HIGH-FLYING THRILLS

Family of performers in Circus Incredible wows Geauga County fair crowd

Circus Incredible soared back into town once again to wow guests with airborne acrobatics and precarious balancing acts at The Great Geauga County Fair.

The family of performers that makes up Circus Incredible has visited The Great Geauga County Fair several times over the years, and their gravity-defying feats garnered quite a crowd at each performance this time around as well. The Great Geauga County Fair ran Sept. 2-6 in Burton Township, and the traveling circus group put on several performances a day that were open to the public.

Circus Incredible consists of Lyric Wallenda, a seventh generation circus performer of the renowned “World Famous Wallenda” family, her mother Rietta Wallenda, and Lyric’s husband Simon Arestov, who began his own circus career in Moscow, Russia, and has been performing for 32 years now. Their newest addition is young son Alex — who marks the eight generation of performing Wallendas.

“We were here in 2015 and 2016 — our son Alex

Lyric Wallenda entranced onlookers as she took the sky on a trapeze suspended about 30 feet in the air.

wasn’t even born yet, so it’s our first time back since then. So we have a new addition to the show,” Arestov said.

The family’s fair performances featured a range of acrobatic tricks, including balancing acts from Arestov, who has been training since he was young to be able to pull off handstands and hula-hoop tricks — all while balanced on shaky stacks of metal plates and cylinders.

“I started performing professionally when I was 5 years old with my mom and dad in the Moscow Circus, and I would do an act with my dad balancing on his hands, and doing handstands and flips and stuff,” Arestov recalled. “Around 12 years old I got too big for him, so I started transitioning to the act you saw today which is the balancing with the cylinders on top of each other and things like that.”

Lyric Wallenda entranced onlookers as she took the sky on a trapeze suspended about 30 feet in the air. She twisted and turned around the bar, even hanging on by her toes at one point. She concluded her act with

what Arestov said was one of the most dangerous and difficult moves in the circus world, swinging and twisting in circles suspended only by a rope around her neck attached to the trapeze.

Much like her husband, Lyric Wallenda began training at a very young age alongside the other performers in her family. She said she began training for the neck-spinning maneuver at 5 years old.

“It’s all about learning the technique, and strength — when I was little it was

obviously always supervised by my mom and my grandmother who were there training and helping,” she said. “It took years of actively training. It adds challenges with swinging and also with the wind, because normally we do it stationary.”

She added that Circus Incredible has gained a following in the Northeast Ohio area, and many fairgoers who came to see them over the holiday weekend were returning fans, who got to meet Alex and get a new picture with the whole family.

PHOTOS BY SHEENA HOLLAND DOLAN — THE NEWS-HERALD Lyric Wallenda, a seventh-generation acrobatics performer, shows off her aerial trapeze routine suspended more than 30 feet in the air.

Simon Arestov holds up Circus Incredible’s newest member, eighth-generation circus performer Alex, who is Arestov and wife Lyric Wallenda’s son.

SHEENA HOLLAND DOLAN — THE NEWS-HERALD Acrobatics artist Lyric Wallenda performs one of her most difficult maneuvers at the Great Geauga County Fair, where she is suspended only by a short rope around the back of her neck.