Cirque Magnifique, a troupe of artists who have performed for Her Majesty the Queen, three US Presidents and innumerable celebrities will be performing at the Annual Exhibition three times daily until Saturday.

Cirque Magnifique is known as the aristocracy of the circus world, choreographer Alexandra Nock said.

She said her family have been circus performers since 1840.

?Nocks have also performed for US President Kennedy, President Clinton, President Reagan and the Queen of England,? Mrs. Nock said yesterday.

She said at a recent party in New York at the Tavern on the Green, celebrities such as Billy Joel, Elton John and Donald Trump, were in the audience.

A Cirque is a new-age style circus, she said, which differs from a circus because there is no ringmaster and no trained animals.

?We assembled a group and seek out the best performers in the world,? Mrs. Nock said. ?It is the first time we have been to Bermuda ? it is a beautiful place.?

She said spectators at the Annual Exhibition will see the acrobatic Coronas brothers.

The 21-year-old brother George juggles his younger 17-year-old brother Michael in the air using only his feet.

Bermuda is lucky because the Coronas brothers are only one of three groups in the world who can perform the acrobatic feat, she said.

?It is a lifetime process,? she said. ?It takes years and years of training in order to perform in public. The training never ends. You are constantly refining it.?

She said the bodies of the young brothers are still growing, so they cannot go a few days without training, in case their bodies change before performances.

?Acts might only take, five to seven minutes, but they take a lifetime to perfect,? she said.

Her husband John Nock has a chair-stacking act where he performs handstands on a 26 foot tall stack of five chairs.

An aerialist will perform ?beautiful manoeuvres on fabric?.

?There are many other interesting things, including comedian Larry Clark,? she said. Mr. Clark has been with the troupe in Sarasota since he was 14-years-old she said.

Even Mrs. Nock is an aerialist who once performed atop 90-foot-tall poles.

?I am one of only three women in history to have done that,? she said. ?I have performed in every continent.?

After Bermuda, the Cirque is giving a private performance for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and then is off to Japan for five weeks.

While only nine members of their company, Nock Dynamic, will be in Bermuda for the Exhibition, they have a core cast of 50.

But there will be no safety net, or other safety equipment used at the Botanical Gardens, she said, because the Cirque never uses one.

?The youngest person is 17-years-old and the oldest is 41,? she said.

They will have three performances per day. The first in the lower ring at 10.35 a.m., the second in the main ring at 1.30 p.m. and the third back in the lower ring at 2.15 p.m.

Exhibition Organiser Georgette Caines said every show will be slightly different.

?You can see the same show three times and they all will be a little different,? she said yesterday.