Sep 17, 2018
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My guest today is contortionist and contortion instructor Serchmaa Byamba.
As a young girl, Serchmaa was inspired by a Contortion act she watched on Mongolian National TV. She began her performance career as a state sponsored artist in 1989 when Mongolia was still a communist country. After the Monogolian Revolution of 1990, she was free to work with whatever company she wanted and chose to work with a traditionally ethnic Mongolian folk art troupe following her belief that contortion is not just a circus act, but an ancient cultural artform. She was and still is, Asian ever to be invited to participate in European Youth Circus Festival where she won the “Golden Elephant” award and was named the golden girl of Contortion.
In 1998, Serchmaa moved to USA. She toured with a circus for a year toured, and then decided to stay close to her family in San Francisco, CA. After settling in, Serchmaa started performing as an independent contractor and has even appeared in the movies, “Minority Report”
Serchmaa teaches private and group contortion classes in San Francisco. Her students range from 5 years old to 35 years. They perform in many local and international shows and circus’ and they train hard every day.
This podcast is dedicated to CIRCUS. Aerialist, Shannon McKenna interviews guests from acrobats in Cirque du Soleil to circus therapists and everyone in between. Learn the backstage lives of those who flip, twist, sparkle, and shine under the big top.
Shannon McKenna is an internationally recognized circus
performer and coach. For the past decade, she has been a freelance
artist: giving workshops and classes across 7 countries and worked
on both traditional and contemporary circus shows in the US,
Portugal, Germany, and Australia including the Shrine Circus and
SOAP. She holds a BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts with a
concentration on post-modern physical theater (how's that for a
mouthful?). She founded The Artist Athlete in 2018 as a means to
produce educational materials about circus arts including a line of
e-books to help aerial artists train safely and a podcast in which
she interviews experts in the industry about their careers. If
you're reading this, you're probably listening to it. Thank
you!
She currently lives in whichever circus community is the
warmest.
Find her online: www.theartistathlete.com
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