42-4,p20

"What's Most Important"

by Sergei Ignatov

Ignatov Tells His Story of Discipline & Desire - Part I

Translation by Christopher Majka from an article in a Soviet circus magazine.

Photos courtesy of Karl-Heinz Ziethen.

This morning I awoke a few minutes before my alarm. While I was trying to guess the time the clock rang.

Seven o'clock - my working day begins. I get up and drink a glass of hot water or rosehip tea with honey.

I spend about an hour warming up. I pay attention to all my muscles and try to loosen any that are tight from yesterday's work. Today my head is clear and I feel well. My body is ready and my muscles are relaxed, testifying that yesterday I did everything well. My work was not in vain.

Only a daily program of exercise and rest allows a person, over a short period of time, to renew strength. My muscles are rested, relaxed and ready to undertake new work. I have a light breakfast and head out to the circus.

For 20 years I've been in it and it's in me. Time reduces, extols, cleans, erases and puts everything in its place. It gives us the possibility to understand the present, reflect on the past and look toward the future - thinking beyond the present and transient. About some they say - "they were," about others - "they were and are," and about others yet - "they were, are and will be."

From the district with the school we always ran to the circus on Tsvetnoi Boulevard, no. 13. We admired the exceptional technique of Alexander Kiss.

Sigmund Chemyauzkaz was an enigma. Then we understood his astonishing human qualities. It seemed to us that we, like his contemporaries, could call him "Sig." The equestrian juggler Nikolai Olkhovnikov worked lightly with a sense of irony toward all those around him. He juggled well but the most important thing for Olkhovnikov was always himself.

We liked the circus. We might not understand everything but we were all crazy about Edward Abert and Leonid Yengibarov. Abert didn't work in the ring, he lived in it. He thought in juggling clubs and was their poet. He became a unity with them and each time he performed he was different. He could do it all: smile, move, stop and, of course, juggle like no one else. One day his work could be inspired, the next day mediocre but he never tried to deceive us. And in whatever he did in the ring we could sense his talent and his nature.

As spectators we already started to see the circus not just as a marvel. There awoke in us a need for a contact between spectators and performers. The circus started more and more to signify artistry and its exponents were the performers.

We wanted to juggle like Alexander Kiss, ride horses like Nikolai Olkhovnikov and climb the ladder like Sigmund Chernyauzkaz. And above all we dreamed of becoming Aberts or Yengibarovs. And we worked. Our first year at circus school came to an end.

I'm riding on a train from Simferopol to Sverdlovsk. In the wagon beside me and my grandfather, Ivan Petrovich Ignatov. are three horses from the Teplovi juggling routine. My grandfather worked as their handler and groom and I went to visit him regularly in one city or other for my three month vacation. Their appearance in Simferopol had come to an end and now we were headed for Sverdlovsk in a freight car.

My grandfather was the first branch on what is today becoming a circus family tree which, it seems, is not about to wither. He was then almost 70 and I was only 16.

The train rattles - my grandfather sits on a sack of oats. He smacks his burnt lips and sips lime-coloured tea, gathered by me, from a glass. He was born in the deep wilds around Voronezh. He speaks with a backwoods accent saying: "I look across the threshold of the door and out jumps the sun." There he sits, and his bald head shines like the sun in the comer of the wagon. The chains rattle to the rhythm of the rails. The planks on which the horses stand creak. Sometimes a horse neighs. But even when we're both silent the wagon feels full of warmth. Today, after many years, I want to call all that romantic. I experienced it and at the time I wanted that journey to last forever. Today I dream that I could repeat it.