Feeling Nine Feet Tall
Archived from The Chronicle Herald, March 31 2009, by Andrea Nemetz, Arts Reporter:
Performers rehearse for the upcoming Circus Circle show at St. Matthew’s Church gym. The show, which runs Wednesday to Friday at Neptune’s Studio Theatre, features jugglers, unicyclists and acrobats.(ERIC WYNNE / Staff)
THERE WILL BE be lots of juggling, a transvestite, nightmarish horrors and beautiful cartoons when Circus Circle stages its debut show Wednesday to Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Neptune’s Studio Theatre, says performer Zack Collins, with a shake of his fluorescent striped hair.
“It’s everything you can imagine wrapped in a circus-y delicious package,” says the 21-year-old Dartmouth native who is hoping for a career in circus arts.
Circus Circle in Motion, with 24 performers aged 10 to 56 hailing from Halifax Regional Municipality, Truro, and Kentville, features artistic direction by Michael Hirschbach, a former performer and teacher with Cirque du Soleil and direction by dancer/actor Louise Renault. Ringmasters are Jamie Bradley and Lucy Decoutere of Trailer Park Boys fame.
“It’s a celebration of the best circus work now being created in Nova Scotia,” says Hirschbach, as jugglers, unicyclists and stilt walkers mill about in rehearsal in the gymnasium of St. Matthew’s United Church in Halifax.
Among the more seasoned performers in the two-hour show will be Daniel Mahoney, a pogo stick artist recently seen on the Ellen DeGeneres show and Dawn Shepherd, a local aerialist currently studying at the National Circus School in Montreal. As well, five performers who were part of a group of 11 who performed in the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo last year, will strut their stuff.
“It’s everything you can imagine wrapped in a circus-y delicious package,” says the 21-year-old Dartmouth native who is hoping for a career in circus arts.
Many of the performers are participants in Circus Circle, a social circus program Hirschbach began at St. Matt’s in Halifax in 2006 targeted at street-involved and homeless youth aged 16 to 30. Circus Circle ( http://www.circuscircle.ca/) has now expanded to Kentville, Dartmouth and the Waterville Youth Detention Centre with a new program slated to start at the George Dixon Centre in Halifax.
After Wolfville resident Hirschbach finished his performing career with Cirque de Soleil in 2003, he was approached by Cirque du Monde, Cirque du Soleil’s social outreach program and asked if he’d be interested in coming onboard as a teacher. The program operates in more than 50 communities around the world in partnerships with Jeunesse du Monde, Oxfam International and community to teach youth life skills.
“My job was to work with the youth instructors and bring their skills up by teaching workshops. I taught for one to four weeks in places like Las Vegas, L.A., Montreal, Toronto, N.Y., Orlando, South Africa and Burkina Faso,” says Hirschbach.
When he returned to Nova Scotia in 2005, he realized that the same kinds of problems that exist in other parts of the world exist here and he began working to establish a social circus program that would be free for participants.
“I’m constantly involved in fundraising, and I work with a number of funding agencies. Without the Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage and Nova Scotia Health Promotion and Protection, it wouldn’t have happened. And St. Matt’s is one of our real champions.”
Seoras Speirs, has been involved with the program, which runs twice a week at St. Matt’s, since its early days.
The 16-year-old Grade 11 student at Sackville High has been unicycling for about six years and has been involved in other circus arts for about a year and a half. Now he does juggling, tightrope, walking globes (giant plastic balls on which performers stand), cigar boxes and bar flair (juggling like bartenders do, a la Tom Cruise in Cocktail).
“I do circus every day. I find I’m jumping around activities, skateboarding, playing drums. With circus I can jump around in the same field. And I like the environment, it’s a really solid group.”
Speirs was one of the youth involved with the Tattoo, and the success there led to the idea for Circus Circle in Motion, which Hirschbach hopes will become an annual event.
“The youth were so energized, they were really pushing me to do a show of their own, to take the skills they’ve been working on here to a new level.”
Kailey McMillen, 15, will be making her performing debut.
The Grade 10 student at Sackville High began coming to Circus Circle in October, after seeing Speirs riding around school on his unicycle.
“I was never interested in sports and I didn’t have a whole lot of extracurricular activities, so I was all for the idea of trying to ride a unicycle. It took me two months until I was solid,” she says, while Collins notes unicycling took him a year-and-a-half to learn and he was never very good at it.
In this week’s show McMillen will be doing unicycling, juggling (which she began in January), diablo (which is like spinning a top with sticks) and levitating.
Collins will be doing contortionism, poi (chains with balls on the ends), club swinging, stilts and will perform as a transvestite.
“It’s a celebration of the best circus work now being created in Nova Scotia,” says Hirschbach, as jugglers, unicyclists and stilt walkers mill about in rehearsal…”
He first got interested in circus arts watching the Halifax Busker Festival as a Grade 12 student at Prince Andrew High and then attended the Bluenose Juggling Club (started by Hirschbach 19 years ago) and the Atlantic Cirque school in Dartmouth, where he got into the best shape of his life doing aerial acrobatics.
The six-foot-one performer, who is nine-feet tall with his stilts, specializes in stilt walking and has performed professionally.
He’s heading to school for make-up arts, and hopes it will help him land a career with the circus.
“I’ve worked security, in stores, in kitchens, done thing with my hands and none of it was ever fun,” he says, explaining his chosen career.
Hirschbach says this week’s show, which mixes professionals and newbies, is not a variety show, but the skills are set in a theatrical context.
“The show is driven by a real sense of play and is appropriate for all ages, very visual and very humorous.”
( anemetz@herald.ca)
Tickets are $20 for adults, and $16 for students, seniors and children 17 and under and are available at Neptune Theatre 429-7070 or 1-800-565-7345.