Tumbling into Totem
Alevtyna Titarenko tumbled, literally, through her formative years. At the age of five she began taking gymnastics in southern Ukraine She practised hard and by the time she was a teenager she was winning world championships in acrobatics.
But she also knew she wanted something more. And that’s how she found Cirque du Soleil, eventually joining the troupe in 1997.
“At the time, the company was quite small and only had three shows and they were looking for acrobatic girls,” says Titarenko, 36.
“My mother convinced me to go to an audition and try a new challenge, and I did.”
Before this, she had always aimed at becoming a coach.
Her first show with the Cirque was the show called O. Since then she’s appeared in Saltimbanco, Love and now Totem. She plays a beach girl in Totem, which has just opened in Ottawa
Titarenko says that when she’s not performing in Cirque shows, she participates in fitness competitions around the world. She has been World Female Fitness Champion three times. She was also European Champion in 2009. “The competitions have different disciplines like body-building, body fitness, fitness and physique. My category is fitness, and in it you have to present your body and at the same time you have to perform a routine for about 90 seconds,” she says.
Even though she is supremely fit, Totem is maybe even more demanding. Fitness athletes have two or three competitions a year; the rest of the time is just spent training, she says.
“But performing onstage, especially if you have two performances a day, that is your competition. You are judged by the public and they have paid to come and see you, so you have to be able to be at your best.”
Each performer prepares in a different way; she likes to visualize her performance in advance.
“For me, mentally I fly my tricks. So when I’m backstage I’m mentally disconnected from other people and I’m flying,” says Titarenko.
And adequate preparation is important for performers during the course of a show that may run for months, she adds.
“If you have one show per day you have about 45 minutes of a warmup, you are doing stretching and different strength exercises.”