🎬 "VACUUM" performance • May 2024 (Patreon)

Hello, my strange and wonderful reader! Well – strange and wonderful viewer, today.

As promised, here is the recording of my performance of VACUUM from May in Toronto. Just got the footage from the event videographer a little while ago.

I had to get a whole new external hard drive for it – 8 GB, good glob. And then I had to sit my laptop on top of an ice pack as it finished exporting from my editing software because this machine's internal fan starts doing the MacBook equivalent of hyperventilating if I run more than 2 programs on it (or have more than 5 browser tabs open on it) at once.

We got there in the end. Hope those of you with the wifi speed for it enjoy that crispy 4K quality.

I trialled a new shape I'd been researching and dialled in during my rehearsals leading up to the show – those of you who've been watching VACUUM since it's weird, beautiful, creepy emergence in 2020 will note the new sequence starting around the 3 minute mark.

I particularly love the feeling the lights gave to this run of the act. It made for new kinds of shadow-work and images that I haven't seen yet in previous iterations of VACUUM performances and it scratches my brain in a satisfying way.

The small lift-up of the Tower base at the end was my technician not counterweighting enough for how deep a position I hit with the final shape. The Tower itself is really light: a few pounds of latex; a few pounds of PVC pipe. It all breaks down and fits into a snowboard bag. Not even 'overweight' for airline standards. (cough cough, c'mon Universe, send me to Europe with this thing).

And yes, that IS the breathing tube falling out into the Tower around [3m 45s]. Whoops. As the latex sleeve ages, it begins to lose some of its elasticity in the high-use areas – like where the vacuum ports and various tubes go in and out of the Tower.

Technically, at this point in my experience and familiarity and HIT score (Hours-In-Tower, har har har), I feel like there's a world where I could do the act without the tube.

But I like it in there as something to interact with. And in earlier iterations of the act  it helped me on the psychological fortitude front for the one-in-ten moments that the suction of the latex envelope is randomly extra-intense.

I had about 2.5 seconds to decide during this show run if I should try to get the tube back in place before I was going to be trapped in an awkward / half-position.

Quick flashes of thought came:

Can I do the rest of the act without it? Should I just carry on with the show? Would that be less visually disruptive?

I think I can do the next shape no problem.

Oh shit, but the big contortion handstand at the end ... okay, that one I'm less confident about being able to do without panicking sans-breathing-tube.

GET THAT TUBE BACK IN.

So I  decided to err on the side of caution and got it back in in time. Apparently this scared the crap out of the crowd. Oops!  (hee hee)

On a more AWWWWW-inducing final note, sharing the footage from this performance also feels like the perfect time to share this adorable candid snapped in the post-performance-adrenaline-dump-haze that followed the show:

On the upper-right-hand corner of this photo (with the cool green-framed glasses) is Marika, the badass lady who engineered and constructed my apparatus;

And on the lefthand side of the photo is my incredible Patreon patron, and your fellow strange-wonderful-reader, GRACE who came all the way from OHIO, USA to SEE THE FREAKIN' SHOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 *very loud exploding head noises*

Thanks so much for making an epic voyage to come see VACUUM in person, Grace!


[shared with permission]

I've received a handful of messages from a few more of you with MORE exciting news that some of you will be attending my run-of-shows with the Montréal International Circus Festival's edition of the Le Monastère cabaret on July 5th, 6th, 11th, 12th, or 13th. Can't wait to take more no-filter, all-gums, heart-overflowing selfies with y'all!

Le Monastère always wrangles together a pretty incredible lineup of artists and it feels like a big honour to be a part of one. Here's the link to the event if you might also be in Montréal on those dates and would like to try to come see Barbette in person: https://le-monastere.ca/en/ticketing/

In the meantime, I'm hard at work re-vamping Le Numéro Barbette ... more from me soon. Until then, stay strange and wonderful –

XOXO ess