


Performance artist explores history of the hula hoop

Gold Coast
September 1, 2009
Judith Lanigan performing at the Port Fairy Folk Festival.

Judith Lanigan performing at the Port Fairy Folk Festival.
Photo: Robin Sharrock

There's a fair chance you've never heard of Judith Lanigan - but thousands of Australians have seen her street performances in cities and towns across the country.

Lanigan, a street and international freelance circus artist, is best known for her interpretation of the ballet piece The Dying Swan, which she performs with 30 hula hoops.

She has performed The Dying Swan in 12 countries around the world and was the first Australian to study at the Moscow State Circus School.

Lanigan's love affair with the hula hoop continues in her first novel. Film rights for A True History of the Hula Hoop have already been snapped up by a UK based production company and director Jean Pierre Jeunet, who made Amelie and Delicatessen.

The book weaves together two parallel stories, one of Catherine, a struggling Aussie hula-hooping performance artist, and the other of Columbina, a feisty 16th century Italian female clown travelling through Europe with the first ever commedia dell'arte troupe - a travelling company of clowns.

A cleverly constructed history of the hula hoop is sprinkled like bright lollies between the chapters.

A fourth layer of the story involves the dwarf Gionnello and his love, Rosita.

Gionnello has come up with a cunning plan to make his fortune and win the hand of Rosita.

Hidden under a table at a dinner thrown by the Italian Duke who employs him, the little man has heard the company of clowns has been invited to Paris by the King of France to play at the wedding of his sister.

He decides to pack himself in a box, disguised as a present, which will be taken from Italy to Paris where it will be stored with all the other gifts for the royal wedding.

Gionnello will then emerge in the dead of night, loot the treasure trove, escape and carry Rosita away to begin their new life.

Lanigan says she became inspired to write the book while researching a solo show she was creating.

"It was about what I call the great clown kidnapping of 1572 ... a company of clowns who were kidnapped on their way to do a performance for the King of France.

"The king released a thousand political prisoners so the clowns could perform at his sister's wedding.

"My tour that year took me to so many places where that troupe had been, and that's when I started writing."

Life also imitated art while she was writing the story, Lanigan says.

"The dwarf is actually based on a real story as well, because around the time I started writing the book there'd been a big robbery in the post office in Rome," she says.

"They could see how the criminal got out of the post office but couldn't work out how he got in until the culprit, who was a dwarf, bragged to his friends that he'd had himself packed in a parcel and when it arrived in the GPO he got out, took all the money and ran."

Lanigan admits the main present-day character, Catherine, is based on her own experiences.

"Well, I've lent her my act, and a few of my experiences," she laughs.

And like herself, Catherine often lies about what she does for a living.

Lanigan has just finished writing her second novel, set in 1856 during the gold rush in regional Victoria.

"It's about a magician, a conjurer, doing a season at the Theatre Royal while the collision of cultures due to the gold rush escalates around him.

"He gets caught up in the story of a pregnant half indigenous girl, and she's based on my great, great, great grandmother."

A True History of the Hula Hoop by Judith Lanigan, published by Picador for $29.99.


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