Circus Video of the Month - May

This month's video is something different again - nothing to do with aerial, not really amateur and, being a Broadway thing, more of a commercial style than I would normally enjoy, BUT.  It's been compulsive repeat viewing for me and is kind of amazing, so I figured why not share it?

I think hand-to-hand acrobatics is my all-time favourite thing to watch. Following my enamorment with Stateless, I went to see A Simple Space a few weeks ago and absolutely loved that too (so clever). Sadly I think it's probably also the thing I am most unsuited to doing myself, since the few gymnastics classes I've taken just felt terribly hard and uncomfortable. Have I mentioned my extreme galumphing-ness and lack of flexibility? Humbug. I'm still holding out hope that handstand stuff could be a possibility for me though - next on my list to try!

Anyway, so the video. These guys are Charlotte O'Sullivan and Nicolas Jelmoni, from the cast of Pippin the Musical, a Broadway show that combines musical with circus. Their act is some kind of magical fluid blend of dance and acrobatics that does funny things to my insides (errm, it might be that feeling known as 'jealousy' acidically melting my guts). I feel like I may be overusing this word in my description of circus acts, but well, it's beautiful! Check it out:

Circus Video of the Month - April

Please excuse the long month's hiatus on here. Rain stopped play for a bit - by which I mean I was distracted by a little personal life melodrama, and deflated by a touch of circus-related disappointment (of which more later) - BUT I'm about ready to get back on the blogging horse...

... starting with this beauty of a YouTube item!

For some reason, of all the circus styles that have jumbled their way through my mind's eye since this obsession began, none have included a troubadour-ish, Shakespearean, rose-twined production such as this one seems to have been. But thinking about it, it's actually kind of obvious.  Surely that's where various elements of circus would have originated, in the traveling acrobats and jugglers of ye olden dayes etc.? I should probably brush up on my history.

'Delicately-lit' and 'peachy' are not qualities I would have previously associated with a rope act or hand-to-hand acrobatics, but here they undeniably are. And romping around to the ghostly, lilting accompaniment of a live Marika Hackman no less. I bet this was AMAZING to watch, wish I had been there at the actual performance.

Repeatedly allowing myself to be mesmerised into a midsummer night's village green dream by the video, though - nice work Mad Adam, the maker - is better than nothing. And it's about 50% of what's got me through the last few weeks of upheaval and upset, so thanks Marika and Tangerino (who appear to be NCCA degree students in their 3rd year, the lucky lucky talented bastards)!

Also, if this isn't an advert for being an alabaster-skinned English rose type then I don't know what is. IN YOUR FACE fake tan purveyors.

Go, go, feast your eyes and ears:

Circus Video of the Month - February

Something a little bit different this month! I have been watching all the circus documentaries I can find for free online (which, although there are tons that you have to pay for, isn't actually that many, booooo. I'm waiting on tenterhooks for 'Grazing the Sky' to go on sale...) and this is hands down the best.

It's an Al Jazeera feature from 2012, about a circus enterprise in Morocco called Cirque Shems'y. Cirque Shems'y started out as a social circus project for disadvantaged kids, but then became the first national circus in Morocco.

It's definitely worth taking 25 minutes out of your day to watch this, for the following reasons:

• It's aesthetically very enjoyable! The contrast between the shots of sweltering, arid Morroccan scenery, deprived areas of town, etc. and the energy and design of the acts / show makes for a really striking effect.
• Every single person in it has passion and love shining out of them.
• There's no pretension, just genuine excitement to be part of something and to be creating something new, as well as having the chance to do what they love and transcending the problems that they had in their lives before.
• It shows the director massively losing his shit somewhere in the middle, which makes it clear how much he cares about the show (it's very endearing) and creates some nice narrative tension, meaning that you can share in a bit of the pleasure when the show goes well.
• The live band which accompanies the performance at the end.  Not only do they play beautiful music, they also just look BRILLIANT. I want to join them!
• The soundbites from the performers (see below)

 

One of the best things about it is the way you see the radiant positivity of the performers transferred to the members of the audience who are interviewed after they watch the show.  This feels really important to me - maybe it's the point of spending all those hours honing and creating something amazing? Communicating a part of your passion and inspiration to other people, who maybe aren't able to spend the time connecting with those things through physical training, but can benefit from sharing them nonetheless?   

The aspect of this video that really stayed with me, though, are some of the things the performers say near the end:

'when you are onstage, you feel a sense of real joy. You have to really concentrate and you get a really nice feeling...'

'When we're in this ordinary everyday world, we feel ordinary. But when I'm in the circus and I'm up in the air doing a sequence I know really well, I have a feeling of lightness... like a dove flying free.  I feel really free.'

'When I get on stage, it's just like I'm dreaming. I forget everything in my head, everything vanishes. I'm not there, my body is just doing things unconsciously.'

I think this really helps explain why learning circus skills can have such a strong effect on people.  The words 'freedom' and 'joy' come up again and again in talk about the experience of doing things like aerial and acrobatics.  And the idea of concentration and forgetting yourself fits exactly with the whole theory of 'flow' - the younger boy in the film even uses that very word: 'I just flow with the show, flow and flow...til I feel it's over.'  You've probably encountered it before, but basically 'flow' is the mental state that is supposed to occur when someone is immersed in an activity which is neither too difficult or too easy, but is perfectly pitched to their abilities with clear, achievable goals. When you are in flow, you are so absorbed in what you're doing that you lose all sense of time, or yourself, and your emotions are spontaneously positive and energised.  Flow is pretty much the key to happiness - if you believe what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says anyway (I think I do). 

This all may be particularly interesting to me because I'm so into the idea of the 'benefits' of doing circus (and because I have a bit of an unrequited desire to visit Morocco), but I really think this is an excellent piece of human interest documentary.  Hopefully you do too!

Writing About Circus

In place of a post about my third week of aerial lessons*, I decided it might be time to unleash my attempt at a review of a circus/dance/physical theatre performance, right here, straight into your eyeballs, pow! BUT...  then I changed my mind.

On Saturday night I went to see the premiere of 'Stateless' by a small Hampshire-based company called Joli Vyann, at the excellent Jackson's Lane  - a venue which specialises in contemporary circus and one which I hope to visit many more times in the future, despite the really steep steps up to it from the tube station (it's likely I only resented these because we were late and running up them like mad things, don't let it put you off!).

Stateless looked something like this:

Jackson's Lane describe it on their website as exploring the subject of refugees, immigration and journeys, with powerful stories of upheaval and crossing borders, intense physicality, and moments of sadness, courage and friendship.

There were. And what's more it was stunning. I was literally on the edge of my seat the whole way through and close to tears at one point, so emotionally charged was the performance. I emerged more convinced than ever that I have basically wasted my life up to this point, and should be spending every minute possible doing circus skills, yoga, dance - anything to be able to experience just a tiny fraction of the soaring freedom and creative/physical fulfillment that those performers must feel on a daily basis. Which is to say, I was moved and inspired in equal measure.

But review it? I don't think I can. I'm not sure the videos even do it justice, let alone some words of mine on a computer screen.  All I have in my head is the old quote 'Writing about music is like dancing about architecture' (in this case music = circus...just humour me).  No matter how many superlatives and similes and artful descriptions I could try to come up with, I don't believe I can recreate the experience of watching a show like that for a reader. It would be like trying to translate a heart-rending piece of orchestral music into braille, or paint a picture of a smell that reminds you of walking home from school on a rainy day in 1993.

No, I will leave such alchemy to the accomplished circus review bloggers already out there conjuring wonders with their words (great examples can be found here and here) and instead just bluntly encourage anyone who stumbles across this to:

Go and see some for yourself!

Watching circus is like seeing a live music performance.  Yes, you can watch a video at home for free, or listen to a recording on your ipod sitting on the bus, the notes as perfectly preserved as a butterfly under glass, but nothing compares to the real thing.

Nothing compares to seeing real human beings, in the flesh, accomplishing crazy-beautiful things with incredible talent and pushing intense emotions out into the same air that you are breathing.  You can't help but absorb a little bit of it, can't prevent the very cells of your body recalibrating in response to the vibrations from the stage. With all our amazing technology, and ability to summon almost any viewing experience at the touch of a button, it's easy to forget about the sheer electric feeling of seeing someone accomplish wonders in front of you.

But I think it's worth paying a bit more money, making a bit of a journey, to be able to remind yourself that there IS real magic in the world, and sometimes you can almost reach out and touch it.

* I didn't make it to class, sob! But I predict the post would only have been along the lines of : 'we did Spider and Amazon' anyway, so the world is probably not that much emptier without it...