Circus legend Yasmine Smart is circus royalty: grand-daughter of famous English showman Billy Smart and Olga Stey, Yasmine's grandfather crossed the Thames on a wire in 1951, she grew up breathing and living circus, and it’s something which has defined and shaped her life. Yasmine comes from a golden age of circus, where glamour defined every moment of her life, and turning herself out in a mink stole and evening dress was part of her everyday working life.

Yasmine has always been passionate about horses, and a large proportion of her life has been spent training and working with them. She bases her training methods of her horses around positive reinforcement, reward and patience; so gentle is her training method that none of her horses work until they sweat. They are part of her heart and her soul, and her circus career has been shaped by them.

Circus was the definition of her childhood, although initially her parents, wanted her to concentrate on her trapeze skills, and so discouraged her from visiting the stable tent. But her love for horses kept taking her back there, and when she was ten she presented her first act, in Billy Smart’s New World Circus, presenting a group of twelve Shetland ponies. And as a child she rode not only horses, but zebras and elephants too. Her career around horses has galloped along since then, and always in the circus ring, a place where Yasmine feels truly at home, but she has worked with many different sorts of exotic animals and elephants. Her role as a glamorous “ringmistress” par excellence, glittering in jewels and satin as she presents a troop of elegant Arab stallions, developed within the public eye after she regularly appeared on BBC television in Billy Smart’s Circus Christmas Spectacular.

The awards and prizes that she has won across the world are almost too numerous to mention, but include the prestigious “Dame du Cirque” award in Monte-Carlo in 1981, and the Silver Clown award for her liberty act in 1985. Ten years later, she won a second “La Dame du Cirque” award, and her skills at presenting a troop of horses “at liberty” in the ring are widely recognised as unmatched. She has appeared numerous times at the International Circus Festival in Monte-Carlo, and has presented horses before the Queen at the Royal Command Performance for the Silver Jubilee at Windsor.

In 1980, she bought her own troop of ten Arab stallions which she trained herself, appearing regularly in the ring with them across Europe. In 1995 she and her horses joined Circus Roncalli where, four years later, she met Nell, who, like Yasmine, was also following her own dreams, that were similarly defined by circus life. Life on Roncalli was always glamorous: this is the kind of high-glamour show where Claudia Schiffer and European royalty will almost certainly be watching the show, and dress is usually black tie. In 2004, Yasmine fulfilled a long held ambition to work with American circus, and crossed the Atlantic, to work as Equestrienne Director at the famed Big Apple Circus in New York.

She and Nell have been working together over the winter, developing her role within the show, Yasmine, which is a tribute to her and the circus heritage that she brings with her.