What it feels like to ... BE A 58-YEAR-OLD ACROBAT

IHAVE to stretch every morning when I get up. I sit on the floor with a cup of tea beside me and do a different gentle stretch with every sip. And then I’m ready for the day.

I can’t really remember not being able to do a backflip. I was a gymnast from when I was seven until I was 17 years of age. But at 17 I was told I was too old to be a gymnast and I accepted that graciously at the time and I turned my hand to coaching.

In my early twenties I started working with a student dance company. That began a journey of turning back to my history as a gymnast. I moved towards physical theatre at first and then I got a job with Circus Oz.

For women it is very hard to keep training and have a family. Training devours the hours.

The solution for me was to become an artistic director for a physical theatre company so I sort of stopped performing and really concentrated on directing for 10 years in my late thirties.

What brought me back to circus? Essentially burning out. By the time I hit my late forties I was exhausted and for women it is so biological. I was hitting menopause, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, my partner and I were breaking up and I was so burnt up that I just went: “I’ve got to stop and hand this gorgeous company over to someone else who has got the energy that I no longer have.”

I started to attend some improvisation workshops. I discovered my clown in that process and one of the girls in A Good Catch, Sharon, got me training again. And that was it. Then it was like: “I love this. I’m so at home again. I’m back in my body.”

I work with these two marvellous women in A Good Catch who are far more highly skilled than I am, and I don’t feel any need to compete with them. I feel that I absolutely contribute to our work just by being me and being in this older body and allowing my body to be free and moving and graciously being my age.

You have to be more careful as you get older. I’m very actively working at preventing injury because I know