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As a couple who run a circus, Charice Rust and Jonathan Morgan have learned the importance of work-life balance.
In the past decade, the Melbourne pair have juggled home life with touring the world in their acrobatic troupe, One Fell Swoop. It’s taken time, and practice, to perfect.
“We had to learn some boundaries, like try not to ask the other person, ‘have you done that thing you needed to do’ at 11pm, before going to sleep,” Morgan says. “We’re pretty good at that now.”
Tension, however, can be a force for good, they say.
It’s one of the themes behind their new show, In Common, that the couple and four other acrobats will perform at the South Side Festival in Frankston next Saturday.
In the show, the troupe work together to build an apparatus, resembling giant pick-up sticks from poles and cables, and demonstrate gravity-defying feats on it, involving trust and risk.
Morgan says: “It’s about those invisible safety nets and the lines of tension that holds communities together. And the way that, once you build those structures, you can flourish within them.”
He says participants might feel they can take risks, and be caught if they fall, such as the audience might also feel if they take a stand on an issue in the community.
Morgan and Rust went out on a limb by founding One Fell Swoop in 2016 after they both graduated from the National Institute of Circus Arts in Prahran.
To date, the circus has performed everywhere from Canada to China, and in August, they will perform for the second time at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Morgan and Rust say they have complementary skills in running the circus: Morgan is a mechatronics engineer who until recently – as well as performing in the circus – worked on the University of Melbourne’s SpIRIT satellite project.
Rust says Morgan is “better at budgets, numbers, engineering and rigging, and I look after tour co-ordination, the artists and relationship building”.
While Rust gained an arts degree before NICA, she has been acrobatic since childhood.
On visits to her family’s farm in western Victoria, Rust would stand on her uncle’s shoulders, do handstands on tractors, and walk along fence-tops.
She says making a living in the arts is not easy, but working with your partner can help.
“Rehearsal days are long and hard,” Rust says. “I know that when I’m running out of words and energy, Jonathan can take over.
“Just having someone there to do it all with is amazing,” Rust says.
Testing new concepts and moves for a show takes courage, as well as trial and error.
“So having your partner, someone you trust, that you can share that with is pretty incredible,” Rust said.
One Fell Swoop Circus will perform twice on Saturday, May 9, at 1pm and at 7.30pm, at Frankston Arts Centre. The South Side Festival is on from May 8 to 17 in Frankston.
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