Circus Tricks (Part 3)

A far better alternative to sitting on the sofa snarfing chocolate eggs this Easter was being offered them – and quails’ eggs, and wine – in Leeds' deconsecrated Holy Trinity Church, as part of Urban Angels’ installation A Wing And A Prayer.
In preparation for the performance, the grimly splendid baroque church was littered with egg shells, copper coins and feathers. A magical glass ball on the altar showed aerialist Deborah Sanderson, ice-bound, skating in on ice in a costume of bleached linen that made her look part bird, part-sprite – but you had to wear 3-D glasses before her tiny figure came into focus.
The performance itself was mesmerising: spooked, strange and oddly gorgeous. Angela Carter would have approved of Sanderson’s rag-clad figure in its birds-nest hairdo and a frock-coat that trailed, like a bridal train or peacock’s feathers. Sanderson twisted herself round the pillars before progressing slowly through the church, tightrope-walking along the tops of pews. Then she handed her white boots to an entranced audience member and climbed up the lengths of white fabric attached to the hoop of her trapeze. There, suspended over the church without a safety net, she was an unlikely, astonishing spectacle, part-bird, part-angel, fearlessly turning herself this way and that with thrilling grace and strength.
You can only hope that such an otherworldly being sleeps in a nest made from rags and feathers. It was noted that when Sanderson re-appeared after her performance, she may have been in civilian clothes, but her vast, speckled feathery eyelashes were still in place.