“Harry the Third”. Photo by Glasses Beard from Menų spaustuvė archive

Young circus artist Monika Neverauskaitė’s (b. 1990) interest in movement started from dance. In 2010, she completed a Norwegian folk dance course at the Manger Folkehøhskule in Norway. Neverauskaitė began her contemporary circus studies in Denmark where she attended Performers House school in Silkeborg in 2011. In 2015, she gained a Bachelor’s degree in contemporary circus at the Codarts University for the Arts in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Between 2015-2017, she continued circus art studies at the Lido art Centre in Toulouse, France. In 2020, Neverauskaitė was deepening her professional circus art training within the Proffessionalisation programme at the same school under the new name, Ésacto’Lido.

The young circus artist predominantly works with the Cyro wheel: a hoop made from aluminium or steel pipe of slightly larger diameter than a performer’s height, used on the circus stage for the first time in 1997, which a performer(s) moves from the inside or around themselves when performing acrobatic tricks.

Since 2018, Neverauskaitė has been working with the French circus troupe Compagnie L’MRG’ée. She has acted in the play Des Bords de Soi (2018) and currently plays a part in the performance Médusées, which is still being developed and should premiere in summer 2021. She also creates mono performances under the nickname Soloneviena. Neverauskaitė has participated in circus performances and shows in Lithuania, the Netherlands, France and Sweden.

In 2018, Neverauskaitė participated in the Art Printing House’s international residency programme Print Art on Stage and presented a draft of a mono-performance Haris 3-čiasis (Harry the Third). It is a story about loneliness and fragility, fragility that is inherent in each of us but mostly kept hidden from the outside world. In this performance, the Cyro wheel collides with eggs and operates on the same plane of the stage floor simultaneously. How far can such a game go? In both classical and modern circus, risk is one of the key elements, and in this work, it becomes a link connecting everything.

monika.neveraus@gmail.com https://soloneviena.wixsite.com