A circus performer with a 12-inch metal spine sounds almost surreal, but it’s the true life story of Angola Murdoch. The contortionist and antipodist, or foot juggler, is one of the dozens of talented artists taking the stage at next weekend’s Alberta Circus Arts Festival in Edmonton’s French Quarter.
There will be four ticketed mainstage performances and free workshops and events to not only entertain but introduce the public to the nuts and bolts of circus arts. All events are family-friendly, but Barka, Cirque in the Park and the drop-in stilt and juggling workshop are intentionally geared toward children and families while the cabaret features some mature acts.
Firefly Theatre and Circus is hosting the festival, which is in its second year of live performances after its 2020 debut was pushed to 2021 when the festival was presented virtually online for home audiences.
Annie Dugan, Firefly’s artistic director, says she’s seeing more circus activity than ever, but prides the festival on being an intimate experience compared to larger spectacles.
“The difference with our festival is that it’s so close up and intimate,” says Dugan. “I like to say it’s like seeing Cirque du Soleil in your living room.”
Annie Dugan is the artistic director of Edmonton’s Firefly Theatre.Photo by Ryan Parker /Supplied
The North x Northwest Cabaret kicks off the four-day weekend on Thursday, with 17 individual and pair acts performing an array of aerial and acrobatic feats.
“I am just giddy about this cabaret,” says Dugan. “The calibre of artists is outstanding.”
Performers from across Canada will hit the stage, such as Montreal-based aerial artist Tanya Burka, who found her place in circus arts but also holds a bachelor of science in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Mooky McGuinty, a playful clown who’s delighted audiences from Russia to Australia and beyond, will be performing with her trained chickens.
“If you know what dog agility looks like, it’s a little bit of chicken agility,” says Dugan, laughing.
On Friday, Murdoch performs Twist of Fate, based on her true experience of a childhood diagnosis of severe scoliosis. Murdoch, not only an aerial artist but artistic director of Toronto’s LookUp Theatre, overcame surgery and recovery to become a 20-year veteran of circus arts with a 12-inch metal spine. She incorporates projections of spinal X-ray scans, as well as a back brace, in her multidimensional performance.
“It’s really a testimony to, ‘Don’t ever give up,’” says Dugan. “Regardless of what your circumstances are, don’t give up.”
Barka, a production from Montreal-based performance company Girovago, hits the stage on Saturday. Musicians, acrobats and dancers will energize audiences with circus feats and Balkan and Afro-Colombian beats. At the end of the 2 p.m. show, audiences are invited to participate, and the troupe’s evening show will be capped with a Danza Party for Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day.
“It’s just going to be this huge wall of energy,” says Dugan. “It’s going to be a whirlwind of chaotic fun.”
Closing out the weekend’s mainstage performances is Deep Dish from Winnipeg contortionist Samantha Halas. She was 21 when she got her start in contortion, so considered by many to be a late bloomer for such physical feats. She’s notable for juggling with her feet, a skill Dugan says she doesn’t see often. Halas plays Helen, a waitress whose pull to do circus arts makes her play with cups and spin pizzas on her feet in the restaurant. Like a truly excellent server, Halas can juggle four pizzas at a time.
Beyond the weekend’s big-ticket performances, Dugan sought to make the festival accessible through free events, such as Sunday’s Cirque in the Park, which will feature performances and interactive activities for kids in Mill Creek Ravine Park. The 5@Cirque, or Circus Happy Hour, will return to the Café Bicyclette patio on Friday and include a workshop on folding fans and prop manipulation with Edmonton artist FloWarrior. Later that evening, Francis Proteau, an acrobatics and juggling instructor from Quebec, will host After Hours Juggle Jam while the National Stilt Walkers of Canada will return with a drop-in workshop on the art of walking way up high, as well as juggling for the more earthbound folks on Saturday.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
