Australian Circus and Physical Theatre Association::June 2007 Newsletter

If you would like anything added to the July Newsletter please email details to ACAPTA. We will make every effort to include it but to be certain that there is sufficient notice contact us 6 to 8 weeks prior to your event.

National Youth Circus Day 2007 Registration Now Open!!!
Information Sheet
Registration Form
Start planning now for the inaugural National Youth Circus Day! Youth Circus is one of the fastest growing arenas for youth recreation and expression. As a way of celebrating this fact, the first National Youth Circus Day is set to take place on September 13, 2007, a date chosen to coincide with the second Catapult Festival, a biennial festival with a focus on circus and physical theatre and showcasing youth groups.

National Youth Circus Day will be a series of events presented across Australia by Youth Circuses, School Groups and other programs incorporating circus skills and promoted to the wider community.

Get involved! Organisations with Youth Circus programs - from schools to professional companies, from community groups to established Youth Circuses - are being asked to plan an event to join in with the day. The event may be as simple as a training session open to the public’s view or as large as an opening night for a major season.

The thrust of the day is to promote the benefits to youth of participating in a Circus program, benefits that extend far beyond the obvious personal and social growth parameters most often reported on. However, the day will also be an opportunity to present the role played by Youth Circus companies in the community and the role played by ACAPTA in supporting those companies across Australia. It will also give the young people participating the opportunity to feel connected to their peers throughout the country.

If your interest is sparked already, please contact ACAPTA on circusday@acapta.net to ensure your organisation is on the lists.
Or write to -

ACAPTA
Office 20 / 5 Blackwood Street
North Melbourne
VIC 3051
If you know of another organisation with a Youth Circus program forward them the link and encourage them to contact ACAPTA soon … the more the merrier they say!

SYNESTHESIA Tues 19th June to Sat 23rd June at 7.30 pm

NICA presents an explosive circus show full of movement and colour - for all the family! NICA students tantalise your senses in SYNESTHESIA... a sensory circus experience.
Preview: Tue 19 June Adults $10, Children $8
Season: Wed 20 to Sat 23 June Adults $15, Children $8
School Matinees: Thur 21 & Fri 22 June at 1.30pm - ask
about our special rates!
NICA National Circus Centre in Green Street, Prahran, VIC.
Bookings (03) 9214 6537 or info@nica.com.au
For more details: http://www.nica.com.au/shows

$2.75 Million in 90 days for land and a home for Lunar Circus.
Thanks to ACAPTA members Andrew Cook and Sarah Mason for this news item.
Cath Wood is a circus mum, with more energy than an atomic bomb. She has put in to buy a plot of land in her hometown of Margaret River, Western Australia, but she can't afford it, so she is on the quest to get 27,500 people to loan her 100 dollars each and turn the land into a home for circus.
Crazy, I know. But I reckon she can do it. And I think it is so crazy, it's beautiful, what a way to chase your dream.
She was on Today Tonight last night.
Here is an extract from her site with a bit more info:
How do I plan to do this?
I plan to borrow $100 each from 27 500 friends.
If my friends don't want to lend me money I'll ask them to throw a few dollars into the hat, or buy a voucher so they get something back for it later.
If they don't want to do that, I'll ask them to lend me a hand.
If they're too busy for that, I'll invite them to just hang around and watch anyway.
First, I need 27 500 friends.
Why do I need the money anyway?
My dream block of land came up for sale recently, and I wasn't quite ready for it yet. Specifically, I didn't have just under $3 million available to buy it.
But I knew this was my future home! And it's the perfect place for the Lunar Circus School. Once I own this block, I plan to build custom training and performance spaces, so that Fatt Matt can use them to teach circus skills to children (and adults) all year round, the Lunar Circus School has a base in Margaret River, and circus performers and musicians from far and wide can perform there.
So I went ahead and put in a cash offer anyway. ....
www.cathwood.com

Melbourne Juggling Convention 2007 is being held at Collingwood College from 21st to 23rd September. This community circus event is not limited to juggling – there will be diabolo, devil sticks, poi/staff twirling, hula-hoop, contact juggling and much more. Workshops in all the above will be held throughout the convention, at beginner, intermediate and advanced skill levels.

All are invited to come and share the excellent facilities we have available, to learn, teach and most important of all, have fun with circus!

On Friday evening there will be a Renegade Show (Open Stage) – a juggling convention tradition – where anyone may get up to perform something in front of a very friendly audience. There are no limits here! There may be anything from telling the latest joke to trying out a new trick or whole routine!

On Saturday night there will be a professional ‘Public Show’ held in the college’s own 250-seat theatre. This show is open to the public, and will feature high-quality circus acts from around the world.

‘The Juggling Olympics’ is another convention favourite, being held on the Sunday afternoon. Jugglers battle it out to win various circus-related games – high-diabolo throw, long distance club-passing, 3-ball gladiators, to name a few! Fun, and laughs guaranteed every time!

The convention has had fantastic support from the community – a big thank you goes to:Little Devils Recreation, Mouleprint, JuggleArt, RUCCIS, Melbourne University Juggling Club and JuggleJam. We hope to see you there!!!

National Workshops --- June/July

If you're thinking about auditioning for NICA's Bachelor of Circus Arts degree later this year, or in the next three years, register for a workshop in your city today. NICA is holding one day workshops throughout Australia this June/July.
Only $25 per workshop - registrations close 22 June 2007.
Mark these dates in your diary:
Adelaide 30 June
Perth 1 July
Darwin 3 July
Cairns 5 July
Brisbane 6 July
Sydney 7 July
Melbourne 14 & 15 July
Launceston 21 July
Visit the NICA website for details and to download the application
form: http://www.nica.com.au/workshops

RichMix Series!
1. Work-in-Progress showing - June 20th:
Join Circus Monoxide for a work-in-progress showing of three new aerial performances by local circus performers Heidi Hillier, Jane Davis and HalfHigh student Kimberly Newland.
WHEN: Wednesday 20th June, 6:30pm
WHERE: Circus Monoxide Training Space, 9 Watts Lane, Bellambi (right down the end, next door to 'Australis Canoes'), Wollongong.
The warehouse is cold in the evenings so bring your winter woolies!
The showing will be followed by nibblies, hot chocolate and a chance for the performers to hear your feedback and great ideas!
2. Intensive - Acrobatics for Adults with Paul O'Keefe - Beginners & Intermediate - July 14 & 15
3. Artist Talk: Women & Comedy - August - date TBC

Creative Corners; The Global Arts Project works in 7 South and Central American countries and has been created to appeal to creative and performing artists, enthusiasts & teachers so that they can share their skills in orphanages and homes for disadvantaged, abused and abandoned children while living with families and host communities. 100 % of profits are donated to their associated charity Arts for Change to set up music and arts centers in the projects where volunteers work.
So how could ‘you’ use your creative skills on a volunteer trip and what are the benefits?
According to Monique Julian Director of Creative Corners there are unlimited ways to use creative skills on volunteer projects….with past and current projects including devising a play in a Bolivian orphanage, teaching photography to street kids in Honduras, singing to teen mums in Nicaragua, sharing moves in a Brazilian social circus, redecorating a children’s home in Guatemala or designing a garden in Peruvian orphanage. She says…
“Living and working in Latin America for a good cause while developing your own creative, teaching and project leading skills provides ‘creatives’ with invaluable personal and professional development experiences and new inspiration on which to draw in the future”
The Creative Corners website also states the benefits as being:
_ Unparalleled personal development, professional kudos and a once in a life time adventure.
_ An enhanced and interesting CV with overseas experience working in the field.
_ A chance to make new friends & international contacts while experiencing new cultures and places.
_ Re-discover your passion for teaching…
_ Hands on experience.
_ Collaborations on which to build in the future.
_ Personal challenges and personal reward.
_ A chance to re-inspire yourself and your career.Artists’ work in needy and underserved communities in developing countries provides unique benefits. Participation in the arts, or in any form of creative expression allows children to connect to their past, envision a future and express imagination.
Encouraging children to think, express and be creative is an essential part of education and unfortunately in the developing world teacher-training doesn’t often include the creative arts so organisations like Creative Corners who send volunteers with these skills to run arts education projects allows children to express their feelings and experiences through a creative process while encouraging inspiration and growth. This then allows them to grow in confidence, become more self-assured and gain new communication skills.

The Circus Diaries – intimate portraits of Australian circus families.
George Adams Gallery of the Victorian Arts Centre, until July 15th.
FREE – open same hours as the Arts Centre
FREE PUBLIC PROGRAM-26 June 1pm
Floor talks with Andrea Lemon
Curator Andrea Lemon offers an insight into the history of Australian circus families through a guided tour of the exhibition.

It is a wonderful exhibition drawn from my research and travels over the past two years, featuring photographs of traditional circuses and portraits of circus elders (95 year-old ex-lion tamers, 86 year-old ex-dental trapeze artists, you name it..) by Cal MacKinnon and myself; old photos of these people in their prime as circus performers in the 1930s – 1970s; old home movies of circus life in the 1940s – 1970s; written and vocal excerpts from oral histories with the people featured; old costumes and memorabilia from life on the road; and a slide show of my time travelling with Stardust Circus, Circus Joseph Ashton, Lorraine Ashton’s Classic Circus, and interviewing the circus elders. It has been a mammoth labour of love, supported by the Performing Arts Collection of the Arts Centre, and the Australian Centre of Melbourne University. I’d love you to see it if you have the chance. We would love to tour the exhibition, so if you know of regional or interstate galleries that might be interested in presenting it, please send them the flier and the website details (and send me their details) and do some lobbying on our behalf!

I have started a website / blog (see addresses below) to support the ongoing nature of this project, as hopefully the Melbourne exhibition will be the first of a number of outcomes. So if you (or someone you know) would like to be kept in touch with future outcomes, would like to hear stories from on the road, or would like to share a circus story, please go to www.thecircusdiaries.com.au and join the newsletter – this way we can stay in touch. The website is just starting, and images and excerpts from the exhibition will be added as I get time! The website contains links to the Arts Centre and the Australian Centre to get more information.
Cheers
Andrea Lemon

Chartered Accountant earns PhD ... about CIRCUS ...
For a Chartered Accountant, Mark St Leon sure knows a lot about circus. Well, he should. On the goldfields in 1851, his forbears formed one of Australia’s first circus troupes. Over the century that followed, the family circus – St Leon’s – travelled the length and breadth of Australia and New Zealand.

The fruits of some four decades of part-time research, Mark’s 96,000-word doctoral thesis Circus & Nation was recently accepted by the School of Philosophy and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney.

“The saga of circus in Australia makes for fascinating history”, said St Leon, a university lecturer, at his home in Sydney today. “For instance, my family’s circus tent was commandeered by the diggers at Ballarat for a meeting just before the Eureka Stockade incident of 1854”.

Asked if he ever wanted to join the circus, Mark was reticent. “No, not really. I started recording the family’s history for posterity and from that developed an interest and understanding of Australia’s travelling show history. Although people today would not realise it, in the days before cinema and television Australia was served by a huge industry of travelling shows – circus, variety and vaudeville tent shows, travelling opera and theatrical companies, boxing troupes and just about any other entertainment you can think of.

Mark spent 10 years at the Australia Council, the Federal Government’s arts funding agency as Senior Finance Officer. There he played a key role in developing the financial and governance systems of Australia’s major arts organizations. He set up the Sydney Arts Management Advisory Group which has now been in existence for 16 years.

And circus? “Oh yes, while at the Australia Council I took the opportunity to study the dilapidated state of Australia’s circus industry. The upshot of this was a National Circus Conference held in Melbourne in 1990 and attended by 160 delegates. From that followed, a decade later, the establishment of National Institute of Circus Arts (‘NICA’) in Melbourne, now federally-funded.”.
Mark received his PhD on Friday 8 June in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney. Mark points out that this fine sandstone edifice was erected in 1857, some six years after the family erected its first circus tent at Sofala!
Mark is also in the process of developing and extending and information rich website:
www.pennygaff.com.au

Launceston Sept 22
Melbourne Sept 25 & 26
Adelaide Sept 29
Perth Sept 30
Darwin Oct 2
Cairns Oct 4
Brisbane Oct 5
Sydney Oct 6

Audition applications close September 14 - go to the NICA website for audition details and application forms.

Circus Oz Melbourne Season
2007 – June 20 – July 17
Birrarung Marr, Melbourne
Venue:
Under the Big Top
Birrarung Marr
Between Federation Square and Batman Avenue
Melbourne
Bookings:
Ticketmaster
Call: 136 100
www.ticketmaster.com.au.

NICA currently has a position available. For full postion description click here
If you or anyone in your network is interested in work of this nature, please view or distribute the attached position description.
For further information, please contact Fiona Spurrell on 03 9214 6411 or fspurrell@swin.edu.au
All applicants must address the selection criteria and applications close Friday 22nd June 2007.

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Circus Teachers Wanted

Westside Circus is looking for excellent communicators to facilitate beginner circus workshops in a community social circus context. We are a not for profit community organisation and facilitate circus workshops – often for disadvantaged young people, in refugee organisations and community schools. We are looking for circus trainers who are interested in teaching circus in this context and are committed to similar values as us.
Westside Circus is based in Fitzroy, Melbourne.
Applications Close:
Friday, June 29, 2007
Contact:Ailsa Wild 03 94822088
www.westsidecircus.com

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Training Intensive 2007
Saturday 30 June – Wednesday 4 July
Bookings and payment must be made by Friday 22nd June

This year’s program will include:
• Swinging Trapeze with Misha Reale
• Swinging Cloudswing with Misha Reale
• Handstands with TBC
• Adagio (int-adv) with Vasily Ivanov
• Adagio (pitching for int-adv) with Vasily Ivanov
• Tumbling with Felicia O’Brien
• Hula Hoops with Leigh Marning
• Pole with Ben Lewis
• Flying Trapeze with Julian Wisdom & Felicia O’Brien
• Duo Static Trapeze with Anni Davey
• Tissu with Helene Embling
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE REQUIRED
All classes will be held at:
Circus Oz, 40 Bay Street, Port Melbourne
Enrolment forms will be available from 18th May on our website, or by calling the office.
For more information, contact Tara or Annie on: 03 9676 0325 or classes@circusoz.com.au or check www.circusoz.com.au

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Vulcana Women's Circus

annually offers 4 terms of circus workshops for women at the Brisbane Powerhouse.
Details of the full program can be found on our website, www.vulcana.org.au
There are still places, this term, in a One-Off Acrobalance workshop being offered on Friday 8 June, 6:30-9:30pm, $35/30 concession.
This workshop is suitable for Beginners through to Advanced students. No
partner is necessary. Learn duo, trio and group balances and have a bunch of fun!

Women from the workshop program will be performing "Revolution", about
renewable energies and based on the incredible skill of Chinese Group Bike
that involves piling as many women as possilbe onto the one bike as it is
riden in a continous circle.
The performance will be presented for the Winter Solstice Celebrations at Northey St City Farm on 23 June.

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Participant registrations now open for Catapult 2007 - September 12-16 Catapult burst onto Australia’s art and cultural calendar on September 16-18, 2005 in a flurry of colour, energy and sheer circus and physical theatre talent. The second Catapult Festival is less than six months away and organisers are calling on youth circus and physical theatre troupes and their communities throughout the country to lend their support to ensure it’s even more spectacular than the first. To achieve this goal Catapult organisers are calling on the communities throughout the country to throw their support behind their local circus and physical theatre performers to ensure they’re at next year’s festival to make it bigger and better. Catapult Program Coordinator Stephen Champion strongly believes this festival is worthy of community backing. “Catapult is the first festival in Australia to showcase the skills of young circus and physical theatre performers and participants are welcome from across Australia and from abroad,” he said. “Another thing that makes Catapult unique is that it is not only a festival for young performers but also attracts some of the best adult professional performers currently practicing. Catapult organisers have observed that the interaction between these youth and adult performers is an inspiration to all participants regardless of their age or skill level.” Brewarrina Circus Project Coordinator Kate Reid, whose troupe shone at the inaugural Catapult Festival, knows first-hand what a magical experience the festival is for emerging circus and physical theatre performers. “Circus is a rapidly growing interest for young people across the country and creating an event such as Catapult, the only youth specific event of it’s kind in the country, provides a unique artistic vehicle for young people from very different backgrounds, to come together in an empowered way with a common language, and focus,” she said. “Catapult is providing an essential place where young people can grow artistically and culturally, can network with other like minded individuals and groups, and gain experiences outside of their local community, in which they can participate in an inspired, inclusive, instructive and constructive environment.” Festival dates: 12 – 16 September 2007 Registration forms, general festival details and copies of the draft program can be downloaded from the website: http://www.catapultfestival.com.au/ For more information contact Catapult Program Coordinator: Stephen Champion on 6333 6166 or email stephen.champion@bathurst.nsw.gov.au. Photos: (from top to bottom) • Kane Peterson • Brewarrina Circus Project - John Kirby,Ivy Dwyer • Circo Blurto from Katoomba • Brewarrina Circus Project - Warwick Williams, David Biles , Chris Barker, Anthony Murphy. • Cirkus Surreal from Bathurst • Popeyed - Rudi Mineur, Mark Sands, (photo by Jerry Boland)

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From the flyer:

by the light of stars that are no longer...combines Circa's physical virtuosity with a haunting soundtrack (featuring works by MuM, Sigor Ros, DJ Shadow and Leonard Cohen) and the startling use of projected light.

Acrobatics, trapeze, tumbling and contortion combine with the nearly lost art of 'tossing the girl' as taught to the ensemble by Australian circus elder, Clete Ball. These circus skills, shaped with Circa's unique sensibility, create a moving piece about our individual relationships with the heavens.

by the light of stars that are no longer...is a hauntingly beautiful work suffused with longing and wonder.

Circa has established an international reputation as Australia's most innovative circus. Since 2006, they have performed in twelve countries. Fresh from a sold out season at the Sydney Opera House and just about to depart to Ireland, Colombia and New Zealand, Circa presents the world premiere of their latest work, by the light of stars that are no longer...

"redraws the limits to which circus can aspire" -The Age

FOUR NIGHTS ONLY
AT THE JUDITH WRIGHT CENTRE
JULY 3 - 6
TICKETS $16 TO $24
BOOK ON 07 3872 9000
OR ONLINE AT www.judithwrightcentre.com
www.circa.org.au

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