Can you imagine having the opportunity to travel the world with a famous circus – and taking your family with you? For Vitali Tomanov, it’s a reality.
Moscow-born Vitali and his brother Roman are the ‘Siamese Twins’, who perform in Cirque du Soleil’s Kurios – Cabinet of Curiosities.
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Kurios premiered in 2014, and has since been performed around the world, including Canada, the US, Japan and Singapore.
Vitali’s wife, Olga, and their children, Elizabeth and Pavel, follow Vitali – who has been a circus performer since he was 16 – joining him at every destination.
Even though there are hardships to life on the road, Vitali believes it’s important for his children to be exposed to new environments.
“The kids can see lots of cultures, new people and areas. When I was a kid, I never saw this. It’s a good opportunity for them to see the whole world and not just continue seeing the same thing,” says the 37-year-old.
“It was a hard decision but we’re glad we did it because right now we will appreciate it and we’re staying together as a family.”
While Elizabeth, 11, and Pavel, 8, aren’t part of the show, Vitali shows them the ropes of circus performing in his free time.
The children also have the opportunity to train alongside other talented artists in Cirque du Soleil.
“It takes a long time to get to the level where the kids are at. Even doing one pull-up, it will take years of work in order to do it. It’s not as easy as it looks,” Vitali says.
“We’re pretty much looking at it like physical training because every kid, at all ages, should do some. When they’re not in school, we try to create our own school that would include this physical ability and training.”
In addition to their training, Olga home-schools the children. “We’re going to keep travelling to different countries so we need to have the option of home-schooling,” Olga tells New Idea.
“I teach them mentally and Vitali teaches them physically. Besides that, we are just normal parents … we try to be normal parents!”
Even though Kurios hasn’t changed since its premiere, Vitali still loves what he does and finds that with each show, he still learns something new.
“Each routine is always the same, the character is always the same, [but the company is] always trying to find new things for us, so it’s not going to be boring,” he explains.
“Like when you try to do the same thing every day, you get tired of it. It’s six years we’ve been doing this and I’m still not tired.”
Kurios runs at Sydney’s Entertainment Quarter until December 29, in Brisbane from 10 January, Melbourne from 12 March, Adelaide from 29 May and Perth from 15 July.
Book tickets now at cirquedusoleil.com.
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