Adding Circus To Your Act with Danys Hamel Part1

Danys hamel teaches circus skills for kids entertainers

Circus Skills Tips For Kids Entertainers

Hello from Canada. I’m Danys Hamel and I love performing a mix of circus, juggling and magic for children’s and family audiences. I have been a professional kids entertainer for 25 years. In this series for Kids Entertainer Hub I am going to cover 6 areas and give you some simple ways to include the extra theater that circus skills can add to your performances. As you can see we start of with simple (and I mean EASY) balancing …

1. Simple Balancing VIDEO

2. Advanced Balancing VIDEO

3. How To Start Juggling VIDEO

4. Advanced Juggling Tricks VIDEO

5. How To Ride a Unicycle VIDEO

6. Advanced Tricks With a Unicycle VIDEO

Why should you consider adding circus skills to your act?

First of all, kids love circus. Some of them maybe practice those kind of activities in the after school programs or in holiday workshops. Most people have tried to juggle at least with one ball, sometimes two … this immediately creates an unspoken bond, a rapport with these parts of your show. And for them, your are not just the magician who does impossible tricks, you can also do something that they have practiced once.

And most of all it’s fun! It demonstrates that you are a skilled performer plus it makes you different from your competitors. Don’t under estimate this. It will add great value to your show. You will now be able to sell it as a variety show… not just a magic show or just a face painter or just a balloon twister.

danys Hamel Kids Entertainer Circus Skills

It has been 25 years that I have been in business as a children’s entertainer. It has taken me a while but I now realize that children respond better when they are exposed to a large variety of disciplines in my show. Every 5-6 minutes, something different happens. An animal, a magic trick, a juggling story, a interactive routine with all the crowd, maybe a balancing act, a ventriloquism act, etc. And if for some reason somebody doesn’t like one part of my show, it isn’t too long before there is something fresh and new that will get them involved again. That’s my secret to keeping the attention of the crowd during and hour or an hour and half. Surprise them!

Some people are scared to incorporate circus skills as they consider it too hard. My suggestion to you is to start doing circus as a comedy… by that I mean clowning around using story telling… so if you miss something, there is no stress… you can make jokes with it. And often, you will have better reaction if you miss something hard at the beginning… It builds up the show, and when you eventually get it, you will have a better audience response and a bigger round of applause!

Make sure you don’t abuse on this… Otherwise it will work against you. It’s like everything, you have to practice a lot before performing on stage.

When you are very good at it, take it to the next level and synchronise it to music. You will have a powerful act that you can perform anywhere… I’m a French Canadian and I have performed in Algeria in front of Arabic people… Usually, circus pack small and play very big!

I hope I am able to convince you to add a touch of circus in your show.

This video shows how you can use a balloon to do some very simple balancing. If you are a balloon twister you could balance your creations on your nose before handing them out. This would separate you from your competitors. If you don’t use balloons, this is a perfect reason to get motivated to learn some simple creations.

Next time, I will explain you step by step how you can balance some trickier objects.