You have to be in good shape to be a contortionist. Folding yourself up, bending yourself out of shape, fitting yourself places no human body should fit – these are not things you can easily pull off when eating out several times a week.

When you’re pulling them off for the world’s largest theatrical production company – Cirque du Soleil – you have to be in even better shape than usual.

But Mongolian contortionist Sunderiya Jargalsaikhan insists it’s not all rigour and abnegation. “I honestly eat a piece of cake every day,” she said.

Jargalsaikhan will be hitting Australian shores next month, touring with Cirque du Soleil’s Kooza, the company’s paean to the old-fashioned circus. Debuting in Montreal in 2007, the show features 50 performers in eight acts from around the world and has already toured to Europe, Russia, the UK, the US, and South America.

Jargalsaikhan, who joined the show in 2014, said she wakes at 9.20am each morning and drinks a glass of water. After half an hour at the gym, where she runs four kilometres and does a little weight work (“I need to maintain speed and have strong and balanced legs,” she said), she sits down for breakfast: two cups of hot water, a piece of bread with avocado and eggs, a piece of cake, and fruit.

She checks her emails, messages and social media, Facetimes with her family in Mongolia, and then reads until 2pm. (She’s currently reading Life without Limits by Australian author and motivational speaker Nick Vujicic, who was born with Phocomelia, a disorder characterised by the absence of legs and arms.)

Between 2pm and 5pm, she takes a walk or a nap, then catches a shuttle bus to work, where she eats lunch.

“I know this sounds late, but it’s the perfect time for me to have lunch,” she said. “If I don’t eat then, I will be very hungry. If I eat later – two hours before warm-up time or less – I will be too full and heavy during the show. I think all contortionists do the same.”

A typical lunch consists of grilled chicken, salad of tomato, spinach and lettuce, grilled broccoli and asparagus, olives, and pomegranate tea.

She begins warming up with her fellow contortionists, Odgerel Byambadorj and Ninjin Altankhuyag, at 8pm. The show begins an hour later, with their act the first cab off the rank.

“After our act, we do some exercises to cool down, such as bending our bodies backwards and forwards, some ab work, and jumping on our hands to help keep us strong for the next performance,” she said.

During intermission, Jargalsaikhan has a light dinner of banana, pineapple, chocolate mousse and green tea, recharging her batteries for the show’s second act, in which she has a few dancing cues. She is typically in bed by 1am.

“Sometimes I miss Mongolian food,” Jargalsaikhan said. “But we have a kitchen with four permanent chefs on tour, so we have different food nearly every day.”

She said she likes to cook when the opportunity arises, but that it rarely does when the team is living out of hotels.

As for a glass of wine at the end a hard day’s work, there is none – or at least, not very often.
“I have perhaps one or two glasses of white wine each month,” she said.

Kooza opens in Sydney on August 25 and will tour Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth through to 2017.