We were lucky to catch up with Olga Shutiak recently and have shared our conversation below.

Olga, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I started my sport career as an acrobat when I was 3 years old, so, basically I grew up in sport school being trained by my mom. So basically, I would say I´m acrobat since I was in my mom´s belly.

I remember once she brought me to a circus show in my hometown and then, I realize my dream about to be an circus artist. I clearly remember this magical world and atmosphere of the stage, performers, artist and this feeling got me really stunning and inspired, when your a kid around 6 years, the only thing I wanted to do at that moment it was to be a clown or a monkey trainer (I still want haha!) But, for me that was the first moment I could picture I wanna be a part of this magic and fantastic world, I wanted to be one of them and belong to this stage. It was about 2 hours of people doing incredible and unbelievable things and I could not stop staring this amazing show.

Olga, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My career started very soon at my childhood. My mom was also an acrobat and as I said, I was born with acrobatic genes in my blood. I started at 3 years old in sport trained by my mom, who was pushing me really hard in the very good way to improve my skills and become a professional sport kid, then I´ve had my first competition at 4 yo, and I won my first medal in there. This competition motivated me to keep pushing my self and get better in this path.

For me, sport life is an inspirational, beautiful but tough life, just the fact to belong to a world where you can improve and make strong your body and specially your mind is a bless, but also is a world full of pressure, hours of training, body pain, judgement and at some point is hard to not fall in this mindset of rivalry, but this doesn´t cut the fact of how this life can shape yourself in many different ways. I´ve being involved my whole life in this environment improving myself. But, I would say the most important part of my motivation to get into this lifestyle it was my mom, I´m who I´m because of her and this discipline and life makes me feel absolutely connect forever with her.

I would say, one of my more important achievements in my sport career it was being a part of “National Team of Ukraine” and being able to get my “Master of Sport of Ukraine”, but somehow, I´ve decided to shift my life and switch from sport career to circus career and pursue my dream of being an circus artist, so I joined “Acro Trio Essence” and suddenly my life changed completely. My first big unexpected project was being a part of Disney movie “Dumbo”, honestly I thought that I was dreaming haha! my dream was about to become an circus artist, and here I am, part of the cast of a Disney movie about circus, I still can´t believe it.

Since then, I´ve been working in many different circus shows and theaters around the world representing my country in countries like Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Croatia, South Africa, Slovakia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Argentina and currently United States.

.
I´ve had performed in prestigious theaters like Folies Bergere in Paris , Wintergarden Theater in Berlin, Hansa Theater in Hamburg, Et cetera in Bochum, I also was touring for 2 years around Spain with Circo Magico, Le Cirque with the world top performres in Italy, Circus Theater Roncalli, and currently I´m part of the artist cast of Cirque Du Soleil BAZZAR just finished the South American Tour and currently touring The United States.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Being surrounding by so many artist and acrobats from different cultures and countries, sharing our experiences and growing together. I think the best way to improve in your life is to understand how many different can be the life in different cultures, nationalities, countries and even disciplines. The circus world give you the opportunity to learn everyday from different point of view of people, and also share your own cultures and philosophy of life. Live the creative world, with creative people, facing challenges, friendship, duties, parties and family moments with people who with the time becomes your loved, is one of the most inspiring and beautiful ways to live your life.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I would say that my mission as an artist is to be able to inspire people through my art and discipline, same as it happened to me as a kid getting inspired first by my mom,and then by those amazing circus artist who got me impressed for the very first time, for the people I am surrounded by. Sometimes we don´t know how much impact we could have in the people who´s there watching every show.

As an artist who work developing dreams, hope, laughs, skills and many other things, exposing ourselves everyday and giving dreams to the audience, I would like to be able to be an inspiration in anyway.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @essence_olga_shutiak, @trioduoessence

Image Credits
I have the rights of all the pictures