Saturday, January 12, 2013

The immortal circus


FROM: gazettetimes.com
By Sarah Payne, The Entertainer
January 11, 2013
The Wanderlust Circus brings a performance troupe of aerialists, acrobats, belly dancers and a ringmaster to the Majestic Theatre
Acrobats who undergo daring physical feats. Aerialists who gracefully defy gravity. A belly dancer who seduces with a flick of her wrist. These are just a few of the acts that will take the stage when Portland’s Wanderlust Circus comes to town Jan. 11 and 12 at the Majestic Theatre.
“(It’s) a theatrical circus fairytale of sorts,” said Wanderlust co-founder Noah Mickens.
According to Mickens — who doubles as the circus’s ringmaster, William Batty — Wanderlust will bring its usual caravan of performers, including two aerialists; four acrobats; a trick cyclist; Leapin Louie Lichtenstein, a cowboy clown who performs rope tricks; and the Wild Woman, a tribal-nouveau belly dancer.
 
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The Wanderlust Circus troupe includes aerialists who perform a number of routines. (Christopher Perez | Contributed photos)
Along with the performers, the circus brings a story: One of the circus members returns from the bayou with a mysterious woman — the Wild Woman, in fact — who possesses magical powers and causes a stir among the circus. “Chaos ensues,” Mickens said. “It’s all the basic stock conflicts of our troupe, in terms of how our characters interact from one show to the next. We’re coming into contact with this new element, the Wild Woman, and we do our very best to continue putting on a show in spite of the various complications and mishaps.”
The sideline story of the Wild Woman is just one of several fairytale elements running throughout the circus. For example, the circus is immortal.
“In the backstory of our circus, we are an immortal travelling circus,” Mickens said. “William Batty has been wandering the earth for more than 200 years under sort of a mixed curse and blessing, which is that he lives forever, but only as long as he stays on the road with his circus. And this extends to all the other members of the circus as well.”
With the circus’s backstory, Wanderlust is able to draw influence from several periods throughout history, from the Victorian age to the wild west to the 1970s.
“There’s a lot of performance happening right now that has that sort of time-travelling, sort of speculative-fiction quality,” Mickens said. “At the very same time it’s sort of Victorian, but also sort of 1920s and ’30s, but also very much like the present day or even the future.”
Mickens and co-founder Nick “the Creature” Habar developed the backstory when they formed the circus seven years ago.
“It felt kind of true. It felt sort of like a good fictional representation of our actual lives and what we were really doing,” Mickens said.
read more:
http://www.gazettetimes.com/entertainment/the-immortal-circus/article_a7045882-5b99-11e2-95ba-0019bb2963f4.html

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