| It’s no fear and all fun at Dahab’s Circ Bonboni |
| By Kate Durham |
| It’s a pleasant April night and standing room only at the Coralia Club Dahab as the lights go up on three boys hanging from the tent rafters.Swaying in their harnesses, they clang out rhythms on metal drums fixed to the wall as the rest of the cast bounds across the stage to the beat, leaping, tumbling and twirling their flame-like fringes. Later, the audience moves outside to watch a troupe of pre-teens twirl real flames and spit clouds of fire into the air. Welcome to Circ Bonboni, Dahab’s all-children’s circus. With a cast ranging in age from four to 14, Bonboni occupies a strange place somewhere between amateur and professional — part theater, part circus, part school recital. No mainstream circus showcases somersaulting pre-schoolers, but then again, no primary school official would trust students to perform with live fire or dangle from hoops suspended in midair. Watching a Circ Bonboni performance, you realize that this is about more than just trust or talent. It’s about the children: This is their circus, and enthusiasm and commitment are the only prerequisites for joining. At the end of October, the Bonbonis are into the third of only eight rehearsals before the December 2011 opening of “Khilf Khilaf,” but future circus star Salma Ehab has bigger things on her mind than her hula hoop routine. “I’m four!” the birthday girl exclaims proudly — and repeatedly. Nearby, Kai Koops and Yonas Sabry, both five and a half and inseparable friends, wrestle like puppies until a volunteer patiently rounds them up to practice balancing on a horizontal ladder. The kindergarten session is an exercise in patience and stamina for Circ Bonboni instructors and organizers. The youngest of the young, like Salma, are first-time Bonbonis, fluttering about like birds. Kai and Yonas are among the veterans after earning their circus stripes playing the roles of “geckos and sunshine” in the April performance. And the adults, all volunteers, have to be more cheerleaders and shepherds than instructors as they try to keep the kids on track. While the four and five year olds practice, adults rig the uncovered tent frame with trapezes, bungee ropes and the flowing cloth tissues used for the aerial acts. The big kids, in grades one and higher, arrive around noon for a packed afternoon of workshops in juggling, unicycling, gymwheel, clowning, aerial skills and more. Over in the fire workshop, Samra Abdel Wahab is working on choreography, explaining to her young charges, “It’s all about drama.” Abdel Wahab has grown up with Circ Bonboni, performing in the fire acts since the first show in 2006. After absorbing everything her local teachers knew about fire, Abdel Wahab recalls, “I started researching on the internet and bought the stuff and started to practice on my own.” Now, at the venerable age of 14, she is Bonboni’s main fire instructor. As for the future, Abdel Wahab says, “Fire is more like a hobby for me. I want to be a physicist. But fire has a lot to do with physics.” Working tirelessly behind the scenes are the Circ Bonboni founders Regula Mahler Bashir and Tina Mandouh, both from Switzerland, along with Michelle MacKinnon, a Canadian who joined the organizing team in 2008. Bashir, described as the “soul of the circus” by her colleagues, is a professional contemporary dancer from Switzerland, where she helped found an aerial dance company that uses tissue and bungee ropes in performances. In the process, she made extensive connections with the circus community before moving to Dahab in 2000. “If you know how to work with children, you know how to work safely. We teach the children step by step by step by step.” Bashir's secret is to rely on experts; her circus friends come to Dahab to teach workshops throughout the year for the children and local instructors. Circ Bonboni held its first performance in 2006 with just 32 children; seven performances later, the circus has 80 kids and another 20 on a waiting list. For many Bonboni performers, the circus is a creative outlet, not a career path. The children are encouraged to try new skills, and expected to practice, but they are not pressured to perform. “I think that the best part of the circus is that people get to do their own special thing,” says Charla ‘Charlie’ Elgin, 11, who has also been with Bonboni since the first show. “There’s lots of numbers in the circus, and everyone has their favorite thing to do and they get to choose it. And you’re not being ordered around, you can do your stuff at your own pace.” Sporting a Cookie Monster T-shirt and a really big smile, nine-year-old Fatima Mandouh zips around the practice area on a unicycle, “It’s fun. You can learn stuff,” she says of her six performances with Bonboni. “I learned to do the unicycle here in the circus and I learned how to juggle, and now I’m learning how to do the bungee and stilts.” What the performers don't realize they're learning is confidence. Asked what the hardest part of the circus is, Fatima seems to think it is a silly question: “Nothing actually, nothing hard.” See the Show: Circ Bonboni • Coralia Club Dahab December 16 at 7pm, 17 at 3pm, 22 at 7pm, and 23 at 5pm. Ticket prices are LE 30 for adults, LE 15 for children (2–16 years). Reserve tickets in advance at the Pink Elephant in Dahab or by calling (012) 2218-0335. For all other information, please call (010) 0713-4988 or visit www.circbonboni.com. |
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