Elena Panova - Revision history

Djando: /* Award Winning Aerialist */

2026-01-31T02:48:42Z

‎Award Winning Aerialist

Djando: /* The Birth of a New Act */

2024-12-02T22:24:43Z

‎The Birth of a New Act

Djando: /* The Birth of a New Act */

2024-12-02T22:22:43Z

‎The Birth of a New Act

Djando: /* The Birth of a New Act */

2024-12-02T22:21:20Z

‎The Birth of a New Act

Djando: /* Early Apprenticeship */

2024-11-24T01:19:18Z

‎Early Apprenticeship

Djando: /* Award Winning Aerialist */

2023-06-03T03:19:15Z

‎Award Winning Aerialist

Djando: /* Image Gallery */

2023-03-07T00:53:35Z

‎Image Gallery

Djando: /* The Birth of a New Act */

2023-03-07T00:46:51Z

‎The Birth of a New Act

Djando: /* Early Apprenticeship */

2021-06-03T20:19:37Z

‎Early Apprenticeship

Djando at 02:28, 21 March 2021

2021-03-21T02:28:30Z

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 === Award Winning Aerialist ===
-The act was first performed in 1985, in a show presented by the [[Moscow Circus]] in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which marked Elena's professional debut. Two years later, her act emerged as the great revelation of the [[Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain]] in Paris: In that landmark edition of the Paris's Festival, the sea-change underway in the contemporary circus became apparent for the first time.
+[[File:Elena_Panova_(1991).jpg|thumb|300px|left|Elena Panova (1991)]]The act was first performed in 1985, in a show presented by the [[Moscow Circus]] in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which marked Elena's professional debut. Two years later, her act emerged as the great revelation of the [[Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain]] in Paris: In that landmark edition of the Paris's Festival, the sea-change underway in the contemporary circus became apparent for the first time.
-[[File:Elena_Panova_(1991).jpg|thumb|300px|left|Elena Panova (1991)]]Elena won the Gold Medal and ignited the imagination of [[André Simard]], who saw her performance. Simard was then teaching acrobatics at the [[Ecole Nationale de Cirque]] in Montreal. After returning to Canada, he decided to develop trapeze acts in the new style suggested by Elena's act. Adding his own ideas, he would in time develop a "Canadian school" of swinging trapeze. (After the fall of the Soviet regime, Viktor Fomin&mdash;now Victor Fomine&mdash;eventually settled in Montreal, where he taught at the Ecole Nationale de Cirque and opened his own very successful trapeze studio.)
+Elena won the Gold Medal and ignited the imagination of [[André Simard]], who saw her performance. Simard was then teaching acrobatics at the [[Ecole Nationale de Cirque]] in Montreal. After returning to Canada, he decided to develop trapeze acts in the new style suggested by Elena's act. Adding his own ideas, he would in time develop a "Canadian school" of swinging trapeze. (After the fall of the Soviet regime, Viktor Fomin&mdash;now Victor Fomine&mdash;eventually settled in Montreal, where he taught at the Ecole Nationale de Cirque and opened his own very successful trapeze studio.)
 In 1988, Elena won the All-Union Circus Competition of the USSR, which was arguably, at the time, the world’s most difficult circus competition. From 1985-90, she performed in the Soviet Union and toured with various units of the [[Moscow Circus]] in Mongolia, Cambodia, Vietnam, France, Belgium, Austria, Germany, and Israel, before becoming an independent contractor in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union.

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 Originally an elephant trainer, Tereza Durova came from a famous dynasty of clowns and animal trainers and had never worked on an aerial act before. She asked another newcomer to the College's staff, Viktor Fomin (known today as Victor Fomine, the French spelling of his Russian name)&mdash;a former competition gymnast who had performed in a horizontal bar act&mdash;to take on the technical aspects of the act. To Fomin, who complained that he had never worked on an aerial act before, Durova is famously remembered to have said, "A trapeze is a bar hanging from two ropes. Go to the school library and read every book you can find on the subject!"
-Durova, Fomin, and Panova spent three years developing Elena's act at the College. Fomin and Elena struggled to realize Durova’s often far-fetched ideas. They experimented with various techniques to try to achieve them, and in doing so, eventually came up with new tricks; some were found by sheer luck, others by trial-and-error.
+Durova, Fomin, and Panova spent three years developing Elena's act at the College. Fomin and Elena struggled to bring to life Durova’s often far-fetched ideas. They experimented with various techniques to try to achieve them, and in doing so, eventually came up with new tricks; some were found by sheer luck, others by trial-and-error.
 When it was all done, Elena Panova’s act didn't look like anything that had been seen before. Performed entirely in full swing, it included pirouettes between the ropes caught by the ankles, and half-pirouettes caught by the heels, all done without interrupting the swing or having it re-energized by an assistant. Furthermore, Elena's act was not conceived around the notion of danger, but around the aestheticism of movement. It was a seductive ballet, danced in space (eventually, in 1987, to the accents of Vivaldi’s ''Four Seasons''&mdash;this at a time when classical music was still a rarity in the circus).

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 [[File:Elena_Panova_-_Victor_Fomine_(2001).jpg|thumb|right|400px|Elena Panova and Victor Fomine (2000)]]Nonetheless, she insisted on building a trapeze act. Perhaps tired of her recriminations, her teachers eventually caved in, and Elena was assigned a trapeze coach. The coach's husband then was offered a job in Paris with the Soviet Television, and  his wife would not miss the opportunity to live for a time in France. Before leaving Russia, the would-be coach asked a friend, Tereza Durova&mdash;an act director who had recently joined the College's faculty&mdash;to take her place and create a swinging-trapeze act for Elena.
-Tereza Durova came from a famous dynasty of clowns and animal trainers and had never worked on an aerial act before. She asked another newcomer to the College's staff, Viktor Fomin (known today as Victor Fomine, the French spelling of his Russian name)&mdash;a former competition gymnast who had performed in a horizontal bar act&mdash;to take on the technical aspects of the act. To Fomin, who complained that he had never worked on an aerial act before, Durova is famously remembered to have said, "A trapeze is a bar hanging from two ropes. Go to the school library and read every book you can find on the subject!"
+Originally an elephant trainer, Tereza Durova came from a famous dynasty of clowns and animal trainers and had never worked on an aerial act before. She asked another newcomer to the College's staff, Viktor Fomin (known today as Victor Fomine, the French spelling of his Russian name)&mdash;a former competition gymnast who had performed in a horizontal bar act&mdash;to take on the technical aspects of the act. To Fomin, who complained that he had never worked on an aerial act before, Durova is famously remembered to have said, "A trapeze is a bar hanging from two ropes. Go to the school library and read every book you can find on the subject!"
 Durova, Fomin, and Panova spent three years developing Elena's act at the College. Fomin and Elena struggled to realize Durova’s often far-fetched ideas. They experimented with various techniques to try to achieve them, and in doing so, eventually came up with new tricks; some were found by sheer luck, others by trial-and-error.

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 === The Birth of a New Act ===
-Although Elena wanted to do a solo trapeze act, the five-year plan then in effect did not call for new trapeze acts. In the Soviet Union, five-year plans were centralized methods of promoting economic growth through the use of quotas. The first Soviet five-year plan (1928) had called for the rapid collectivization of agriculture, a policy that was not revised even though it led to millions of deaths from starvation. In the light of this, there seemed to be little hope that Elena would get her trapeze act since it deviated from the five-year plan then in place.
+Although Elena wanted to do a solo trapeze act, the five-year plan then in effect did not call for new trapeze acts. In the Soviet Union, five-year plans were centralized methods of promoting economic growth through the use of quotas. The first Soviet five-year plan (1928) had called for the rapid collectivization of agriculture, a policy that was not revised even though it led to millions of deaths from starvation. In the light of this, there seemed to be no hope that Elena would get her trapeze act since it deviated from the five-year plan then in place.
 [[File:Elena_Panova_-_Victor_Fomine_(2001).jpg|thumb|right|400px|Elena Panova and Victor Fomine (2000)]]Nonetheless, she insisted on building a trapeze act. Perhaps tired of her recriminations, her teachers eventually caved in, and Elena was assigned a trapeze coach. The coach's husband then was offered a job in Paris with the Soviet Television, and  his wife would not miss the opportunity to live for a time in France. Before leaving Russia, the would-be coach asked a friend, Tereza Durova&mdash;an act director who had recently joined the College's faculty&mdash;to take her place and create a swinging-trapeze act for Elena.

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 Murom is one of Russia's oldest cities, dating back to the 9th century, and "home" to the Kievan Rus folk hero of yore, Ilya Muromets. It is also a Holy City that managed to keep some of its monasteries and convents open during the communist era. Yet, it is a small town, and although the Soviet government gave it a theater building, it didn't have a circus, neither was it important enough to receive the summer visit of a ''shapito'' (or ''chapiteau'' in French&mdash;a traveling circus). In fact, Elena never saw a live circus performance while growing up.
-She did see circus shows on television, however, as well as ballet performances, and in her early teens, she enrolled herself in her school's amateur dance company. Meanwhile, a friend of hers had joined the local "Circus Club" and suggested that Elena, who was then fourteen, came with her. "Circus Clubs" were the Soviet equivalent of European or American youth circuses, though generally at a much higher level in terms of the training they provided. They flourished in the Soviet Union, where circus arts were held in high esteem.
+She did see circus shows on television, however, as well as ballet performances, and in her early teens, she enrolled herself in her school's amateur dance company. Meanwhile, a friend of hers had joined the local "Circus Club" and suggested that Elena, who was then fourteen, came with her. "Circus Clubs" were the Soviet equivalent of European or American youth circuses, though generally at a much higher level in terms of the training they provided. They flourished in the Soviet Union, where circus arts were held in high esteem, and still flourish today in Russia.
 During these years, Elena trained in basic acrobatics, but her tastes drew her to aerial apparatuses; while still at the  Circus Club, she and a fellow student developed a "bambou" (aerial perch) act. Her performance debut came in April 1978, when she presented a static trapeze act in the Easter show the Circus Club staged in Murom’s Grand Theatre.

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 File:Elena_Panova_-_Lanza.jpg|Elena Panova (1991)
 File:Panova_%2B_Gordoon_(1991).jpg|Elena Panova and Jeff Gordon at the Big Apple Circus (1991)
-File:Elenapanova_BAC_1991.jpg|Elena Panova (1991)
+File:Elenapanova_BAC_1991.jpg|Elena Panova at the Big Apple Circus (1991)
 File:Elena_Panova_Ankle_Catch_(1991).jpg|Elena Panova at the Big Apple Circus (1991)
-File:Elena_Panova_(1991).jpg|Elena Panova (1991)
+File:Elena_Panova_(1991).jpg|Elena Panova at the Big Apple Circus (1991)
 File:Elena_Paniva_Heel_Catch_(1994).jpg|Elena Panova at the Big Apple Circus (1994)
 File:Panova_1997.jpg|Elena Panova, Cirque d'Hiver-Bouglione (1997)

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 During these years, Elena trained in basic acrobatics, but her tastes drew her to aerial apparatuses; while still at the  Circus Club, she and a fellow student developed a "bambou" (aerial perch) act. Her performance debut came in April 1978, when she presented a static trapeze act in the Easter show the Circus Club staged in Murom’s Grand Theatre.
-Since she was bent on becoming a circus artist&mdash;and had the ability to succeed&mdash;Elena's coach suggested she applied to the entrance exam for Moscow’s famous State College for Circus and Variety Arts. She submitted the proper forms and documents and, to her surprise, was invited to audition in Moscow. She was seventeen and had never left Murom.
+Since she was bent on becoming a circus artist&mdash;and had the ability to succeed&mdash;Elena's coach suggested she applied to the entrance exam for Moscow’s famous [[State College for Circus and Variety Arts (Moscow)|State College for Circus and Variety Arts]]. She submitted the proper forms and documents and, to her surprise, was invited to audition in Moscow. She was seventeen and had never left Murom.
 Following a strenuous physical exam, Elena was accepted to the College&mdash;one of the few among hundreds of applicants from all over the Soviet Union. Over the next three years, she trained in acting, ballet, and all circus disciplines, eventually specializing in swinging trapeze. Even so, the creation of her act&mdash;an act that would redefine the swinging trapeze specialty&mdash;was the result of a fortunate stroke of serendipity.

← Older revision		Revision as of 02:28, 21 March 2021
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−	[[File:Elena_Paniva_Heel_Catch_(1994).jpg\|right\|~~300px~~]]	+	[[File:Elena_Paniva_Heel_Catch_(1994).jpg\|right\|400px]]
	==Swinging Trapeze==		==Swinging Trapeze==