the Soviet Union did: she enrolled in Minsk’s State Institute of Variety and Circus Arts. The year was 1987. She graduated in 1989 as a "generalist" (a performer without a specific act), and was hired as a top mounterIn an acrobatic or balancing act, the performer who holds the top position (on a human column, for instance). in the famous perch-poleLong perch held vertically on a performer's shoulder or forehead, on the top of which an acrobat executes various balancing figures. balancing act of Aleksei Sarach.

Elena worked with Sarach in the Soviet Union and on foreign tours of the Moscow Circus for eight years. Meanwhile, she began to train on the aerial hoopA heavy metallic hoop used as a variance of trapeze, usually with contortion moves. (Also called Cerceau.), or cerceau(French) See Aerial Hoop., an apparatus that was ideal to showcase her amazing grace and flexibility. While doing so, she caught the attention of Tatiana Assovskaya, then director of SoyuzGosTsirk (later, RosGosTsirk), the Russian state central circus organization.

With Assovskaya’s help and encouragement, Elena further developed her act during a long engagement of the Moscow Circus with Circus Williams-Althoff in Germany, where she eventually premiered it in 1995. Her beautifully choreographed aerial presentation, combined with Elena’s natural grace and elegance, was an immediate sensation.

That same year, Assovskaya got Elena to perform in two major circus festivals, Circus Prinsessan in Stockholm, Sweden (and all-woman competition), and the prestigious Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain in Paris, France. She won a Bronze Medal in each competition, and her international career was immediately launched.

From then on, Elena Serafimovich worked regularly in prestigious nightclubs and variete theaters all over Europe, including the Sporting Club of Monte-Carlo and the legendary TigerPalast in Frankfurt, Germany. In January 1997, she returned to Paris and the Cirque d’Hiver to participate in the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain’s 20th anniversary gala celebration, among an extraordinary stellar cast of former laureates.

She went to the United States that same year to be featured in the Big Apple Circus’s own 20th anniversary production, aptly named Twenty Years!. Although she continued to appear in many of Germany’s top variete theaters, Elena began to work more frequently in the U.S. in various productions of Teatro ZinZanni—the very successful Seattle-based variete dinner-show, with spiegeltent theaters in Seattle and San Francisco.

Elena Serafimovich eventually retired from performing her physically demanding aerial act in 2007. By then, she had settled in the United States. She resides now in Las Vegas, where she has appeared in various capacities in Cirque du Soleil productions.

See Also