Life in a twist

Juliaya Cheglakova performs in the Aqua Show. More than a circus act, the act combines dancing, acrobatic stunts, aerial acts, motorbike derring-do and jet-ski stunts - all simulcast on a massive video screen.[Photo/China Daily]

Supple Russian puts her body to the test every day in a circus show. Shi Yingying grabs a front-row seat at a Shenzhen outdoor theater.

SHENZHEN, Guangdong - For nearly 16 years, since she was only 6 years old, Juliya Cheglakova has been a circus performer. But in 2010 the 22-year-old Russian girl took her act out of freezing Siberia and came to the warm city of Shenzhen in Southern China.

"I picked the city," giggles Cheglakova. "It was in Shanghai that I made my debut performance (in China), but I'm never a fan of a metropolis. I saw this city facing the big blue sea with green mountains as backgrounds on my flight as I traveled, and it was Shenzhen. I told myself, 'That's it!'"

Unlike in Siberia, "you don't have the terrible flu caused by the weather here, nor the one-month-long only summer. In Shenzhen, you have the unlimited free sunshine," said Cheglakova, who added that she's a good swimmer.

Squeezing her amazingly flexible body through narrow tubes and balancing on her hands, Cheglakova is now one of the leading performers in the resort and theme park of OCT East Shenzhen. She's the one who never stops smiling once onstage.

The red-haired girl recalls her childhood memories, all associated with the circus. "Papa and mama brought me to the circus when I was 4 and I fell in love with it immediately," she said. "The atmosphere (at the circus) was so good. You've got kids my age playing with tigers and lions - let alone the breathtaking aerial acts."

Two years after little Juliya made her decision of becoming a circus performer, she started her journey at age 6. "I didn't understand why other kids were crying so hard during practice," she says. "Every movement was easy for me.

"If there was any person in my family against me joining the circus, that would be my mother. She always wanted me to learn to play accordion rather than 'break my neck'," says Cheglakova. "But in Russia, performing in circus is a well-paid job and has fairly good reputation, so she finally compromised."

The young star says the circus has been the pride of Russian culture for more than two centuries and almost every big city in Russia has its own circus. "I watched a Chinese acrobat performance and it's quite different from ours," she said.

Cheglakova's workplace, an open-air theater, sits at the foot of the mountain. "I can never get bored with Shenzhen even though I'm living 30 kilometers away from city center," she says. "We've got performers from Brazil, Canada, Australia, UK, US and Ukraine and it's like a small United Nations.

"We sneak out to the beach for football and swimming to the city for sauna and Chinese massage after the show," she says. "You know how much the Russians love sauna!"

In her spare time, Cheglakova cooks Chinese food and invites friends to her dorm to have a bite. "I can do pretty good egg fried rice and sometimes Chinese bone soup," she said.

Surprisingly, Cheglakova is also a current engineering student at Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas - one of the top students, as a matter of fact.

"The study system in Russia allows me to do full-time work and part-time study at the same time," she said.

"I spend two months a year studying and I'm flying back to the country next week to attend the examination."

She says she thinks circus performing is more exciting and fun than working at a computer desk, "but it's just the back-up option to become engineer - you know, in case you get old and can't do the circus anymore."