Iheard I could get high on a field in Obs. So I drove there with a friend and found grass — a huge, green grass lawn dotted with black tyres and sandpits and a contraption that looked like a space launch pad. But the poles, ropes, ladders, nets and swings made it look more like circus equipment — which is what it was.
We were at the South African National Circus School in Observatory to meet founder, contortionist and former World champion trapeze artist, Dimitri Slaverse, and his wife, Nicky, also a high flyer.
A large black sign read: ‘Gladiators are you ready?”And ready I was — to hit the trampoline. But my friend was dressed, rather inappropriately, in a brown suede skirt and Chinese denim one-inch-heeled slippers that restricted her to spectatorship. ‘I’m contemplating whether or not to jump,” she said as she lit up a smoke.
I was summoned to join the couple, on the launch pad. I raced up a ladder adjoining a swing 11m high. They were up there wearing fluorescent lycra bodysuits — Dimitri in white, Nicky in pink and their 13 year-old daughter, Roxanne, in orange. The only absent family member was 18-month-old Zion. ‘We built him a mini trapeze of his own, over a sandpit, in our back yard,” said Nicky, who wore a T-shirt with ‘Fresh Addict” emblazoned on it.
‘There are lots of addicts here on Monday nights,” she told me. ‘The oldest is a 58-year-old ex-professor, but he still swings in a harness.”
She convinced me that without a harness I would feel free and, for a split second, that made sense. As winds blew, clouds shifted and time sped up, I dabbed chalk on my palms from a bulging tennis sock. This is how it’s done in the circus, Nicky told me as she caught a bar flying my way, something I needed to grab.
‘I’m trusting you,” I said as my feet left the ground and I flew. ‘Trust yourself!” yelled Nicky. Hooking my knees over the bar, I let go with my arms and hung upside down like a pendulum. I let go, literally, and landed on a green net that looked a little like the kind used to bag vegetables.
Dimitri has had years of experience as a trapeze artist: ‘I was doing acrobatic acts in my township [Hanover Park] before I joined the Boswell Wilkie Circus at 17 and became one of a handful of single trapeze artist and ‘heel catchers’ in the world.”
He toured worldwide for 17 years and returned to South Africa with his wife nine years ago. ‘At first we put a net on the beach and charged people R1 a jump.”
Then in 2003 they decided to share their talents with the public and started teaching trapeze on Monday evenings. They have also set up a development initiative teaching children from township schools, with the aim of establishing South Africa’s first Circus Arts School for underprivileged people.
‘You can swing all night until your muscles get sore,” Dimitiri mused. ‘But you must tell yourself that every time is like the first time — you should never get too confident.” Nothing, though, could beat that first high.