Wanted! Disabled swingers

A disabled acrobat is hoping his volunteers will perform at the 2012 opening ceremony. Kelly Mullan reports

Jean-Marie Akkerman, founder of Cirque Nova, plans to train disabled volunteers for what he hopes will be a performance in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games.

The first ten recruits start training in trapeze, juggling and stilt-walking this month. Rookie performers will attend the circus school on Saturdays trying out various skills to find what suits them. By 2012, Jean-Marie (right) aims to have at least a 40-strong troupe from throughout the UK.

Impairment needn’t be a barrier to learning circus skills. Adjustments can be made. Jean-Marie, the first disabled member in a family steeped in circus, undertook “severe training to a high level of skill” and achieved things he thought impossible at a circus school in Paris.

Born in a caravan in the Canary Islands, Jean-Marie says: “Circus is in my blood. As a boy, I was surrounded by lions, elephants and performing dogs.” However, as a teenager he endured violent homophobia intended “to make a man of me” and encountered prescriptive ideas about which body shapes could learn different skills; as a tall man he was apparently only qualified to be an animal tamer.

Pre-empting rejection, Jean-Marie left the family when he was diagnosed as HIV positive and given a year to live.

He joined a circus school in Paris, where he met radically different attitudes: “I discovered no matter what your size – fat, tall or small – you can work with whatever body you have to create something beautiful.” Jean-Marie has swung with this liberating idea and now adapts trapeze swings to enable wheelchair-users to fly through the air upside down.

His mentor was the founder of the first circus school in western Europe, Annie Fratellini: “She was six years terminally ill with cancer and we had a competition of who would die first. Annie Fratellini allowed a new movement of contemporary circus to develop. Traditional circus is showmanship and entertainment; contemporary circus can be art with something to say.”

Jean-Marie has used circus as a tool to promote HIV awareness and safe sex. Now he uses it to say “disabled people have abilities”. He first encoun­tered the idea of HIV as disability when he approached the Terence Higgins Trust after being dismissed from a job because of his diagnosis. They helped him bring a discrimination case against his employer and win compensation. Realising he would not be accepted in society as an HIV positive person, he created his own company.

Jean-Marie is evangelical on the benefits of circus training: trapeze work strengthens muscles and promotes independence, working in a team boosts confidence, coming up with routines stimulates creativity, and vigorous exercise staves off depression. Jean-Marie’s 2012 dreams for Cirque Nova are dependent on funding, but if you’d like to get involved, contact the school through www.cirquenova.com

• Follow the progress of the trainees via a blog at www.dadasouth.org.uk