Friday, June 28, 2013

REBECCA OSTROFF

SIDE STREETS: The local woman on the flying trapeze


Herald News Photo | Dave Souza.
Fall River native Rebecca Ostroff, an aerialist with the Kelly Miller Circus, performs in Fall River with the circus on Wednesday.

from:  wickedlocal.com
By Marc Munroe Dion
Jun 26, 2013
FALL RIVER —
In 1899, after being committed to what was then called an “asylum,” alcoholic French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec managed to obtain his early release by drawing scenes from the circus performances he’d attended over the years.
Toulouse-Lautrec, and his doctors, believed that a man who could draw those scenes from memory could not be insane.
In the bright sunshine that begs for Toulouse-Lautrec’s talents — behind Espirito Santo Church, just off Alden Street in Father Travassos Park — aerialist Rebecca Ostroff, in shorts and a T-shirt, watched the heat shimmer off the walls of the mill next door. Her husband, Marshall Eckelman, walked the couple's four dachshunds nearby.

Herald News Photo | Jack Foley.
Rebecca Ostroff pauses during her morning tour to smile for the camera. Ostroff, an aerialist with the Kelly Miller Circus and a Fall River native, performed with the circus in Fall River on Wednesday.

It’s simple, really, the reason why Ostroff swings from a trapeze and doesn’t sell real estate or own a coffee shop.
“In 1987, I ran away and joined the circus,” she said.
A graduate of B.M.C. Durfee High School, this local woman began by taking gymnastics as a child, eventually being lured into the complexity of dance. These days, Ostroff lives in Sarasota, Fla., in the off season. The other 38 weeks of the year, she lives on the road, 200 towns, 500 shows, most of them one-nighters. Her mother is Elaine Ostroff,  a well-known community activist in Westport who was at both of the circus’s shows in Fall River.
 
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Herald News Photo | Jack Foley.
Trapeze aerialist Rebecca Ostroff shows her mother, Elaine Ostroff, of Westport, around the grounds of the Kelly Miller Circus on Wednesday.

Read more: http://www.heraldnews.com/news/x208439825/SIDE-STREETS-The-local-woman-on-the-flying-trapeze#ixzz2XVkGsnAK

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