THE BALLOON MAN

Cirque Mother Africa -- A Circus Of The Senses

Sunday, 15 August 2010
CIRQUE MOTHER AFRICA, a spectacular celebration created in Africa by an African, Winston Ruddle, and pounding with the heart of Africa, is coming to New Zealand next month.
It will open at the Founders Theatre, Hamilton, on September 7 and continue its thrilling New Zealand tour with shows in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch.
Worldwide Cirque MOTHER AFRICA has thrilled two million. The show is filled with joy, emotions, surprises and amazement. Showing the full circus range of juggling, contortionists, high-wire acts as well as live music, dances and beautiful costumes, the two-hour program really is a sparkling event.
Contortionists Lazaraus and Hassani from Kenya and the Ramadhani Brothers, presenting hand-in hand artistry, are firm favourites with crowds.
The “Adagio Act” from Tanzania is astonishing. It’s a slow, very aesthetical dance where a couple shows slow motion movements by using leverage forces. “Icarus Games” is the name of a juggling act. Two artists juggle with their colleagues in the air by using their feet. Fast, colourful and swinging, that’s how the program is presented: The “Hoola-Hoop Act” with “a thousand hoops around a beautiful woman’s waist” and the “Diabolo Act”, where the diabolo flies high from one rope to the other.
The “In Africa Band” delivers a traditional sound, played with the “Kora” an instrument that comes from the African West Coast. With its 20 strings it sounds like a mixture between guitar and harp. Three beautiful ladies from South Africa and Zimbabwe are the lead singers, creating a warm and powerful sound together with the In Africa Band.
Cirque MOTHER AFRICA combines the best of all the classic circus elements. Forty artists from the length and breadth of the African continent – Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Benin, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Guinea, South Africa -- performing in intoxicating colours and extraordinary costumes and masks.
And doing it all-stops-out for two breathtaking hours.
And it has an unforgettable and unique dimension, something that no other circus can match: the infectious rhythm, the dance and the soaring music of Africa. At the heart of this spectacular circus is pulsating music.
Mark Rafter, the producer of Cirque MOTHER AFRICA, says he saw Cirque MOTHER AFRICA while producing a show in Germany. ‘I wasn’t expecting too much, to be frank, but when I saw the show I loved it! I thought, “It’s a Cirque De Solei with a twist from the heart of Africa.
‘More than quarter of the Cirque MOTHER AFRICA company are musicians. They play modern and traditional African instruments - and, yes, we have no vuvuzelas!
‘But we do have the world’s prettiest ‘ring master’. Mtshali Sibongile Prudence, from South Africa is a vivacious dancer and singer with a sparkling sense of humor who informs and entertains the audience when she’s not performing.’
NEW ZEALAND Hamilton - Founders Theatre September 7 & 8 Wellington - St. James Theatre September 10 & 11 Auckland - Skycity Theatre September 14 - 24 Christchurch - Isaac Theatre Royal September 28 & 29