Big Apple Circus, 94-95
Doug Harris
should've missed two seasons of the Big Apple Circus. Last year a consulting
assignment in the DC area enabled me to visit the city and see the show which
included Serge Percelly's tennis-themed juggling routine. This year, my
girlfriend's sister decided to get married on November 6. That event was a
circus itself, but that's not what I'm here to write about. On November 5th,
I got to see this year's show.
The title of this year's show is "Grandma Meets Mummenshanz." "Grandma" is a
clown who has been with the BAC for many years. Mummenshanz is a Swiss
troupe which might be described as clowns or might be described as
puppeteers, but neither would be terribly accurate. The distinguishing
characteristic of their acts is their costumes which mostly hide the fact
that they are humans underneath. As various points in this show, they were
dressed up a large white gloves (one person was the left hand, the other the
right), large slinkys (playing with a large balloon), and a slinky creature
(four slinky like appendages attached to a slinky torso).
Unlike the past two seasons, this year's circus has no invited guest who is a
juggler. The core company, however does perform a nice club juggling
routine. There's a little club swinging and lots of passing.
Although the passing involved 7-8 members of the company, one woman (name
escapes me, she's Dutch) was obviously the best juggler and served as the
feeder for the multiple person patterns. They did a six person circle with a
feeder rotating in the middle (feeder does 2-count, everybody else does...
ummm... 10-count?). One pair of jugglers across the circle from each other
did synchronous triples right after the feeder went by one or the other.
This same woman was a feeder in an 8 person back and forth feed. There were
other passing patterns involving two jugglers at a time that weren't too
spectacular.
Ultimate assesment? I enjoyed it greatly, but I enjoy the atmosphere of the
BAC generally and did a fair amount of volunteer work for them a couple of
seasons ago, so I'm a little biased.
The juggling is low enough on the technical scale that you wouldn't stop to
watch it at an IJA fest -- unless it was 8 people passing as solidly as these
performers do. There were *maybe* 2-3 drops during the 15 minute segment,
probably fewer than that.
There are some amazing acrobatic feats that left me in awe. And, if you're
into that sort of thing, there are animal acts -- horses, elephants, and
pigs, yes, PIGS.
Go see it, especially if you've never been to see any BAC show before. It's
one ring, there's not a bad seat in the house.
doug