There's a largely unexplored route to being one of the cool kids in high school: Learn how to soar on the flying trapeze. "It was exciting, it was physical, and it was cool," said Marin native Brennan Figari. "There aren't many people in high school who take flying trapeze lessons. But I didn't realize it would end up being a career."
For the past four years, that career has been with "Odysseo," the newest attraction from the Cavalia company created by Cirque du Soleil co-founder Normand Latourelle that first visited San Francisco in 2004.
Figari is one of 45 performers in the production, but they are outnumbered by a horse population of 65. Those who saw Cavalia in its two previous big-top productions know that the main attraction is the maned contingent, but "Odysseo" has been designed to outdo its forerunner with amped-up acrobatics, special effects, equine feats, and sheer size.
"It's twice as big as the show you saw before," said 28-year-old Figari, one of two out-gay performers in the troupe. He was on the phone from Winnipeg, where the show was running prior to its move to San Francisco for a five-week run beginning Nov. 19. "It's very different from the first Cavalia, but it still retains that emotion of the relationship between horses and humans. You're really seeing what can be achieved when you and the horses are working together and have that mutual trust."
While Figari does work with horses in several scenes, his specialty doesn't happen in the saddle. He's featured in a carousel scene with performers synchronizing their movements as the poles they hang from as well as the merry-go-round itself rotate, but his spotlight solo is his work with a simple hoop, with which he performs not-so-simple maneuvers.
"It's basically a solid-steel hoop that's suspended from the ceiling, and it's on a swivel," Figari said. "There's a lot of spinning and there's a lot of flight and lifts and descends and balance poses that need a lot of strength. And when you spin faster, that adds a whole different element, with the centrifugal force giving the hoop a life of its own."
A year or so ago, he added what can be best described as a neck hang, a move he created on his own. "Another great thing about having a solo," he said, "is that I'm able to work with our artistic director to keep changing things so that it stays fresh for me and I get to push my limits."
All of this began with a family vacation to a Club Med in Mexico when Figari was 15. "It's one of those all-inclusive resorts, and you can go scuba diving or play tennis or hop on a flying trapeze," he said. "I figured a little adrenalin rush would be good, so I climbed up that rickety ladder, and they hooked me into safety lines, and off I flew."
Figari began taking after-school classes at Trapeze Arts in Oakland, and then came a stab at college, where marine biology was his main interest. "After quite a few lengthy conversations with my parents, we just realized that because 100% of my attention was directed toward performing, it didn't make sense to waste money and time and stress on schooling."
Much of Figari's early professional experience came on cruise ships, where he was part of the entertainment lineups. "I was able to see a lot of the world and have somebody pay me to do it," he said. "It was almost too good to be true."
Figari was living in Las Vegas when he flew to Quebec to audition for Odysseo, and ended up living there for seven months as the show was assembled. Odysseo and Figari will be giving their 1000th performance during the SF run, and he's not sure how long he'll stay with the show or what life will be like after it.
"I'm just taking it one day at a time," he said. "But I still love doing the show, and every day I'm learning something new." The downside? "There are definitely some weeks when I do get homesick and wish I could drive a couple of minutes and hang out with my sister and have dinner with my parents. I'm so happy we're going to be in San Francisco during the holidays. This will be the first Christmas I'll be home in five years."
And what about romance? "I don't even know what that is," he joked. "We're in a new city every couple of months, so it's hard to build something meaningful in that amount of time, and on the flipside, if you're going out with someone on tour you're stuck with them 24/7. Fortunately, I have never been in a situation where I've been tempted to do that."
Being out and gay has been a non-issue with "Odysseo." "What matters most is your talent and your attitude," he said. "A lot of people in the show have done shows before, so it's not like they're coming from some teeny tiny village in Eastern Europe and have no idea what kind of liberal world they're being thrown into. There was one girl from Belarus who I worked with on cruises who had no concept of what being gay is. I had to explain it to her."
Figari was a contestant on TV's "America's Got Talent," but dropped out when the chance to do "Odysseo" came along. On talent competition shows, producers try to build personal stories around the contestants, but have also been known to counsel gay competitors to keep that private if they want to maximize the viewers' votes.
"If you're so focused on how other people are perceiving you that's just that much less time and energy you can put into discovering what you want to do and create," Figari said. "With Odysseo, I know no one's going to vote me out."