REMEMBER Field Of Dreams, the 1989 film that starred Kevin Costner as an Iowa corn farmer who interpreted the voices he heard as a command to build a baseball diamond in his fields?

For Costner’s Ray Kinsella, read Winston Ruddle, an African breakdancer turned circus clown, trapeze act and dreamer with a vision to start a circus school from scratch in Tanzania.

“There’s no real circus tradition in Africa, though now it’s starting to pick up,” says Winston, who has been so instrumental in that upsurge.

So much so, he is touring Britain for the first time with Cirque Mother Africa, two hours of circus, dance and music that will energise the Grand Opera House in York on Tuesday (March 26).

The 7.30pm show will be one of ten in the UK at the conclusion of three months of European dates in Germany, Holland, Switzerland and Austria for a company that made its British debut at last summer’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Turn the clock back ten years to when Winston set up his circus school in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. “Now, African people are starting to realise you can make a living from circus acts, but in 2003 we had to train acts ourselves from nothing,” he says.

“It wasn’t easy to set up, financing it myself, and starting with training just six people – but today we have over 100.

“In the beginning, it was just myself doing the teaching. I was an acrobat before that and how I first taught people was by watching a lot of videos and then working on the skills.”

From that standing start, Winston progressed to choreographing a circus show with dance and song for performance in Africa. “Next I tried to find a producer in Europe, and after meeting with many, many different agents and promoters that weren’t interested and a few failed attempts to get the show started, a producer in Germany called Hubert Schober decided to take it up,” he says.

The first European performances ensued in December 2006, since when Cirque Mother Africa has been staged each year. “It’s always been a theatre show, not a big top show, and every year we change the show, training different acts at the school,” says Winston.

Once “money started coming in”, he was able to hire teachers from Mongolia to add to the repertoire of acts and now some of the students have progressed to teaching others their skills, but even now Winston has only two full-time teachers.

On the latest tour, Cirque Mother Africa has pooled together 40 performers from nine African countries for a show that is hosted by Winston in clown mode, performing his comedy between the contortionists, hat jugglers from Ethiopia, a stacked-chair balancing act and the “most flexible man in the world, Mwangi Lazarus Gitu from Kenya.

Winston has come a long way since starting out as a breakdancer in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe in the 1980s. “A German circus came to Zimbabwe and I went to join the circus, and as they didn’t need any breakdancers, I started as a tent hand, putting up the tent for the shows,” he recalls.

“That meant I could watch the acts at work and because of my knowledge of breakdance and my flexibility, it was easy for me to learn how to be an acrobat, taught by my friend Joseph Biro, an acrobat and juggler.”

Winston began on ground level as a clown but he progressed to doing a balancing act on the high wire, and the African exuberance that he brought to his performances is now instilled in his Cirque Mother Africa shows too.

No wonder they are said to be as much a “hot party” as a circus. “There’s a lot of difference between African performers and Russian, Chinese and European circus performers. OK, African performers are not as skilful but they’re more energetic, more joyful and happy,” he asserts.

“There’s a mix of African cultures that we have in the show and we always mix the circus skills with African dance and choreography, African music, African costumes and even African lighting designs. That’s what makes the show so different.”

Cirque Mother Africa, The Circus Of Senses, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york