My Circus DNA - Nicolai Kuntz - Cirque du Soleil

My parents were already in circus when I was born. My father had a horse-riding act before. So I grew up in circus and I started my training as well early on, at the age of six years. Very early on, it was very clear to me that I wanted to become an artist. I started with acrobatics and flexibility and all the general stuff. I've also done acts like a Diablo juggling act and I've also been on the Wheel of Death before. And then once I turned 12, I specialised on swinging trapeze. And ever since then, I got hooked on it and love to do it still. I've always been travelling with the circus. I grew up in the circus, I grew up in a caravan. That's how I came to really enjoy also being on stage because as a kid, I saw all the performers every day and it fascinated me with what they were doing on stage. And growing up in that environment, I just really wanted to do the same. I grew up in a German circus and that one was touring in Germany mainly. We all lived with caravans on site at all times. The cities mostly were a lot shorter, so there was a lot more travelling involved. And the distances between cities would also be quite a bit shorter, so it would be just like 20 kilometres away. But mainly the biggest difference is that we all lived on site and helped each other out with everything that we could. So growing up, there were a lot of other children around. We had a school that was travelling with us, which was very convenient. More or less like a normal childhood, actually, because I would wake up in the morning and go to school with all my friends. And then in the afternoon, I would have my artistic training. And then there would still be enough time to play around and to joke around and to live a normal childhood, really. If I wanted to play, I would just walk 10 metres and knock on another caravan and be like, hey, you want to come out to play? It was very important to me and also to my parents that I first finish my school education before starting to work on stage. So that's exactly what I did. I started to work once I turned 17 years old. My parents were very supportive with everything when it came to work on stage and were generally also very supportive in all the other terms. If I would not have wanted to do circus, they would have been also more than fine with that. But they were also very happy that I wanted to do circus and that I wanted to become an artist. So Cirque was looking for the two best trapeze artists that are out there. And then the decision came to me and Roxanne together. And on top of that, because we know each other already for quite a while, we work really well together. Being now at Cirque du Soleil still feels sometimes surreal to me because it's been such a long dream that I had. It's still sometimes I cannot really grasp that I'm actually here and actually made it to work here. Yeah, just trying to enjoy as much as I can of it and trying to enjoy the tour and the community that we have around here. Every night when I finish the act and when I'm standing there and the people are cheering and applauding, that is one of the reasons why I'm doing this, to give joy to the audience and to let them escape their everyday life and come here and dream for a few hours and forget all of their troubles at home and just be astonished by what we do. And being reminded of that every single day is amazing.