It was a small advertisement in the paper that led Koichi Yano to one of Canada's leading circus companies, Montreal-based Cirque Eloize. It was 1996, he was in Canada helping his sister settle in and was still under the spell of a recent performance by renowned circus company Cirque du Soleil, also from Montreal.
"I was deeply moved by it," he recalls. "It was when I first realized that there were jobs dancing in the circus."
So when he read about the audition for Cirque Eloize, he jumped at the chance, if only for the excitement of it. But he managed to pass, and today he is one of the company's principal dancers.