The tiny town of Te Anau

On Wednesday we started tent up in Te Aneu. The king poles were up, large parcels of tent were lumped on the lot ready to be laid out, and a scattering of tired performers lay by the chuck wagon with cups of tea, eagerly awaiting dinner. Luke was up on his ladder practicing a new trick and Briar was no where to be seen, some times we all just needed to take space from the group.

The three day tent up progressed, marketing continued and in between jobs, we found time for extra moments of training. Luke continued to work on some new free standing ladder balances and I practiced new hoop material. We returned to living on the bus and were parked up on the far side of the tent.. so far, bookings were high and everything was about to launch into action as our opening show was about to start..

Saturday morning was the first show.. we stumbled out of bed and crawled into costume via coffee and a handful of jobs. 11am seemed to rush at us like a bull at a flag and in no time I was dancing on stage and spinning in a pretty tangle of trapeze and glitter. It was a full house. So full that we had to put out extra seating at the start of the show and had extra audience members sitting on spare ring boxes.

They were lively, cheerful and so energetic! 80% of our audience were screaming children who were fueled on candy floss and sugar - at half time we had to pluck them from the ring and the support poles of the tent and prevent them from literally bouncing off the walls. They were so much fun - but a little hard to grasp when you have had little sleep and are running on coffee!