Don’t tell me I can’t…
From tightrope to unicycles, Nikki Elliott knows circus skills aren’t just for kids...
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Dangling 40ft in the air by a single piece of silk, I feel like one of the sequin-clad performers of Cirque Du Soleil. But I’m not a trained professional. I’m a 51-year-old mum and I only started learning this particularly difficult trick recently.
At school, I loved gymnastics, but I’d always be the one left struggling at the bottom of the rope in PE. And, by the time I started university, the most taxing exercise I could manage was yoga and Pilates. It was at one of my classes that I met Tony. Eight years later, in May 1999, we got married.
In 2001, I started working as a PR for an entertainment company and we often hired aerialists to perform at our events. Watching them twirl and spin from the silks, I was fascinated – and impressed.
Chatting to them during rehearsals, they mentioned the Belfast Circus School, where they’d trained. I kept imagining being able to perform like them, but I felt sure that it was just a fun daydream.
Only, three years later, in 2004, after falling pregnant, Tony and I moved to Belfast and, that November, our daughter Freya was born. I didn’t want to be a coffee-morning mum, so as Freya got older, I looked for fun, active things to do with her. When a friend mentioned the children’s sessions at the Belfast Circus School, I remembered the name and, intrigued, in May 2007 I took Freya, then two, for her first class. She loved it. Her favourite part was the high wire – which was only five inches off the floor, but seemed like the real thing to her.
A year later, Freya moved up to a class where parents weren’t needed to stay. And, sensing my disappointment, a class leader recommended I try out the adult lessons on Wednesdays.
At first, I was reluctant. What if I was the only 40-year-old there? But, with Tony’s encouragement, in September 2008, I went along. To my relief the class included a mixed group of men and women from 18-year-olds to retirees.
The instructors broke us in gently and within a month, I was learning to ride a unicycle and walk on a tightrope. But I had my sights set even higher – on the huge silks than hung from the roof, like the ones I’d seen the aerialists perform on years before.
I’d watched the school’s professional members using them to practise the Cleopatra, a move that involves wrapping yourself up in the silks so that you hang horizontally to the floor, then dropping 2ft before bending your knees to be caught by the silks. It looked so dramatic, and I hoped that one day I could try it.
First I had to master the trapeze. I learnt basic rolls and balances with the help of an instructor and, two years on, I could do a forward roll unassisted. At last, I was ready for the silks.
In my first session, I got so knotted up the instructors had to unravel me. But by November 2010, I managed to perform the Cleopatra. Tony came to watch and couldn’t believe his eyes when I tumbled 2ft through the air. ‘I thought you were going to fall to your death!’ he said.
Although my friends thought I was crazy for attempting to take on circus skills, now they’re inspired. And rightly so. Just because I’m 51 that doesn’t mean I can’t still challenge my body. If circus school has taught me anything it’s that the sky’s the limit – no matter what age you are.
‘it looked really dramatic’