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Acrobat earns trip to circus camp

A young acrobat isn’t about to run away to join the circus. She plans to earn her spot under the big top by doing the proper training.
Emma Shewfelt practices on the silks at Spectacle Blue Studio in Okotoks. The Grade 12 student has been accepted to the école Nationale de Cirque summer camp in Montreal.
Emma Shewfelt practices on the silks at Spectacle Blue Studio in Okotoks. The Grade 12 student has been accepted to the école Nationale de Cirque summer camp in Montreal.

A young acrobat isn’t about to run away to join the circus.

She plans to earn her spot under the big top by doing the proper training.

Emma Shewfelt, a Grade 11 student at Foothills Composite High School, was invited to attend the École Nationale de Cirque summer camp in Montreal after a pre-selection tour in Calgary in November.

“You spend the day doing different tricks for them to see,” Shewfelt said of the audition. “You have to do tumbling, show your flexibility, strength, dance and some acting.”

It was a bit of a boot camp for the young athletes.

“They asked us to show our flexibility — hold each foot for a minute, show our flexibility in our back and hips,” said Shewfelt, a member of Spectacle Blue Studios in Okotoks. “Then we had to show our strength. I did a lot of pushups.”

After showing her tumbling skills, she had to be quick on her feet.

“We had to do a dance and they gave up about two minutes to get ready,” Shewfelt said with a chuckle. “Then I had to act. I did an improv of a Disney princess.”

She got news just before Christmas that she had been selected for the camp.

For two weeks she will work on her skills in trapeze, silk ropes, partner-hand-balancing, drama and other activities.

Shewfelt joined Spectacle Blue approximately two years ago. The Okotoks studio specializes in aerial dance, acrobatics and puts on shows three times a year when the studio is transformed into a theatre.

It’s ideal for the effervescent Shewfelt, who got the circus bug after watching a Cirque du Soleil performance a few years ago.

“There were these girls on the trapeze and they were doing a trick and they just dropped to their ankles,” she said. “I was blown away and I said: ‘Hey I want to do that.’”

She joined Spectacle Blue after a successful stint in gymnastics, a sport which led her to an Alberta Winter Games gold medal in the bars in 2012.

She’s enjoying the transition to the circus-like sport.

“It (aerial acrobatics) is a lot more in the air, posing and putting on a show,” she said. “It’s a lot easier on my feet as compared to gymnastics — a lot of arm strength.”

At present she is working on the silks, trapeze, a hoop on rope, dance and is part of both the younger and adult performance company at Spectacle Blue.

“I love performing,” she said. “Silks is definitely the hardest, because you don’t get to sit at all. On the hoop trapeze, you go on, sit, do a trick and then you sit again. Silks, you’re up there constantly holding on… I’m pretty comfortably up there.”

Spectacle Blue creative instructor Robin Szuch said Shewfelt is a natural.

“She’s got a lot of genetics helping her,” Szuch said. “She has the right build, powerful and flexible. The other thing is she came from a gymnastics background, which is very technical, circus in an art form — you have to be able to act a little bit, dance a little bit — you have to be able to play a character… She has the technical skills and now she’s working on the artistic skills to back it up.”

The hard work has paid off.

“The National Circus School is the most prestigious training school in North America — there is a lot of competition to get in there,” Szuch said. “It’s an awesome experience.”

Shewfelt hopes to pursue a career in the circus after high school.

“The National Circus School does a college program that is three years,” she said. “I’m hoping to either go there or take kinesiology at university.

However, there is a cost. Shewfelt has set up a gofundme page at https://www.gofundme.com/tbed8qy4 to help cover expenses.

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