Circus Tricks, Parts 1 & 2

On Friday night I saw some of the best circus acts from all over the globe put on the most fantastic show: Cirque Du Soliel’s Varekai.
Cirque present circus as a breathtaking spectacle on a lavish, extravagant scale, and in doing so, their shows are so polished that the nearest thing to a sense of carny grit on Friday night came from the fact that their vast Grand Chapiteau tent had been erected in the car park of Manchester’s Trafford Centre.
Varekai, then, is tent circus on a vast scale, but despite the glorious set and fancifully grand linking story – a forest into which an Icarus-like winged creature falls – the focus is on the extraordinary acts, split-second timing and sheer sense of wonder generated by human beings whose bodies are capable of extraordinary feats: this is everything circus should be, and in this case, probably the best circus in the world. The astonishing artistry concentrated into each short routine is what makes Cirque’s world of enchantment so convincing that the audience is transported into an enthralling otherworld. Sitting close to the stage, the experience of watching Varekai was more intimate than you’d imagine from the size of the space: this was a truly magical show.
How extraordinary was brought home to me on Sunday, when I took part in a trapeze workshop at Yorkshire Dance led by Deborah Sanderson of Urban Angels. Perfecting a new aerial routine of my own invention known as The Sack Of Spuds, I struggled to heave my feet onto the bar, then wobbled to find a sense of balance as I teetered a mere few feet above an enormous crash mat, helped and encouraged by the endlessly patient, supportive Sanderson, who demonstrated moves, which seem impossible when it occurs to you that you’re about to try them, with a strength and grace that showed that she was as much at ease in the air as she was on the floor. It is, though, the most exhilarating feeling on earth to find that you are, even in an ungainly fashion, poised on a bar above the rest of the world, and that even the most unpractised body can be persuaded into positions – upside-down, inside-out – that seem to defy the limits of what your body can do (see pic), until someone like Sanderson shows you how. It would take a long time to feel weightless; I didn’t fly through the air with the greatest of ease, and I certainly wasn’t magnificent on my static trapeze, but it was an inspiring experience.
Deborah Sanderson will be doing a solo, site-specific aerial performance in Holy Trinity Church on Boar Lane in Leeds on April 1 at 7pm. Go, and wonder.