THE BALLOON MAN

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Circus performers in King’s Lynn keeping in touch with crisis-hit Ukraine

The four Ukrainians with Circus Mondao, which has come to King's Lynn.

Picture: Matthew Usher.

from: edp24.co.uk

by David Bale

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Four Ukrainians in the Circus Mondao act now playing in King’s Lynn are having to put thoughts of their crisis-hit homeland to the back of their minds.

Boston-based Circus Mondao is back in Lynn with a brand new production that includes two clowns, Mila and Alex Manger and two trapeze artistes, Nina Babicheva and Andrii Babichev from Ukraine.

While they are all excited about performing for the first time in the UK, they are understandably desperate to keep up to date with what’s happening in their homeland.

Nina Babicheva left Ukraine last month when she said the trouble seemed to be confined to the capital city, Kiev.

In the last month the country has hit the headlines across the world with the pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych being ousted by anti-government demonstrators backing closer ties with the European Union.

Russian troops have now moved into the Crimean region of Ukraine with international observers set to be deployed to the country.

Nina Babicheva comes from the central part of the country and is neither particularly pro-European Union nor pro-Russian.

She said: “The problem is that people in the west of Ukraine want closer ties with the European Union and people in the east of Ukraine want to be closer to Russia.

“What we want is to see Ukraine return to being a peaceful country. If people want to be closer to EU it’s okay, and if they want to be closer to Russia, that’s okay too. Please, we don’t want war.”