After four years of literally flying high in Hilton Coliseum, former ISU gymnast Camille Santerre-Gervais, is not quite ready to cease her athletic pursuits.

Santerre-Gervais, senior in animal science, is attempting to transfer her acrobatic skill set and her love of performing from the gymnastics mat to the bright lights of the Cirque du Soleil stage.

“I love gymnastics, but at some point you have got to move on,” Santerre-Gervais said. “I just do not want to be done with athletics. I like to be in shape and I love to perform.”

Santerre-Gervais tied the school record on bars on three separate occasions during her senior season, posting three scores of 9.950.

She said that the time she spent at Iowa State and the skills she developed under the guidance of Iowa State’s head coach Jay Ronayne will make her attractive to Cirque du Soleil.

“College gymnastics is all about consistency. You have to make your routines every time, week to week,” Santerre-Gervais said. “The consistency, the strength, the flexibility and an artistic [sense] all help make me a package deal.”

Growing up, Santerre-Gervais trained 15 minutes away from Cirque du Soleil’s international headquarters in her hometown of Montreal, Canada. She said she began mimicking the performers in her living room after the first show she saw at age 10.

While the notion had existed for many years, Santerre-Gervais said that a turning point in her desire to be a performance artist came during her sophomore season at Iowa State when she heard Kristen Maloney, assistant gymnastics coach, talking about her personal experience with Cirque du Soleil.

Maloney performed on one of Cirque du Soleil’s traveling circuits from 2006 to 2008. Santerre-Gervais said she began thinking seriously about a post-collegiate career in performance art after hearing what Maloney had to say.

“I always had it in the back of my mind that it might be a cool thing to do,” Santerre-Gervais said. “Since last year, I have been talking to my parents and they agreed the best time to do it would be after college.”

Santerre-Gervais admitted that further motivation to join the show has been born out of envy.

“A couple of my friends tried out and now they are in traveling shows and I am really jealous,” Santerre-Gervais said. “I love what I do at [Iowa State], and I think [my friends] would have liked doing something like I did too, but [Cirque du Soleil] is very different and I am very jealous.”

Maloney said that Santerre-Gervais’ natural attributes and the skills she has developed from her career as an ISU gymnast make her a great candidate for a position with Cirque du Soleil, so she may not remain jealous for long.

“Cammy is a very pretty gymnast and that translates well,” Maloney said. “She is artistic and very pretty to watch. She is very pleasing to the eye. She makes it look easy and that is what [Cirque du Soleil] wants to see.”

As transferable as the experience of being a gymnast is to a career with Cirque du Soleil, Maloney said there are also important differences, which she outlined for Santerre-Gervais.

“I told Cammy that she needs to remain open to different experiences,” Maloney said. “As a gymnast, you can get very narrow. Sometimes [in Cirque du Soleil] you have to do weird and crazy things that feel strange, and you might be embarrassed at first, but you have to be open to it.”

Maloney said that another demanding aspect to a career with Cirque du Soleil is the physical rigors that accompany performing in eight to 10 shows weekly.

Maloney added that if Santerre-Gervais is selected to perform in a traveling show, the nearly 50 weeks she will spend each year on the road without a permanent address will be challenging as well.

“I loved the traveling part of it, spending time in each city … and getting to know the culture,” Maloney said. “But after a while it gets tough living that lifestyle because you are on the road all the time. A lot of the time you are away for holidays or important events that you miss back home.”

Another difficulty Maloney mentioned is the shift of focus for a former gymnast from executing a routine for a great score to engaging and connecting with the audience via an artistically-inspired performance.

Santerre-Gervais is aware of these challenges and said that she is willing and excited to undertake them.

Cirque du Soleil periodically retires shows and then replaces them with new concepts, but it has roughly 20 different performances running at any one time. Which specific show, or acts within that show, that Santerre-Gervais will be a part of if she is asked to join Cirque du Soleil are still unknown to her.

Santerre-Gervais recently sent in her video application, complete with photographs and a typed resume, and is waiting on a callback for which there is no timetable.

The next phase in the process, whenever it arrives, will be a general audition. If Santerre-Gervais is selected, then she will move on to training.

While she waits for word from Cirque du Soleil, Santerre-Gervais plans to head back to Montreal where she will study for the Medical College Admission Test.

She said her plans are to study orthopedic surgery if she is not selected for Cirque du Soleil. If she is chosen, then orthopedics will be her path after her Cirque du Soleil career has concluded.

Ronayne said he has faith that Santerre-Gervais will find success performing — a belief he said is evidenced by the development of both her mentality and her physical skills, which he has witnessed first-hand over the previous four years.

“As a competitor, she [has] matured tremendously,” Ronayne said. “[In the beginning] if things were not perfect she would just give up … and now she fights to make things go her way. That is something we were really pleased to see from her.”

Santerre-Gervais said she is intent on fighting for a spot in a Cirque du Soleil show or on its tour while she is still in her 20s and young enough to put up with the physical demands of the job.

She added that she is very excited about the months ahead and the potential of living out one of her dreams.

“[Cirque du Soleil] has people come from all around the world,” Santerre-Gervais said. “It is always interesting to make friends from [different places] and learn new cultures. If I end up in a traveling show, I will get to experience those cultures in person, and that would be awesome.”

Ronayne said that gymnastics talent is rare; because of that, it is difficult to apply once a gymnast’s career is over.

He also said that those dynamics make Santerre-Gervais’ venture into the artistic world of Cirque du Soleil a unique journey.

“Every once in a while a former NCAA competitor will utilize the skills that they learned in gymnastics and move into a different performance realm,” Ronayne said. “In the time I have been coaching in the last 25 years, I have only had a handful of gymnasts have an opportunity to do something like this, so it is pretty cool.”