Related / Unrelated: A Brief & Unpolished Deviation for your Viewing Pleasure (Patreon)

***UPDATE***: Hi Patrons, when you open this post/video on mobile instead of desktop, it seems to (REALLY RANDOMLY) open up to a video of someone on a horse (?!) No idea who that is, or how that's happening -- I'm not sure if this is an embedding issue with Patreon, or some weird URL wibbly-wobbliness. In case this helps as a non-embedded post link, here is the unlisted URL in hyperlink form: https://vimeo.com/767608676/cde2ba578f

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Hello, my strange & wonderful patrons,

I hope you all enjoyed the unusual glut of essays that October brought you as I tried to download all the Numéro Barbette thoughts and plans and schemes in my head into readable words for you lovely humans!  

If you don't have much time to read further today, here is some brief backstory to contextualize today's video share. I've shared little nibbles of this on social media here & there, but the full video is only showing up here, for our greedy little eyes [please don't share the link elsewhere].

The super-short backstory: 

• This is NOT the Numéro Barbette act. 
• This is a 3-minute practice run of a demo that I threw together over the past week as an act to have in my back-pocket if I am invited to a circus audition this coming week in Montréal (I still have no idea if I am or not!)
• Because there is a school/teacher strike happening in my province right now, to the RIGHT of frame there is a small audience of about forty or fifty 6-to-12-year-olds giving me feedback as we go along (all the screeching and clapping)
• I'm hoping (fingers crossed!) if I'm invited to the audience that we'll be able to compare this humble rehearsal run video to however I perform under pressure in an audition environment. (ooooooh, ahhhhhh).

Thoughts on how this little practice-run went:

Numéro Barbette is –quite literally– my first aerial straps act ever. And it's nowhere near done. Which I guess actually makes THIS cheeky, low-pressure, doesn't-mean-anything little three-minute number my 'first' straps act. Fun! Scary.

Working with pullers is awesome but also introduces a new variable / vector of difficulty and technical precision into any work. It matters a lot when they pull you up, how fast they do it, when they let you down, etc. If they do their job perfectly but I don't, that's on me. If I do my job perfectly but they're a little late or early on their pulls and I'm not able to adapt to that elegantly, it can show up in a pretty clumsy-looking way.

My pullers did a bang-up job of getting us through this thing relatively smoothly but there's details that need to be dialled in, which we'll iron out on a rehearsal tomorrow (Sunday) night.

For example, they pulled me up a little earlier than I asked for for that first spin sequence, so I wasn't able to generate enough speed and consequently my little one-arm-chin-up spin looked a little sad (that's ok, though). I need to be going at a good clip for that one to look great instead of good. For other moments I could've used them taking up the tension on the line a little more quickly so I wasn't just improving rolling around on the ground (haha).

On my end, I'm pretty pleased at how this looks: I've pulled it together with only 4 sessions or so, and I still have a bit of time to polish and smooth out some bumps. I stumble a bit during one of the ground transitions towards the end – that's something I can do better at. And while this practice run was a win for me in that I didn't rush changing my straps from one hand to another, those are still moments that I'm not happy with and I'll give some attention to. 

There's points in that middle section (after the split-drop) where I'm obviously missing some of my returns, or having to tag a hand, etc etc; those are things  I need to push myself on eliminating through a bit more mental focus and precision.

I had a scary moment in the rehearsal runs that I was doing the day before this video was taken, so the fact that all of this went as smoothly as it did in the video shared in this post made me happy and helped put my confidence back in a place where I feel like I can keep moving forward: even if you don't have this app, you should be able to click on this hyperlink to watch a short TikTok vlog I made about this day to see what I'm talking about.

The slightly longer backstory:

• About 10 days ago, I heard that a company based out of Montréal called Cirque Eloize would be holding an open audition for circus artists. There hasn't been an open call for circus artists for any Montréal companies since pre-pandemic. The description said they're looking for artists for everything: touring shows, short term contracts, and 1-off corporate events. 
• Numéro Barbette work in Toronto is still chugging away, slowly and surely, but the idea of trying to present a 6-minute act at an audition that I have very little information about seemed imprudent. I decided I'd pick a fun song that made me want to move my body, select a few of my favourite tricks that I've been putting in the time on, and just let them see that (if they invite me).
• You had to apply online through a registration portal: CV, supplementary video or photo, information about yourself. I submitted my application and received a message indicating I should wait to hear if I'm invited or not to attend (which doesn't sound like an 'open audition', but maybe it was a translation issue...?)
• There's no information on how the audition itself is structured or what you might be asked to do there, beyond that there is a "Morning Group" from 8:30am to 12:30pm and an "Afternoon Group" from 12:30pm to 4:30pm. From what I've heard through word-of-mouth, they've received so many applications that they're going to have to spread the auditions out over 2 days instead of the single day initially broadcasted.
• No one –myself or any artists in Montréal or Toronto I've been in contact with– has received any further formal communication from Eloize about these auditions; there's a bit of an expectation/tradition with any other 'big 3' auditions I've heard about involving some very short-notice communications so . . . I'm fully expecting to hear on Tuesday night if I'm invited to come in and spin around on 1 arm for a bit on Wednesday morning. I'm going to get myself back into Montréal a little ahead of time, in case I get the call. If I don't, that's fine too: I've got some more residency time set up with William and Marie-Josée for Numéro Barbette work afterwards, anyways.

Arguably superfluous details to complement the backstory that I think are interesting anyways:

• I thought that it would be a good short-term challenge to throw my hat in the ring for this audition:  
  
  I've never auditioned for any of the big circus companies but have lots of film/TV audition experience; it would probably be good to put myself out there and let some casting directors know I exist and that I've been working on aerial straps;   
  
  And –mainly– I thought that the finite, limited intensity of "GET READY FOR THIS AUDITION!" would be the kind of short-term goal that would feed back into the Numéro Barbette project in a positive, productive way. I can go, show some casting humans the way I move and what I can do, and hopefully get some feedback from them that I can use to make the Barbette act better. At this point, that's still my main drive (and will be, for quite some time).
  
  I think the pressure of an audition day (excitement; not much sleep; lots of unknown factors; weird energy in the room) is a good thing to experience in relation to the ultimate, bigger goals I'm dreaming about for the Numéro Barbette act.
• Cirque Eloize is one of the 'big 3' companies in Montréal:
  You've got Cirque du Soleil (the company that needs no introduction), Les Sept Doigts de la Main / The Seven Fingers (smaller than Cirque du Soleil, but ... everything is smaller than Cirque du Soleil, and The 7 Fingers are by no means a small company), and then Cirque Eloize.
  
  Cirque du Soleil does absolutely massive, high-production-value spectacles in arenas and big-top touring tents. There's live musicians built into the show, clowns, actors, dancers, and of course ground and aerial acrobats. It's fun, it's energetic, it's family-oriented.
  
  My impression of the 7 Fingers is that aim to make work that feels more ~contemporary~ in nature: their artists are almost always costumed in what looks like street clothes; their shows are generally staged in theatre spaces instead of tent; the cast is often comprised of highly skilled generalists (everyone does multiple disciplines); they've mounted shows that incorporate text or the acrobats speaking on stage (not super common for contemporary circus); and everyone is usually on stage for the entire duration of the show.  
  
  Cirque Eloize (again, just my impression) sits somewhere in the middle of those two in tone and style. They're contemporary circus; they're smaller (budget-wise) than Cirque du Soleil while still presenting high-production-value shows; they've created shows that are highly stylized (like, they had a Hieronymous Bosch inspired show); but the structure of the shows lean more towards CdS (with acts cycling on and off the stage; with there being generalists and specialists, and connective tissue between the acts with bits of dance and acting) than to 7F (which –from the shows I've seen, anyways– feel more like a flowing, stream-of-consciousness, perpetual-motion machine of circus).  
  
  All 3 companies (Cirque du Soleil, 7 Fingers, Cirque Eloize) have had ~troubles~ in the last half decade. (Some folks I talk to don't even seem to know that Cirque du Soleil actually went bankrupt and somehow resurrected themselves--! But that's a different conversation). All 3 companies have received some criticisms that their more recent productions have lacked the cohesiveness, sparkle, quality, shine, whatever-you-want-to-call-it, of their older material. And yet– all 3 keep on pushing.
  
  Personally, my first exposure to Cirque Eloize was through a full YouTube recording of their show Cirkopolis: it actually features the cyr wheel artist, Angie, in the red dress that I was telling you all about a few posts back.  I saw a
  YouTube recording of the show and Ang's cyr wheel act made me cry like a baby –– WHICH IS SAYING A LOT, because that happens to me far less with recorded material than it does with a live show.
  
  *****SHOCKINGLY, after it being down for years, THIS LINK (at the time of this posting) leads to the FULL RECORDING of a televised version of Cirkopolis. It's a little over an hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5TUAdhM1Us
  
  That recording is from 2014, so if you're a circus nerd keep in mind that the style, choices, trick difficulties, everything, are about 8 or 9 years old! This was also one of the first productions I ever saw that used digitally-projected backgrounds in a way that I thought was really effective. I'll have to rewatch the link above myself and see if I still think that, 5 years after seeing it for the first time!
  
  In any case, it gives me a small little warm fuzzy feeling in my stomach to think about auditioning for these folks, pretty much on the basis of how much I loved the above points in my early years of circus-career-dreaming, so ... yeah.
  

FINAL NOTE, PERSONAL THINGS:

My apologies for the abrupt cessation of posts: I've had (have) a family member in the hospital at the moment and that has been taking precedent over mostly anything other than rehearsal hours in studio. I've been balancing driving out and back to a hospital in the north-end of my city most days after 3-5 hours of training and rehearsing in the mornings to help support my family and find my brain to be wrung out dry after leaving the hospital environment.

I'm doing the most I can at this moment to not fall off the work and momentum that I've got with Numéro Barbette (at the hospitalized family member's insistence) while also trying to be there for someone who is sick and scared. I'll be continuing to try (and probably fail, at times) to strike this balance in the coming weeks.  I'll be heading to Montréal on Monday for two weeks (for the audition, and for another week of Residency / being in-studio with my creation team for Barbette), but if things head abruptly south again I'll be hopping in my car and driving back to Toronto. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to write about things in the mix of all this, but I'll absolutely be documenting and sharing the audition day if I'm lucky enough to get the invite. (Hey, this might be a situational-combination where all I want to do is dissociatively mind-dump my thoughts into lots and lots of writing for you while not physically in Toronto and doing daily hospital visits; or, I might just be a dissociative puddle crying and eating pretzels on the day-bed I'll be crashing on for this short trip until it's time to go to the studio, or time to go home again).

I know those among you who are my older patrons are familiar with my "HERE'S A BUNCH OF WRITING" (....crickets for a few weeks...) "OKAY HERE'S SOME MORE" (.....another long, quiet stretch) because that's just how I work; but for those of you who might be newer patrons, I hope this helps manage your expectations of how I use this platform: It's a respite from the content-generation-machine that I somewhat attempt to maintain on social media platforms (because it matters for acting gigs, which tends to fund this outrageous circus habit I've developed and/or self-fund my hare-brained art schemes, har har, collar tug [along with the support you amazing humans give me <3] ).

Against the backdrop of how we've all begun to be conditioned to expect SHTUFF on a regular, steady-drip schedule from the artists, creatives, etc that we follow-along with digitally, I try pretty hard to identify and resist when I start feeling like I need to do that in this particular online space.

Art comes in ebbs and flows for me. I love sharing my process and I think it's important (both for me, and for others to see if they like!), but I do not place that sharing higher-in-importance than my creative health, or the rest and quiet needed to continue seeing, feeling, interacting with the world and our responses to it in a sensitive, thoughtful, inquisitive way.

That's kind of like putting the cart before the horse, if that makes sense – at least for the way that I do my work.

I owe you all the 2 final instalments of those Barbette update posts (on costuming, on music) –they're comin', don't you worry– along with more updates that have accumulated in these past few blurs of weeks.

Thank you all for your patience, thank you all for your support, for your kind words, for your interest in what I'm making, thank you for all of it.

Stay strange & wonderful, and talk to you soon – 

Ess