Circus Cabaret Night is back, freshening the blood flow of Scottish Circus Arts. Created by Edinburgh-based company Delighters to demonstrate the true skill of Scotland’s Circus scene today, their seventh event in the Cirqulation series is coming to Assembly Roxy on Sunday 24 April. Cirqualtion: Future will celebrate our time ahead of us, life, growth, survival and perseverance in the time of wars, pandemic and climate change.
The line-up, curated by founder Jusztina Hermann, seeks to represent a new wave of circus acts emerging alongside international touring talents that rarely take to Scotland’s stages for a night of immersive family-friendly entertainment. The event showcases various disciplines, from ground-based acts to breath-taking aerial performances. An unforgettable evening of personal stories and theatrical entertainment, Cirqulation brings the best of professional contemporary circus together under one roof and gives audiences a chance to see leading circus artists outside of August’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Artist – Matt Von Trap (Matthew Keys) Image credit N/A. Artist – Blaise Donald & Kate George (Skylarks) – Credit – Chris Watts Photography
Matthew Keys, also known as Matt Von Trapp, will be hosting and performing in this immersive night of circus. Part magician, part poet and complete clown, Matthew will compére and display his skills as a clown, juggler and magician. Amy Longmuir is a non-binary dancer, aerialist and acrobat based in Edinburgh whose new silks act highlights the pressure to conform to gendered ideals when being hired as a performer, and marks a turning point where Amy has decided to be true to themself, regardless of risk to their career. Particularly inspired by the experience of performing as a Frozen princess, this act was created as a reinterpretation of ‘Let It Go’ and is an optimistic look to the future.
Melanie Jordan and Alice Langley will be inviting audience members to witness their circus theatre piece in development, Gwyn’s Garments. Emma Robbie, a circus performer based in North East Scotland, will be exploring the feeling of being constrained and weighed down by our technology-obsessed industrial world in her new act Heavy Metal, Eric Munday and Alix Bailie will be presenting PhDistraction, an act which represents their day-to-day life as PhD students distracted by dreams of a future in the circus.
Blaise Donald and Kate George are Edinburgh-based aerialists who often perform as a duo and run pop-up circus Cirque Affair. They will be performing a lollipop hoop piece highlighting the importance of human connection in our future world of technology and AI.
Rachael Macintyre, an aerialist based in Forres, is co-founder of Moray Flying Circus and artistic director of Jabuti Theatre. With a background in puppetry and theatre, Rachael performs and directs and is enjoying developing aerial arts as a means of creative expression. Her piece is about cycles of generations, a ritual of recognition that we are made up of all those who have walked before us and those who will continue on our path. Gemma Simpson, also known as As Above, established Adventure Circus in Perth in 2015. In Cirqulation: FUTURE, she will be performing on aerial hoop.
Artist – Bob – Credit – Bob. Robert Gallagher Lyall – Photo credit Polifilm Media
Sally Fyfe will be performing her first dance trapeze act on the night, focussing on themes of aging, uncertain futures and moving forward. Elsa van der Wal will be exploring the changing of seasons, how time spools out in cycles, blooming and decaying as time goes by. Edinburgh-based performer and teacher Robert Gallagher-Lyall has juggled their way through the last 12 years, while also dabbling in a variety of other disciplines along the way. They have spent a life accepting things as they are, little belief in the power to build and shape what they desire. Now they enter the stage, ready to see where the future has led them.
Each Cirqulation event is themed differently to inspire the creation of something new. Cirqulation offers mentoring to artists in the creation process of their new acts and the chance to show work to a live audience, as well as providing a great networking opportunity for artists within the industry, whether they are performing or coming to watch the show. Although currently performed in Edinburgh, the aim is to take the show on tour, making the artform available for communities across Scotland in the future.
Jusztina Hermann, Artistic Director of Cirqulation, said: “There is an ever-growing circus scene in Scotland all year-round that stays hidden from the larger public. As well as providing performance opportunities to established and emerging circus performers, the event aims to attract new audiences that appreciate contemporary circus. We were performing the first six editions of the show in Muirhouse and Granton to bring circus to areas where people wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to attend such events.
“With the seventh edition at Assembly Roxy in Edinburgh’s city centre we are making the show available for a larger audience. The fact that all our previous shows sold out demonstrates the need for this artform. The plan is to bring Cirqulation to other parts of Scotland in the future, we are currently working on the touring version of the show.”
The event is funded by Creative Scotland and the National Lottery Fund, and sponsored by Cascade Juggling and Polifilm Media.
CIRQULATION: FUTURE
Produced by Delighters
24 April, 18:00
120 minutes
Roxy Theatre – Central
Assembly Roxy, 2 Roxburgh Pl, Edinburgh EH8 9SU
https://assemblyfestival.com/roxy/whats-on/cirqulation-future
