Phrases “a stretch of imagination”, “a spirit hover” carry one away into the world of irrational, world of dreams which the circus always appealed to. Human dream to learn to fly doesn’t derive from birdwatching, but evolves out of flying experience in our dreams, as well as from the internal “free fall”. One can hardly rely on Freud, who interpreted it as a fundamental sexual basis and educed origins of aircraft from Leonardo Da Vinci’s erotic dreams (“fellatio”). Flight is our unconscious desire enclosed in the memory of body and brain by evolution as a potential ability. Dream of flying is a “dream reality” that puts body under control and trapeze artists’ way of thinking turns into their lifestyle.

The whole structure of Katsuba’s photography underlines spiritual and classic origins of the gymnasts (Olga Golubeva and Evgeny Efremov) work, turns trapeze into high art backed by the “memory of body”. The young gumnasts in their performances place an accent on beautiful forms of high art. Suddenly Dante’s Paolo and Francesca – two cuddling shadows floating together, who don’t part even in the hellfire – appear behind the photos showing elegant compositions built of young bodies. But the point of high art is that even in the most extreme circumstances it “performates” stress and recoil into high artistic conditions. In this sense the exhibition comprising several kinds of art and creative minds as co-authors (photographer and gymnasts), is about elevated things – it terms of gravity, ideas and feelings.

Andrey Khlobystin, art historian, St. Petersburg.
The author would like to express his utmost gratitude to The Old Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoy
Boulevard (Moscow), training teachers for air acts Nina Chuglaeva and Vladimir Buracov,
aerialists Evgeny Efremov and Olga Golubeva.
The author acknowledges his indebtedness to Anna Shpakova, Ekaterina Kondranina, Mark
Titensky, Dmitry Shevlyakov, Ilya Barkovsky.


List. Valery Katsuba. AIR FLIGHT. Red Ribbons. Flight. Body Shock.

1. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Red Ribbons I.
2. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Red Ribbons II.
3. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Red Ribbons III.
4. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Red Ribbons IV.
5. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Red Ribbons V.
6. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Red Ribbons VI.
7. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Red Ribbons VII.
8. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Red Ribbons VIII.
9. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Flight I.
10 . Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Flight II.
11. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Flight III.
12. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Body Shock V.
13. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Body Shock IV.
14. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Body Shock II.
15. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Body Shock VII.
16. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Body Shock VIII.
17. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Body Shock I.
18. Valery Katsuba. Air Flight. Body Shock X.