Omnium is a new American circus troop. Lisa B. Lewis is the creator and proprietor. Tersit Asefa Dersu is the juggler. Evgeny Vasilenko does Cyr wheel and slackwire. Tiffany Riley and Dick Monday are the skill clown team. There are altogether ten separate acts in the two hour show (with a 15 minute intermission).
Tiffany and Dick jazz up the down time between acts with clumsy recaps, comic bits, sight gags, and juggling. He balances 9 cigar boxes and together they create soap bubble patterns and sculptures. They do fake “pull the table cloth out of the table” shtick, and they bring six children up on stage to play a tune on bells. Between the sillyness are some high level skills and great comic timing.
Evgeny Vasilenko sends the Cyr wheel across the stage and runs and leaps in flawlessly. He rides on it inside and out, and holds on for the penny spin and figure 8 with only two contact points.
After the intermission he walks, runs, and dances on a slackwire. Then a one-arm handstand and no-hands headstand. He does a lateral spin and back flip. He tosses a hat, does a forward roll, and catches it. Then, while still on the wire jumps on a rola bola.
He makes the difficult look easy and doesn’t resort to ‘missing on purpose.’
Tersit Asefa Dersu is the toss and bounce juggler. Her corner apparatus bounce work is dynamic and original with many patterns and a superb overall effect. The progression is less of the “and look what else I can do” reasoning, but rather an organic progression of graceful difficulty and mastery.
She goes from a five ball force bounce to five up cascade and pirouette. Then 7 balls in a lift bounce with increasingly lower and lower throws. Finally five balls with an acrobatic back sprint and a flex leg split and seven again in the dark with glow balls.
Tersit is the final act and ends the show to a thunderous ovation. She is originally from Ethiopia and trained in Addis Ababa with the Ethio Selam Circus School.
Some of the other acts include contortionist Elayne Kramer from Argentina who won the Bronze Clown at the International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo in 2008. She does contortions and hand stands and shoots a bow and arrow upside down with her feet and hits the target. She really bends over backwards for you.
The King Charles Troope play basketball while on unicycles. The troop was founded in 1969 and performed with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey’s circus in Madison Square Garden. Originally they played another team(non-unicyclers) but now they play against each other which saves space on the bus.
Ottavio Geundo and wife Naomi are crossbow dare-devils who have two Guinness world records. They finish with Ottavio shooting an apple placed on Naomi’s head á la William Tell.
Rik Daniels is a champion gymnast and acrobat specializing in pommel horse.
Jen Bricker-Bauer and husband Dominik Bauer do aerial silks and trombone.
Owen Sanchez is a Mexican hand balancer and equabralistics expert.
Concerning the fact that the performers are of various races, creeds, colors, and sexes, and includes some who are deaf or have no legs, Founder Lisa B. Lewis says,”The mission of Omnium is to include the beautiful mosaic of humans who make up our world creating joy and entertainment for all- no matter the bodies they inhabit.”
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- from left, Tiffany, Dick, Rik, Evgeny, Lisa, Elayne
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- Tersit seated
Lisa is a graduate of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Clown College and a graduate of Brandeis University and New York University with an MA in clown and circus history. She worked with Big Apple Circus and co-founded the Super Scientific Circus.
Her reward is the look of wonder on the faces of the audience, especially the children who want to join the circus and now all of them, no matter what, can do it.
Omnium finished a successful run at The New Victory Theater in New York in April and continue to tour.
Raphael Harris
Raphael Harris was the proprietor of the Jerusalem Circus School for Children for over ten years. He has performed "Sir Juggley's One Man Circus" over a thousand times. He appeared in the Guiness Book of World Records twice and the Record Setters Book of World Records three times. He lives in New York.