This circus performer was once a vegetarian – then he came to Sydney

1 month ago 16

Most nights, Ukrainian-born performer Sergiy Mishchurenko spins gracefully through the air above his audience, making shapes and pointing his feet as he dreams of a new life in Australia.

But the agile aerialist sits now in the storied Grand Electric performance venue on the edge of Surry Hills, a white T-shirt subtly accentuating his musculature as he explains his craft.

The cast members of La Ronde, with Sergiy Mishchurenko (third from left) and Geniris Mena atop the giant disco ball.

Mishchurenko manages his feats without eating meat protein: vegan for one year, then vegetarian for five years, he was just recently persuaded by Sydney’s balmy weather and abundant fish to become an occasional pescatarian.

“If I eat red meat, it makes me heavy,” he says with a laugh, “mentally and physically”.

At 35, he contemplates his career longevity. “In my 20s, I was thinking at 30 I’d have to stop, but now I feel much stronger and better than when I was 20 because I have a better understanding of my body,” he says.

“While I have energy to perform, I will stay on stage. Then we’ll see: I can open a school; I have many students online and I can create a show.”

As one of the stars of La Ronde, a fast-paced circus by Australia’s Strut & Fret company that has just opened here, Mishchurenko contemplates whether he could apply to make the visit more permanent.

Sergiy Mishchurenko spinning gracefully through the air.

“My best friend from school in Ukraine, I met him now in Sydney, and I hadn’t seen him for 18 years. We were sitting together on one table from age seven to seventeen, and he left Ukraine for Australia straight after school.”

This building at 199 Cleveland Street has the hopes and dreams of many performers in its bones. Constructed in the early 1930s, it has been the State Rail Authority Trade Union Dance Hall and even reputedly an illegal casino and a brothel.

From the 1980s through to 2007, it was home to arts organisation Performance Space, and then the Giant Dwarf theatre till 2020. Strut & Fret, which stages other circus shows such as Blanc de Blanc, extensively renovated it three years ago, adding a mezzanine and artist-painted murals.

Mishchurenko was working in circus show Ohlala in Switzerland when Strut & Fret creative director Scott Maidment suggested he make his first visit to Australia to perform in La Ronde – in English, premiering in a Spiegeltent at the Adelaide Fringe Festival.

The audience seating is similar in this theatre box, though Mishchurenko notes the ceiling is lower, bringing him closer to people’s heads – he’d prefer more height. However, the temperature here is cooler than in the tent.

Singer Geniris Mena welcomes the audience to the show.

Senior Strut & Fret producer Jess Copas says the company’s shows have included several Ukrainian-born performers, including aerialist Diana Bondarenko, who also features in La Ronde.

“We just keep putting them in shows because their skills are incredible,” she says.

Yet Mishchurenko only began his aerial work after leaving Ukraine in 2012, having trained there as a dancer, to work at a variety theatre in Germany’s Rhineland. He stayed, and is now based in Cologne.

He returned to Ukraine to visit family – but on the last occasion, when he went back to get a tooth implant because the procedure is cheaper there than in Germany, the war with Russia broke out, and he couldn’t leave.

But with a flat and job in Germany, he finally escaped through the forest and returned to Central Europe.

“I ended up having to pay [much] more to leave Ukraine,” he laughs, unsure when he’ll return.

In contrast, Dominican Republic-born singer Geniris Mena, who introduces audiences to La Ronde and sings atop a giant silver disco ball, dreams of her home, where she would sing in the forest with family. She was seven when her mother, a cleaner, relocated her and her siblings to Madrid to improve their opportunities. She began her singing career at 15.

She sang all the main female roles in The Lion King, altering her pitch from soprano to mezzo to contralto, and performed as Diana Ross in the show Forever King of Pop, a musical about Michael Jackson.

Strut & Fret recruited her for this, her first Australian visit, as she was performing in a five-year residency at a club in Dubai.

Despite her global career, she returns to her mountainous, bucolic birthplace each year. “When you have issues, and your aeroplane lands there, you forget everything – it’s like magic,” she says.

“You can breathe there [and] we do our food at home, and it’s nothing like processed things.”

She dreams of a permanent home, of planting wholesome foods – but she loves Sydneysiders.

“When I go into shops, they ask, ‘How are you? What are you doing today?’