Today we’d like to introduce you to Michelle Kolev Nicole Kolev.
Hi Michelle Kolev, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We are half Italian and half Bulgarian, but we were born and.raised in Italy.
We are 27 year old (Michelle) and 24 year old (Nicole).
We are the fourth generation of an italian traditional circus family. Our mother was a lion trainer while our father was a gymnast in Bulgaria who -due to an injury- joined the circus when he was about 15 years old.
Together they created a flying trapeze act named “the flying Wulber” who toured around Europe for several years.
My sister Nicole and I were part of our family flying trapeze act before being introduced to the “hand to hand” discipline by our first coach Aguamado Merzari back in 2014, who thought it was a great idea for us to prepare an acrobatic act which is usually and mostly ever been performed by man.
Therfore he taught us the basics of that discipline using his personal experience and knowledge from the years he had been performed that same act with his brother.
It took us 4 years to prepare our performance while we were touring around Europe with our family. We were lucky enough to encounter 2 other amazing performers throughout those four years who helped us shape and finalise our act, our skills and exercises named Karim Messoudi and Omar Liazeed.
With the help of these 3 coaches we were finally able to build our performance in order to present it in front of an audience in November 2018. Since that day we had been presenting our hand to hand act in front of the audience of several European countries as France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Hungary, Netherlands and we competed in 2 International Circus Festivals which are competitions where artists from all the world come together to compete against one another presenting their performances in the hope of winning Gold, Silver and Bronze prizes along with the opportunity of receiving future work engagements.
We participated in the Nikulin Circus Festival in Russia and in Budapest Circus Festival in Hungary where we won respectively Gold and Silver Prize.
Thanks to our participation in these competitions we also have been noticed by Cirque su Soleil talent scout who offered us to be part of their signature show Mystère in Las Vegas for their reopening right after the pandemic in 2021. And for this reason we have moved our family to the US and we are still living in Las Vegas and we are part of Mystere until this day.
In January 2024 we have also competed to the greatest Circus Festival in the world which is the International Circus Festival of Monte-Carlo which is compered to the Olympic Games for Gymnastics, where we won the Golden Clown with our hand to hand performance.
We feel very lucky and grateful to have started this path which allow us to follow our dream of traveling the world while being able to do our dream job with passion and dedication every single day.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
One of the first challenge that we had to face was our decision to perform certain exercises which were never presented by two female before. Therefore we had no example to look after to and that fact gave us many reasons of doubt we were going to be able to accomplish it.
There is a certain exercise that we perform at last in our act that we call “Leg Sequence” which was indeed always performed by two man before. This makes us the first and only woman to ever present it in front of an audience.
Another challenge that we face on a daily basis is the maintenance of an ideal body and mind condition which helps us to support the physical limits we have to push ourselves to in order to perform our act 10 times a week.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My sister and I specialize in an acrobatic discipline called “hand to hand”, which is mainly presented by men due to the incredible physical strength it requires in order to be able to perform certain exercises.
Nicole and I are mainly known for being among the few women who over the years have specialized in this discipline but above all for being the only women who have ever performed the Leg Sequence.
A very complex and long exercise where my sister Nicole holds a handstand position on top of my feet while I roll over on the ground performing a hamstring curl while she is balancing on top of my feet.
This exercise is definitely the one we are the most proud of since we are the only female duo who ever performed it.
One of the reasons we are the most knowing our field is our success in the 46th International Circus Festival of Monte-Carlo which we attended in January 2024 were we have been awarded with the maximum prize, the “Golden Clown”.
For this reason people in the industry gave us the nickname of “Golden Girls”.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Considering that my sister and I are two women specialized in a purely male discipline, we found ourselves following a path in which distrust presented itself many times to discourage us and the doubt of failure risked preventing us from continuing more than once.
For this reason we are big supporters of female power and our biggest dream is to be able to inspire all women and young girls to believe in themselves. To not give up on their dreams when the road becomes difficult because we are exactly capable of reaching any goal we set ourselves just like men.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kolev_sisters?igsh=eGtkdTF6ZnlhbjJu
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1AMPQW4w9k/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/t7-4OwJ9xJs?si=9yd4Ba6X7X_16zfu
Image Credits
The photographer who took the shots are:
Marco Poker
Roberto Reyes
Ivan Vargas
Christophe Roullin
Frederic Nebinger
