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Youth Circus Newsletter
Welcome to the first ACAPTA Youth Circus Newsletter. In this issue you can read about some of the amazing things that youth circus’s all over Australia are working on and meet some of the inspirational young people who practice circus with passion and commitment.
Featured in this issue are:
Westside Circus- VIC
Circus Cycas – North Qld
Brewarrina Youth Circus - NSW
Flipside Circus- QLD
Trick Circus - VIC
Fabulous Risk - NSW
WESTSIDE CIRCUS
Gen’s Story-by Gen
Elmes
Admin Assistant
Westside Circus Inc.
Warehouse 3, 433 Smith St Fitzroy 3065
PH 9482 2088
info@westsidecircus.com
I joined the Westside Circus in November 2004 at the age of 20. In the beginning, coming to circus classes once a week was something fun to keep me busy in the summer holidays. I’d been quite inactive after giving up sport at the age of 14, and although I hadn’t thought of myself as a very physical person, I loved the new experiences and challenges that circus offered me.
Gradually my attitude changed from “I could never do that!” to “Look what I can do!” as I learned to trust myself enough to try, and others to help me do things I would never have imagined – building human pyramids, learning to juggle, performing tricks on a Cloudswing four metres high! Circus gives me a great sense of achievement, and has brought many wonderful new friends into my life
| Westside Circus "Albatross" |  |
Over the last eighteen months at Westside I have
trained at two classes per week, sat on the Westside Circus Board as a
Training Member, and taught kids how to make juggling balls at the Moomba
Festival. A major highlight was performing in the 2005 show Gravity
along with about eighty other people aged 3-50. It was amazing fun, and
I can’t wait to perform again in the December 2006 show! I now work
part time in the office at Westside, and I’m also very excited to
have recently been inducted as a ‘Trainee Trainer’, which
means I’ll be mentored by an experienced Westside Trainer in teaching
circus. Training at Westside has helped me feel more confident, happy
and healthy, and I would love to share some of the things I’ve learned
with others.
|
Westside Circus' 2005 Community performance
|
OUTREACH PROJECTS
The Westside Circus provides outreach programs for schools and a range
of diverse community groups. Programs can consist of a one-off experience
to a year-long project. Workshops are tailored to suit the needs of participants
and their organisation, so that classes are always challenging and fun.
Activities might include juggling, hula-hoops, partner acro-balance and
aerials such as trapeze, cloudswing and tissue.
The Westside Circus outreach program focuses on using circus to encourage personal growth, confidence building, positive risk taking and making social change (as well as creating shows!) Some of our current partners include Melbourne City Mission with its Going Off Tap anger management program for young men; SCOPE a program for adults with disabilities; and Inner East Community Health Service programs targeting disadvantaged young people in their region. The Westside Circus also offers the circus experience in schools.
In 2005, we conducted the highly successful Amazing Kids Circus
at Ringwood Heights Primary School, which involved 320 students, ex-students,
parents, teachers (and even the principal) in an outdoor theatre performance.
Current 2006 school partners include Sunshine Secondary College, Cheltenham
Secondary College, Eltham College, Kingswood College, Burwood Primary
School and Chesire Early Intervention School.
For more information contact: outreach@westsidecircus.com
THE WELCOME PLACE PROJECT
The Welcome Place is a program offering circus training to recently arrived
young people from refugee backgrounds. Based in the Western suburbs of
Melbourne, The Welcome Place runs circus workshops at different times
throughout the year, ending in a performance outcome such as The Welcome
Day, performed in October 2005 at The Living Museum of the West. The Welcome
Day showcased the talented young circus performers who had been training
through the Welcome Place Project in 2005. In 2006 the Welcome Place Project
has run an outreach program at the Western English Language School, and
drop-in circus classes in St Albans. Participants who performed at The
Welcome Day in 2005 continued their circus training in 2006, leading to
the formation of the Afrabats, a circus troupe of young people from refugee
backgrounds. The Afrabats will make their performance debut on Saturday
July 29th at the Holy Eucharist Church, Oleander Avenue, St Albans South.
For more information contact: caitlin@westsidecircus.com
CIRCUS CYCUS:
A word from Patti Burnheim;
 |
Circus Cycus |
I am the founder and director of Cycas Circus at Smithfield
State High School. I formed the troupe in the Spring of 2005. With training
and guidance from Kassowary Circus of Kuranda, a group
of students from all age groups and social groups were able to showcase
what they had learned after only a few weeks of instruction. They showed
dedication and positive team spirit, working consciously and in collaboration.
The results highlighted their potential of creating something unique within
our community.
My goal for Cycas Circus is to teach the art of life through circus education.
I aim to create an interactive experience that encourages young people
to value team spirit and appreciate a love for physical theatre and all
areas of the arts. Cycas Circus fosters communication skills and assists
students to achieve their unique potential. The skills they develop are
not only physical, but self-discipline and confidence building, promoting
positive self-esteem and team work.
This year workshops are being provided by local professionals from the
Northern Circus Alliance in the areas of stilt walking, unicycling, diabolos,
pois, fire twirling, flower sticks, juggling, trapeze, silks, hula hoops
and much more.
Kassowary Circus is working closely with the students training them in
acrobalance: building human pyramids and tumbling. Once skills are developed,
the shows are choreographed with music and special lighting and media
effects to produce a spell-bounding innovated work of art for a variety
of audiences. We have also been asked to perform at the Cairn’s
Youth Circus Festival at the Tanks in September and our year’s
grand finale will be at Smithfield State High School’s Drama Festival
in December. We are available to perform for special events or functions
upon request.
BREWARRINA YOUTH CIRCUS
News from Bre'
| John from Bre' and Becky from Zip Zap |  |
The Brewarrina Youth Circus is going form strength to strength.
Last year saw 16 students Perform at Catapult Festival and the creation
of 2 streams of training with options now for General Training and Advanced
Training.
The Commonwealth Games Cultural Arts Project was awesome
beyond all expectations. A unique collaboration using three different
groups from across the globe who found a common voice through Circus.
8 students from Brewarrina teamed up with 9 students from Zip-Zap
Circus in South Africa, and 9 members of the Flying Fruit
Fly Circus. They performed their inspiring show, 3wAyXchange
under the Big Top in Alexandria Gardens.
The show, set in an Airport waiting lounge, showcased and celebrated
the diverse, styles, skills, acts and cultures of the three groups and
they performed to sell-out crowds. The troupe performed 7 shows with three
standing ovations, a massive yeah! to all the Team, Artists and Crew for
an outstanding effort.
We are also glad to welcome our school on board. The Brewarrina Central
School is looking into options to have both general and accredited Circus
Skills Training available, we are hoping these will be on offer for 2007.
Good Luck to our 2 students, Tiffany Winters and David
Simpson who have been on tour with The Flying Fruit Fly
Tour of Le Triste, rehearsing in Albury for 3 weeks and then
touring for 2 weeks, the tour concludes with a public performance of the
show in The Brewarrina Community Hall.
Our web-site has been updated with some photos from the Commonwealth Games
Project, and more are coming.
And last but not at all least, CONGRATULATIONS to Tiffany Winters,
Senior Student and now Trainee with the Brewarrina Youth Circus who is
going to Cape Town in December to train with The Zip-Zap Circus
for 3 months, AWESOME!.
Tiffany leaves after Co-directing the next Brewarrina Community Circus
Show, which will be held in Brewarrina the week of the 20-24th of November.
We are happy to announce our trainers for the next Training Intensive,
starting Oct 16th are, Josh Bond, Jesse Scott, Zanette Clements, and me,…
Kate Reid/Co-ordinator.
For more updates on Brewarrina Youth Circus, or just to see some photos
of where we live in Bre’, go to, www.brecircusproject.com.au
FLIPSIDE CIRCUS
It has been a busy year for us at Flipside Circus as our company continues
to grow in many new and exciting ways! Flipside is Queensland’s
only circus dedicated solely to young people. The performance troupe is
made up of 35 bright young superstars aged from 7 through to 19 and so
far this year the Flipside Circus performance troupe have performed at:
The Queens Street Mall, Community Garden Festival, Holy Spirit Annual
Fair, Valley Fiesta, The Buranda Fair, Ikea launch Brisbane, The Variety
Club bash, The Motor Neuron Disease Benefit, The Brisbane Caberet Festival
and most recently our production of Reg Bolton’s Xtreme
Opera at the Brisbane Powerhouse. We were lucky enough to have
a well attended season with fantastic feedback from all our audience members
and industry friends. Flipside is proud to have had the opportunity to
dedicate our season to the memory and work of Dr Reg Bolton.
| Conor Blakely of Flipside Circus |  |
We will be taking the show on the road to the Woodford Folk Festival
performing at the Palace so if you’re at Woodford this year make
sure you check us out!
Our Cultural Community Development program focus’s on forging partnerships
with the Murri School at Acacia Ridge and with the refugee assistance
program QPASTT (Queensland Program for Surivour’s of Trauma
and Torture) through workshops and long term projects. We are
happy to have 2 students from QPASTT attending regular Flipside classes
as part of our Bursary fund. We hope to see them in the performance troupe
in the near future!
Over 250 young people attend Flipside Circus’s regular classes (after
school and on weekends) each week! Our classes cater for every child from
4year olds who we call our wrigglers, right through to our long term students
Ted Hully and Hannah Cryle who have just completed their NICA auditions!
Both Ted and Hannah are Trainee Trainers at Flipside as well as students.
Our Trainee Trainer program is expanding to include a full course where
our potential trainee’s can learn all there is to know about teaching
circus to young people in Australia. Cheers Kristy Seymour – Head
Trainer www.flipsidecircus.org.au
TRICK
CIRCUS
Trick Circus wins 3 awards in the Melbourne Fringe Festival
www.trickcircus.net
by Lilikoi Olsen
Our Melbourne based youth circus took a creative gamble that paid off.
We are a group of between 10 to 15 members (the numbers vary a lot each
year as members of the group take on final exams) aged between 11 and
20, with the shared desire to focus on performing and creating circus
shows.
We collectively decided to stake all that we had accumulated from gigs
on mounting a show in the Melbourne Fringe Festival. On top of that, we
also decided to collectively devise, write, direct and publicise the event
ourselves. We figured that we would probably lose money but it would be
a good experience and an opportunity to let a large audience know who
we are.
The show, “When I Grow Up”, emerged from
our own feelings and thoughts about a common concern - the hopes, fears,
pressures and fantasies about what it means to grow up. We framed this
with many of life’s big transitions – moving from primary
school to secondary, secondary school to uni, finding work, dealing (or
not dealing) with the increasing demands to figure out who we are, choose
a career and decide on our futures.
 |
It was not always easy to operate as a collective and the more vocal and confident members of the troupe had to consciously try to take a step back to let the younger or less experienced members have their say. |
Having started with a sort of chronological approach to
the material we then ended up mixing things up a little for the sake of
a balance between the fast, slow, serious, comic, structured and totally
chaotic sections. This process was helped by Kim Kaos offering to be an
outside eye. She was great because she didn’t want to hinder our
creative process but acted as guidance for what worked and didn’t.
Things were complicated by the fact that, 2 months before the Fringe,
we found out that our usual training venue wasn’t available and
we had to book time in other places and move our gear after each rehearsal
for storage or to the next venue. We even had one dress rehearsal in someone’s
backyard by the light of camping lanterns when we couldn’t find
anywhere else.
All in all, the process was worthwhile, it enabled us to combine circus
with our own stories and put them into a show that was, according to Cameron
Woodhead from The Age -“Infused with irony-tinged optimism”
– . Click
here for the full review
Another irony was that while putting on the show 4 of us were trying
to keep up with the work load of our first year at uni…and part
time jobs…and for the younger members a couple were coping with
exam prep or trying to decide which high school to go to. We were completely
living what we were performing! We all ended up pretty tired but that
was more than compensated for by the fact that we managed to sell out
every performance before we were even halfway through the season. People
were turned away every night, which is a pretty big deal in a festival
where over 200 shows are competing for audience.
When we decided to go to the Fringe Awards, we went more in the spirit
of having a sort of ‘end of run’ celebration. We were a little
worried because the event was in a night club and half our troupe is underage
and luckily we got there early because, an hour later, the bouncers weren’t
letting in people without ID’s!
It was totally worth being there though. When they announced that we had
won the Circus Award there may have been a few cardiac
arrests from our screams of surprise. The Circus Award is a new category
award that was started by Fringe in response to the increasing number
of circus acts that have been involved in recent years. After receiving
the award we went back to where we had been standing and were so busy
laughing and hugging each other that we nearly missed the announcement
saying that Trick Circus had won the Best Family Event Award!
Luckily we had time to catch our breath before they announced that we
had also won the first ever Melbourne Fringe /ACAPTA Award.
Pretty exciting…but we all had school the next morning. With such
outstanding and innovative circus works appearing in the Fringe this year
we were completely surprised to win. Every single show deserved an award,
but somehow, getting this kind of recognition in a festival that is not
specifically a youth arts festival made us realise that our stories and
perspectives count and our circus skills have opened yet another door.
We all feel incredibly encouraged to make more shows and are very excited
that the circus industry has welcomed our youth-run youth circus. Now…if
we could just find a regular place to train where we can rig aerial gear,
learn how to write a better funding applications and get cheaper insurance…
FABULOUS RISK…danger and performance
in circus sideshow!!!
Due to great interest we will have 2 separate youth sessions at the
conference.
We have identified a need to run 2 separate and different youth sessions
which is really exciting.
Saturday Dec.2 @2:00-3:30 in the BIG TOP:
YOUTH CIRCUS
Chair:
Paul Woodhead
Panel:
Bridgette Van Leuven & Kim Spinks: Arts NSW < Funding
Jane Davis: Half High Circus < Youth & Risk
Kristy Seymour: Flipside Circus < Career Paths
and
Sunday Dec 3 @11.30- 1 in Novotel
Youth on Youth: Responses to the Plenary Forum
Chair:
Louise Moriarty: Broken Hill Circus
Panel:
Lilikoi Olsen - Trick Circus
Mitch Jones - Trick Circus
Spenser Inwood - Flying Fruit Fly Circus
For more information on this fabulous conference head to:
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/ccas/programs/2006/circus/
The next issue of the ACAPTA Youth Circus Newsletter will be focusing on Circus in Education. If you have an article to submit don’t hesitate to contact me at: kristy@flipsidecircus.org.au
:: TOP ::
This project has been assisted by the Federal Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.