THRILLS, SPILLS, and circus skills galore can be anticipated in Attack Of The Circus, an exciting co-production between the Galway Community Circus and Fidget Feet Aerial Dance Theatre, which plays the Black Box Theatre on Wednesday at 8pm.
This is a contemporary circus show combining aerial skills with music and video art, developed and performed by more than 50 members of the Galway Community Circus Young Ensemble and supported by the Arts Council’s Young Ensemble Scheme.
The Galway Community Circus is the only Co Galway arts organisation to receive funding from this scheme during 2010.
During a break in rehearsals on Saturday afternoon, GCC’s Ulla Hokkanen and Fidget Feet’s Chantal McCormick, who is directing the show, talked about the production. Firstly, Finland native Ulla began by explaining how she ended up working in circus in Ireland.
“I first came to Ireland seven years ago to study sociology and politics at UL in Limerick and ended up staying,” she reveals. “Then, a couple of years ago, I saw an ad from Galway Community Circus looking for volunteers and I thought that would be good to get involved with.
“I used to be very involved with youth circus in Finland; when I was seven my parents started a youth circus in my hometown. I trained with them for 10 years until I started studying and moved away. When I came to Galway I wanted to get back into it, so I volunteered for GCC then I started tutoring and helping and administration and now I am the project manager.”
Ulla outlines the range of work that Galway Community Circus does.
“We run five weekly classes in St Joseph’s Community Centre in Shantalla,” she says. “We have a wide age-range from five to 20 for young people and then we run adult classes as well. We travel around Ireland, mostly in the west, teaching in schools and with local youth groups and community centres and outreach workshops.
“Our teachers and performers would also take part in different parades and festivals and events like that. At the moment we have our highest ever number of members with about 100 people coming to our classes every week. We started adult aerial work classes a year a ago and they have proved to be really popular.”
How did the collaboration with Fidget Feet for Attack Of The Circus come about?
“We worked together two years ago on a similar type of production and last spring Chantal contacted us to say if we could secure the funding could we do another show together,” Ulla explains. “That’s where it started. We got backing from the Arts Council and ever since then we’ve been working on the idea.”
Fidget Feet Aerial Dance Theatre creates spectacular indoor and outdoor work and has become renowned for stretching the boundaries between several arts forms, combining aerial skills with contemporary circus, and creating theatre fused with aerial dance, music, and video art.
“When we met the GCC kids earlier this year we asked them what kind of show they wanted to make and they wanted to do something that was a bit like Galway’s version of Cirque Du Soleil so that each act has a story and pushing the drama, the comedy and the beauty of it,” says Chantal.
“One of my favourite routines is where we have little kids having a rave in a shopping trolley! The kids were also fully involved in doing the publicity for the show so they came up with the ideas for the posters and flyers themselves.”
Ulla expands on the show’s content.
“The young people wanted to show audiences that circus is cool, that it belongs to Galway - they can do circus on the streets or anywhere really, it’s not something separate from your everyday life,” she says.
“This concept turned into this shopping centre idea where you have the circus taking over your life in a positive way, bringing something fun into it, in everyday situations. So we’re going to have shopping trolleys, people inside shopping bags, there’s a scene in a bakery where the bakers start juggling the dough, things like that.
“The kids really wanted to show how circus is something good in their lives and that anyone can do it and anyone can join and it’s meant so much to them in their lives and they wanted that to inspire other people.”
Tickets for Attack Of The Circus are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 or www.tht.ie The Galway Community Circus begins a new series of classes in January. For more information contact 085 - 111724.
