Olga Sidorova was born in 1974 in Ishim, a small Siberian town in central Russia where even a TV was a luxury.
She lived with her parents and as a hyperactive child who regularly got into trouble and says she felt like she was always disappointing her mother.
Her parents sent her away to be disciplined by her army general grandfather as a youngster, but instead, Olga was given absolute freedom as her grandfather adored her. It was with that freedom that she stumbled into a circus.
“Once I was walking down the street alone," she tells SBS Russian. “I saw a big white house. It seemed to me like some kind of temple, something magic. And when I entered, I saw people in the air and thought to myself that they must be angels, and if I could be an angel too, everyone would love me! I just knew that I must learn to fly like them, no matter what.”
She discovered there were circus schools in the neighbouring town of Tyumen, and announced to her mum and dad she would go there to learn.
Olga with her Granddad, an Army general Source: Supplied
“My poor parents knew that if they didn't let me go, I would just run away,” she says. “Dad said, ‘Let her go, she will be back in a week.’ And when the train doors closed, it suddenly hit me that from then on I was fully responsible for all the decisions in my life.”
‘Today I met the man who will teach me to fly’
In 1986 a 12-year-old Olga enrolled in all the circus schools she could find in that city, as schools were free in the USSR. She moved from place to place to find shelter and often fed herself and her pet dog with scraps from school cafeterias.
“I had my own training routine,” she says of the beginning of her circus schooling. “Before school and on the way home, my dog and I had to make a handstand on each step of a ladder. If one of us fell, we had to start all over again. I knew that I was short of time, I didn’t do any sport before, I had to push myself hard.”
She still remembers the nostalgic smell of her mother’s homemade salami, the memory of which almost saw her running home.
“It was so easy to return home with my mum, but the dream was stronger than me”.
Olga didn’t ask her parents’ permission to move to another city, Sverdlovsk, where she attended a larger circus school, nor for Moscow, the following destination in her astonishing journey. She says she practically made it to Moscow, more than 2000km from Ishim, by foot in 1989.
Olga spent all her free time training Source: Supplied
“I don't know how I got accepted [by the school in Moscow]. Only 10 places were available for girls that year and people applied from all over the USSR, mostly children from circus families or with an athletic background. They probably were smitten by my dedication and gave me a chance. I remember how I wrote in my diary: ‘Today I met my coach, the man who will teach me to fly’.”
Famous circus trainer Gennady Totukhov did not immediately take Olga into his class, but she went to all his lessons just to watch. In the end, he relented and began teaching her. From that point little else existed for Olga, except her trainer and the trapeze, which she sees not just as ‘equipment’ but as a living being.
“My coach became like a father to me,” she says. “We trained day and night. When I graduated I did not even realise that no one in the world could do the same tricks. I didn’t want to leave my coach, my trapeze. It was a tragedy that I then had to work and perform.”
Olga was offered several contracts when she graduated in 1995, one of which was for work in Australia, where she would have to go in two years. She signed it and completely forgot about it.
The circus was the whole world for Olga Source: Supplied
She had been working with the best circuses in Europe when, in November 1997, her agent called her: It was time to go to Australia.
“I didn’t speak English and knew nothing about Australia”, Olga recalls. “On the way from the Brisbane airport to the Gold Coast I saw a billboard with my photo on it and thought how cool that was".
Olga spent all her free time there in the circus arena with her trapeze, where her skill even outpaced the size of the arena.
"The organisers had to dismantle the roof of the circus, because I flew very high.”
Cirque du Soleil troupe Source: Supplied
A sense of belonging in Sydney
In 2000 Olga rented a car and travelled to Sydney to see the Olympics. It was a short trip, but she quickly felt connected to the city where she now lives.
“I believe that people do not always feel that they belong to the place where they were born,” says Olga. “I had never felt a connection to my hometown. But I got this feeling of belonging in Sydney, and it was such a strong feeling that I just wanted to kiss the ground.”
Olga was teaching at the NICA circus university in Melbourne when Cirque du Soleil approached her. She then worked with them for many years, traveling the world and finally got very tired.
“People changed, countries changed, only the trapeze stayed the same,” Olga says. “I started losing myself, and got sick of traveling. In the end, you want to belong to something in life, and for me it was Sydney.”
In Sydney, Olga founded a circus school, Dancing in the Air, in 2009, and became a dedicated coach. She married a wonderful man and at 43 gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
Olga with her family Source: Supplied
Olga says that when she first saw her son she felt the love and connection for which she had looked all her life. She compares this love with her attachment to the trapeze.
“It’s the same, like a circle,” Olga says. “Sometimes you have to leave it, but you always come back.”
