Brent van Rensburg is the co-founder (with his wife) and artistic director of the Zip Zap School of Circus. Born in 1961 in Cape Town, he started to learn daring aerial skills at the old circus school, YMCA Observatory from the age of twelve till he was eighteen. After that he packed up his bags and went around the world. A few of the countries he visited as a performer where Italy, Holland, Denmark, Norway, France, England, Monte Carlo and America. He was met with applause wherever he would fly into the ring.

But tragedy struck and after a performing accident, Brent decided to hang-up his leotards and start teaching acrobatics. He started as instructor at the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus whose tag was the Greatest Show on Earth. And what show it was, it was here that the idea the idea of a big top three-ring circus tent was originally launched. And it was also here that a thought began to develop in Brent's head.

After two years of training at the Ringling Circus, he went on to Club Med Holiday Resorts. Here he ran spent three years running circus workshops for the resort organisation's guests. Here he learnt how to introduce the magic of circus to people who had never experienced it before. He also met his future wife, Laurence Estêve.

On their thirtieth birthday they celebrated by performing their flying trapeze act in the centre ring of Cirque (Circus) Gruss in France. The following year, 1992, Brent returned home with his new wife to found the Zip Zap School of Circus.

Originally aimed at street children but open to all the circus's first act was called Dare to Dream because at the time the country was in turmoil and Brent thought a dream is better than nothing. It was with virtually no money and a borrowed tent that Brent took his young charges and went to go perform at the Grahamstown Festival.

The kids loved it and so Brent set about ensuring that they were able to go the next year. Straight after the 1995 Grahamstown Festival, they drove to Johannesburg to perform at the 77th birthday of one Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela who was leading this country in its first democratic government.

To follow this coup with another 1996 saw the group's first international tour. The troupe toured Denmark and for many of them it was something which they never dreamed possible. Little did they know that this would be the first of 22 international tours and an innumerable amount of local tours over the next twelve years. France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, China, USA and the Commonwealth Games are just a few of the places that Brent has taken his Zip Zap kids.

He has drawn together children from the most diverse of backgrounds. Rich, poor, black, white, no colour lines, no class lines, no lines at all, in Brent's mind he merely sees children.