Chapter 32: The reality of BBC1's Tumble

It's Sunday morning, an ungodly hour, and I've just joined a group of beginners for my first ever windsurfing lesson.  The wind whips up blinding sand and we overhear the club owner wonder how safe conditions are to take us out that morning.  Secretly I'm willing them to call the whole thing off. But they don't, and we're committed. Once in, we all take to it like a duck... to snowboarding.  Our instructor's radio bleeps.  "How's it going?" crackles the radio.  "Wobbly" was the deflated response. I've never heard weather described as wobbly.

But we had one thing in our favour. Determination. Three out of four of us were Mums (the fourth was the teenage son), carving out this precious space for ourselves. Our instructor later confessed that as soon as she saw us in the water, she decided to call it quits after 20 minutes, but we lasted the full two hours, and we're incredibly grateful to her for bearing with us.  We got up on the board, and we managed a few turns into the bargain.  And even more tumbles.

And as these things do, probably because I'm in the zone right now learning aerial at Circus Space (National Centre for Circus Arts), talk turned to Tumble, the night before, the reality show in Strictly Dancing format on primetime BBC1 where celebrities try their hands at gymnastics and circus skills.   It turned out that my windsurfing buddy is a former gymnast, and as we are both London Mums who love a bit of Strictly, we swapped notes.  She felt it didn't have enough of the sport of pure gymnastics, and I was disappointed not to see more of the art of circus.  Would either of us have tuned in if we didn't have some background connection? Probably not.  

Will we stay tuned in?  Well, I will because it's billed as family entertainment and I'm certainly enjoying watching it with my kids.  Going by their reactions ("A.w.e.s.o.m.e.!!! ... Can you do that Mum?!" Er, no, Strictly speaking!), and those of their friends, the programme encourages the next generation to roll up and sign up. Especially when they include stunningly impressive and aspirational acts like Beth Tweddle's with her stars of the future, in a routine that was a beautiful balancing act of gymnastics with a touch of Cirque. My son's friend, another Beth, aged 8, said:

"I think it's amazing how people can do acrobatics like that when I really want to do them myself".

And it would be great if there were performances from groups like the London Youth Circus in the line-up:

The BBC have cottoned onto the fact is that circus is a zeitgeist and it's catching. After their summer workshop at Airborne Circus, the kids can now spot a mermaid on a hoop, turn swings into trapezes, and quickly made new friends swapping juggling tricks at family-friendly Camp Bestival.  And only this afternoon, my husband, who allegedly doesn't "do" circus, has been caught red-handed at the bottom of the garden practicing with their diabolo... in reality, I want to see more of that.

And funnily enough, there is an abandoned fortress for sale on the Thames.  Fort Boyard on silks? Now there's an idea ...

Source: The Independent

Chapter 31: bread&circuses: Wot? No Fish!!

I found this fridge magnet at the weekend at Fishbourne Roman Palace, circa (the) A27 and bought it in honour of Danny Braverman, of theatre company bread&circuses.  His one-man show Wot?  No Fish!! was on at the Battersea Arts Centre recently and blew me away.

Let me start by saying I'm not a theatre critic.  State the bleeding obvious Luce, I hear you say. The thing is I don't  attempt to review shows not for want of trying, but because every time I try my hand my writing bombs.  I know, because my husband starts to yawn. Instead I enjoy writing virtual thank you letters to performers for shows where I've emerged, renewed. And on occasion I buy them a fridge magnet (Danny, if you send me your address, it's yours!).

When I first heard about the show, it was the name bread&circuses that attracted.  So it's a figure of speech,  describing the opium of the masses way back when in Roman times.  But as I've been recently rather evangelical (kinder folk refer to it as "enthusiastic") about circus as a current zeitgeist, and the Battersea Arts Centre is my local theatre, I thought it was meant to be.

Danny Braverman inherited, through his mother, shoeboxes of doodles on the back of old paypackets that his great-uncle Ab (Abraham Solomons) a shoemaker, would pen each week to his beloved wife Celie. Over decades.  What emerges is the portrait of a Jewish family in the East End, their joys, heartaches and aspirations (pictured right).

See the trailer below. 

At the start of the performance, we are greeted with fishballs.  Real, home-made ones. Are there any other kind?!  Each member of the audience, takes one, dips it in the sauce should they wish and passes the box it on.  This very act seems to bring us into communion with the story before Danny has even begun.   Danny begins with a dream of his ancestors, a hilarious anecdote in the telling, which brings him to the realisation that life is neither a straight line nor a matter of going round in circles.  Rather, his(family)story is a helix, where certain spiral patterns map themselves onto events to come.  It's like viewing current events with a sense of deja-vu on the periphery.

And there are connecting instances between the past and the future. Danny ends up, by sheer joss, living in the house where his Great-Aunt Celie had grown up.  I later find out from my mother,  who like Danny's mother is the repository of family history, that a cousin had once ended up in a small terraced house in Liverpool, that had been home to her great-grandmother a century before.   Danny would not be surprised at such coincidences, or the fact that people invariably want to share their own stories with him afterwards.  Because that's what his show does, it connects.  It encourages each member of the audience to chime in with their own personal experience or recollection.   And thats the beauty of it.

And it has been ever thus.  The storyteller in society is the guardian of cultural memory.  Not all storytellers are writers, but given it is an art rooted in oral tradition, with stories passed from generation to generation, it strikes me that all performance is storytelling.  And Danny Braverman is a master storyteller.

When we bumped into Danny on the staircase afterwards, another member of the audience was asking him if he still writes political theatre.  Before I could help myself, I chimed in "But the personal is political." Jeez, I haven't said that since university. Or, to put it another way, Danny Braverman is a micro-historian.  He is one who "focusses [his] attention on people who can illuminate the socio-historical context of the period from ground level", a definition by Julia Barclay-Morton in her article  (click here) on writing about the "lived history" of her own grandmothers. 

There is an extract of a poem called Ancestral Poverty that I read recently which brings this home.  It is by a Cuban poet, Georgina Herrera, currently sponsored by a growing publishing house Cubanabooks in the US, which gives a voice to Cuban women writers by publishing them in translation. As a Spanish speaker who has spent time on the Island I obviously support this.  But also because it ties into my world view that the greater the diversity of voices we listen to, the more we engage in life around us, and that maybe the myth of the destruction of the tower of Babel is in essence a challenge to reconstruct our humanity. So I read:

We were so poor in my house.

So much so 

there was never enough for portraits;

family faces and events

were preserved through conversations.

It is this universal need to bear witness to life and hand down to future generations that drives storytelling, and justifies the odd blog into the bargain. Ultimately, for me, bread&circuses is food for the soul,  and manna from heaven.  Get your basket at the ready.

Chapter 30: Matisse and the Art of Circus

Here's where I'm going with this blog: circus for me is a state of mind. It denotes flexibility, an ability to explore beyond boundaries and an openness to new ideas. And that's what I find interesting about the current exhibition of Henri Matisse, "The Cut-Outs", at the Tate Modern, where Matisse engages with circus, dance and all that jazz, innovative disciplines that play with form.

from the book "Henri's Scissors" by Jeanette Winter

I find Matisse's life story illustrates that point as much as his work itself. It was his mother's gift of a box of paints while he was recovering from an appendicitis that drew Matisse away from a career in law and set him on a creative path. Many years later, again crippled by sickness, Matisse turned to a pair of scissors and developed the cut-outs. He was also inspired one day to take a  long pole and tie a piece of chalk to it to design the faces of his grandchildren on the ceiling, who “looked down on him and saw his dreams”. That creative, bendy thinking when presented with an obstacle reminds me of the time my mother, balancing on a stepladder for hours, turned the stains on the kitchen ceiling (from a leaking basin upstairs) into a fresco of a koala sitting on a branch, munching on some eucalyptus leaves. So when she asks me “Lucy, this circus thing, where does it all come from?” I think you just have to laugh. Maybe it’s genetic. 

I like to think the kids will inherit that creative gene too. Only they aren't allowed to go to art galleries to foster it apparently, according to Turner Prize-winner Jake Chapman see link here. To get a rise out of the chattering classes he has declared, stop press!!!, that taking kids to look at pictures is a total waste of time. Well, of course it is.  That's the whole point, honey. If you were stuck at home with three kids all day, all summer long, you'd find yourself becoming pretty creative with ways to waste a bit of time too. We saw Matisse this time round, before that Lichtenstein, and Hockney the time before that. Each time round the kids have chosen a print or some colouring that they enjoy, and off they go. Of course the finer points are lost, but it's time out together that gives us a direction. We've not yet gone to an exhibition by YBAs such as the Chapman brothers though - I wonder what the kids would make of it? Would the Brothers Grimm enchant? Or would they think it was a load of old Pollock?!

Dragging the kids to the Tate Modern again...

Chapter 29: Gandini Juggling at Camp Bestival

And, now, come to this spot

Where the spotlight is hot

And you'll see in the spotlight

A Juggling Jott

Who can juggle some stuff

You might think he could not...

Dr Seuss, "If I ran the Circus"

... Like what? 

Clubs and balls, 

hoops, a few

ideas, expectations 

Thing One and Thing Two. 

Do you give a jott for juggling? If not, then what?  Circus is the new religion you know, the tent is temple, and Gandini Juggling is a slice of heaven. Say festival, think fiesta, think party, right?  Originally though, a Spanish fiesta was a day off to celebrate a patron saint, a festival was a religious holiday.  

As a child, I read Paolo de Tomie's story of "The Clown of God" about a juggler in medieval Italy who goes from festival to festival, astonishing, delighting, awe-inspiring.  Gradually he ages, his clothes are in tatters, his balls have lost their gleam, he has lost his edge.  Our juggler is shown kindness by a couple of Franciscan monks, and chances upon a church, where he finds a statue of the Christ child looking sad. That won't do.  One last time he gets out his rainbow of balls and juggles higher and higher, creating beauty in the moment. And then, his work done, he dies.  The child is smiling.  Laughter is sacred.

So I am delighted that churches have become performance spaces for circus companies - Jacksons Lane in Highgate, hello! And then I see a picture on Twitter recently of Sean Gandini and partner juggling their way through a sermon.  I assume at first, being self-styled atheist jugglers, they are at the  London Sunday Assembly, which serves "the best bits of church but with no religion".  But no, on closer inspection it appears to be a bona fide Sunday Service.  And I've since learned that there are a number of church services around that use circus acts to convey that sense of wonder and mystery.  

So I love that the first time I see Gandini Juggling live is at Camp Bestival, the family-friendly festival at Lulworth Castle, Dorset, with my three minibeasts in tow, and they are LAUGHING their heads off.

The children are a bit skeptical at first about going to see a juggling act. What's so great about that? They are used to me juggling three balls, mildly amusing, but within their reach - and the whole point of circus is that it is fantastical, it should make your jaw drop and wonder "how on earth?"

But then the six Gandini jugglers walk onto Castle Stage and they are spellbound.  Within seconds. There is no fuss to the costumes, they are like slim-fitting overalls, utilitarian, and yet pristine white, an utterly impractical colour to wear to a festival. I like that edge, and the cut-away sections that give a touch of bare-faced chic to the ensemble.  This was a short introduction to the full show.  It was like one of Willy Wonker's gobstoppers - the children savoured the first course, actually more an amuse-bouche with those smiles, and were hungry for more.  

The main banquet was held in The Greatest Tent on Earth.  What a great name to roll up to.  There were balls, hoops, over-sized globes that toyed with perspective, and glowing orbs that they presented to the children in wonder, stepping down onto the small platform in front of the stage.  My kids wondered if the orbs were made of fireflies, and whether the fireflies have enough oxygen inside the balls to breathe? Enough to last out the act at least, I reassured them ...

All the sequences were choreographed to music remixed by Rob da Bank. It was an eclectic score that encompassed upbeat and bouncy, dreamy and classical, and, well, mixed it all up.  Harmoniously. There was an undercurrent of steady crescendo that culminated in a light display at the end of swirling LED-lit clubs that changed colour to the beat of the music.  It was stunningly beautiful.  We puzzled later over how that was done. Buttons on the clubs used by the jugglers?  No, too much to co-ordinate. Pre-programmed?  Remote-controlled?  We had fun trying to work it out, and not sure I really want to know the answer. 

When I asked the kids what they favourite part was, they said "The End".  They were not being facetious. They meant the very end, when a child was picked from the audience and asked to stand very still while clubs shaved past his head.  They loved seeing one of their own involved, and so composed, what a star.  It brought the jaw-dropping fantastical into their reality.  Bravo!

The few images and clips I have really don't do Gandini Juggling justice.  This is just a taster.  Still, I hope it makes you lick your lips ... and then go see them live.  

And smile.

Chapter 28: Tangerino's "The Red Shoes"

“Music is a playground in which audience and performer gets to explore”

Roundhouse Radio's Ros Fraser

Interview with Penguin Cafe 16th July

The Vaults, underneath Waterloo Bridge, was our playground last night where Tangerino, the brainchild of sisters Lil and Kitty Rice, revived the tale Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of "The Red Shoes".  And when I say revive, wow, what a breath of fresh air.   These guys energised the scene with a network of creative friends bringing together music, art and acrobatics.  The idea behind the show is to recreate their ideal night out, and  “the kind of evening we enjoy out in London would include an exhibition, a show of some sort and great live music” (quote from the programme).  If I’d realised that before, it would have been the perfect end of term night out for my Circus Space classmates this week instead of the dive of a pub in Hoxton.   

This is Tangerino's third show, and each one has been in a different location  "each space has given the show a different aesthetic” (ibid.). I’m not familiar with the previous productions, but the cavernous grandeur of The Vaults is the perfect setting for this dark tale, and, as they say, if the show fits …  In fact, it makes me wonder what came first, the location or the show?

It was my first time to The Vaults, and I was struck by the riot of colour as you descend into the tunnel.   I was in good company too with Anne, the friend who has travelled with me to Circus Space every Tuesday,  pictured here in glorious technicolour, displaying untapped equilibrium talents  in her red heels.  

We were greeted with the welcome “Good evening, now, what time were you expecting the show to begin?” Well, I thought 7.30, but the extra hour was very welcome.  One of the other punters announced he was off to score some D in the meantime then - we’re all Ecstatic about sunshine at the moment - while we used the time to browse the art on the walls, designed to compliment the show,  and got our Vitamin D from a bottle of Sol at the bar. The bar that sits atop a bath. Surreal. We really had scored. 

The bar was at one end of the performance space where ecclesiastical windows are silhouetted on the walls. Ahead, the chairs were arranged in pews for the congregation either side of a central aisle, that led up to a garden arch festooned with garlands of ivy and pairs of scarlet slippers.   There was a rope in the rigging and to the right an elevated platform for the musicians.  The stage is now set for the story of a young girl, Karen, who slips on the red shoes and just can't stop dancing.  It is presented thematically rather than through a plot, via the scenes of Pride, Vanity, Condemnation and Guilt.

Deadly sins the lot of them in my book, quite frankly.  A bit to close to the bone.  Unlike Anne, I didn’t dust off my red shoes for the evening, but I did wear my old pair of tango sandals.  Proper dancing ones from a life before kids, and though the suede sole is worn through now, putting them on again took me back to lessons with my then fiancé in a church crypt  in Farringdon.  Paul & Michiko still teach at El Once Club,  it would be great to go back.   In a distracted state (three kids, bed-time) I draped on a red dress that I haven't worn for years. It felt fabulous, and it wasn’t until I met friends, and their open jaws, at the train station, that I realised the the drape was a more of a gape, and there was a bit too much on display. Luckily Caro had a kirby grip to hand, and with a nip and tuck, covered up my immodesty.  

In the show, Pride comes dancing along before a fall into Vanity, who is as exquisitely graceful on rope as she is foolish in the presence of the Poe-faced Grimm Reaper.  Condemnation follows in the hand(stand)s of the most awesome acrobalancers, whose feats literally took my breath away.  I enjoyed having Anne to hand, who, as a student of the language of acrobalance, could decode the movements for me afterwards, explaining precisely why I was right to be impressed.

We were then ushered into the depths of the Vaults for the final scene where we find Guilt exposed.  We surround the contortionist, part voyeur, part judge and jury.  But as she begins to move, the balance of power shifts. The body twists into such  extraordinary shapes that it is the audience who is taken out of their comfort zone.  

Claudia Hughes, Contortionist and Hannah Tottenham, Violinist

In the actual tale - I read it on the tube this morning! - when Karen begins to fully comprehend the extent of the damage the red shoes are inflicting she begs an executioner to use his axe to sever her feet from her body.  Contortion illustrates this cleavage perfectly.  The head appears suspended in space while the body has a mind of its own, and the feet dance of their own accord.  At the end, crippled by Guilt?, it makes sense that she has to be carried off.

Redemption?  Well, it took the form of the Soul-Full live music afterwards, created by the fabulous voice of Lil Rice and all her band of talent.  You were invited to dance the night away, just be careful where that might lead ...

Lil Rice and Ollie Clark

Ones to watch:

(click on names for links to sites where given)

Director and Producer:  Lil Rice 

Art Director and Producer: Kitty Rice

Assistant Director:  Luke Hallgarten

Artists:

Kitty Rice

Julia Bancilhon

Grace Manning

Divjah Scialo

Christabel MacGreevy

Storm Athill

Performers:

Dancer - Olivia Leek

Rope artist - Maisy Taylor

Hand to hand - Floria De Silva

Hand to hand - Arthur Parsons

Contortionist - Claudia Hughes

Singers: 

Lil Rice (Director and Producer)

Marika Hackman

Musicians:

Ollie Clark - Guitar and Piano

Hannah Tottenham/Rosie Kohl - Violinist

Ed Johnston - Drummer

Austin Cooper - Trumpeter
Hidden Charms Band

Chapter 27: The Gender-Bending Circus of Shakespeare In Love

"Writing is a love affair not a solitary pleasure.  There must be a connection between you and the material."

Jeanette Winterson
(tweeted by @WomenWriters)

This observation could have been written for "Shakespeare in Love",  the stage adaptation of Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's screenplay, currently on at the Noel Coward theatre in the West End.

Picture the opening scene in an Elizabethan playhouse.   Will Shakespeare is sitting at a writing desk, quill poised, surrounded by the expectant faces of his friends, and he is struggling.  He grasps at words that Kit Marlowe, seemingly effortlessly, plucks from the air.   And it's not because Will can't write,  you understand, but because he can't connect.  He is struggling to write a love sonnet, but he hasn't yet fallen in love.

Enter stage left Viola De Lesseps.  Having always wanted to run away to join the circus theatre and be a real player, Viola dresses up as a boy, Thomas Kent, and auditions for the part of Will's Romeo.  She will soon desires to also play his Juliet.  Tom Kent's audition is successful because s/he has already connected with Shakespeare's poetry, and with that level of engagement s/he not only "gets" the role of Romeo, s/he incarnates him.  And Will quite clearly falls for the boy who so embodies his text.  The fact that he is later revealed to be biologically a girl is pretty much an irrelevancy.  The naked truth is that Will Shakespeare worships the muse who has engaged him, who has reconnected him to his material, and released his pen.  

Liam Brennan' Duke Orsino, Johnny Flynn's Viola
"Twelfth Night"

Viola is a great role in any incarnation.   I played her once in a school school talent contest (nul points!) where Viola meets Desdemona and Lady Macbeth in heaven, and a debate ensues as to which is the greatest of Shakespeare's heroines.  For the record, my money will always be on the girl who finds liberty, equality, and, ahem!, fraternity in  stepping outside the constraints of her corset for laughs. (cf. burlesque in The Polelogue).   Then last year it was the turn of the delectable Johnny Flynn playing Viola in Mark Rylance's all-male production of "Twelfth Night".  If music be the food of love, then his singing voice is pure ambrosia to be devoured.  The Greek sort that is, nectar of the gods, not the UHT devon custard.

But I digress.  While in this production Lucy Briggs-Owen as Viola enchants as she goes a-musing,  Abigail McKern's nurse entertains, and Anna Cateret's Queen Elizabeth is a commanding presence,   "Shakespeare in Love" is not really about the fair sex at all, but rather a celebration of manhood in all its guises.   First up, Tom Bateman's Will Shakespeare.  Oh sweet heaven, a tower of sexual charisma and a relentlessly exciting presence on the stage.   And  I was Wilde about David Oakes' Kit Marlowe, his ready wit and steel, feeding lines to a starving friend in need, brotherly love paired with Eros' roving eye for a pretty boy. Doug Rao's rakish Ned Alleyn, cast as Mercutio, is electric.   Colin Ryan's hilarious and creepy Webster, a scene-stealer.

The play is a study in unzipping masculinity in other ways too.  It is not just Tom Kent who sheds the doublet and dons a frock.  Alistair Petrie's superbly arrogant Wessex, Viola's betrothed, finds himself cuckolded, unmanned.     Paul Chihadi's put-upon Henslowe, Shakespeare's patron, is being held to ransom by Ferdy Robert's loan shark Fennyman, and finds himself mincing across an economic tightrope, on occasion dangling.  Fennyman in turn is disarmed on being cast in the play as the apothecary, oh vanity of vanities.  The cross-gartered Lord of Revels, a future Malvolio, is thwarted in his attempts to close the playhouse and stuffed through the trap door, only to emerge impotently raging "I will be revenged on the whole pack of you."

Watching the fortunes of these players unravelling, passion unbuttoning, creative juices unleashing, I was transported for the duration.    At the end of the day, though, just another Passenger, along for the ride. 

Chapter 25: Circus School for Kids, Airborne Circus and a Real Education

"We are revolting children, living in revolting times."

Have you seen "Matilda the Musical" in the West End?  Roald Dahl's story brought to life on stage tells the tale of a neglected child prodigy, Matilda Wormwood, who stands up to the local school bully - that happens to be the school's headmistress, Miss Trunchball - and ends up living happily ever after with her dream teacher, Miss Honey.  If that sounds too cloyingly sweet for you, hold on.   It's essentially Roald Dahl after all, sharp and witty, while Tim Minchin's music consistently hits the right note, and his lyrics are acutely funny.   The costumes and staging are a dark delight, it is hilarious, disturbing, touching and uplifting.  And the scene on the swings in the photograph above, from the number "When I grow up..." is, ironically, in part responsible for me signing up for the trapeze at circus school.  A whole new education.

The kids have been asking for it as well - circus school, that is - so on Monday I took them to a trial class at Airborne Circus in East Finchley, North London.  "Are we in, like, the North of England, Mum?" the kids wondered, as the tube emerged overground. The journey had taken a good hour. Worth every minute.

Halo Adam at Airborne Circus
(Photo:  Classes 4 kids website)

Airborne Circus was set up by Adam Cohen, and the Monday morning classes in the Finchley Youth Theatre (another converted church, hallelujah!) run for children the whole year round.   I hadn't fully appreciated that we were crashing a course run by Adam for the local home education community.  "So, how long have you been doing home education?" asked one of the mothers.  "Oh, we  don't, we go to a private school down in South London" piped up my son.   Having been avidly following the Wimbledon tweets for the tennis finals at the weekend, I could almost hear commentator Rufus the Hawk twittering away ha! #hawkward.

Only I'm quite shameless, and before long we were swapping contact numbers and talking about a group outing with the kids to the circus-themed Matisse Cut-Outs exhibition (see link here) at the Tate Modern. Adam, himself home-schooled, is passionate about the benefits of home education, sure,  but he also reaches out to schools as well, running circus workshops.   As well as being fun, the key value that I see in promoting circus skills, and yoga, as part of any educational curriculum is the development of core strength, the back-bone to good posture and long-term health.  From what I see, games lessons at school generally favour competitive sports, with emphasis placed on sports like football or netball rather than more gymnastic activities that are generally extra-curricular, and over-subscribed.   I wonder how much of that is parent-driven in the desire to see little Jane or Johnny "succeed", or schools seeking to demonstrate they are top of the league, where glory can be quantified in goal-scoring.  Just a thought.  Who knows?

So, back to circus school.  My daughter went into the 4-6 year old class first, and then my son went into the 7-10 year old class that followed.  Our Toddler didn't need to join a class - she is already a demonstrably accomplished Escape Artiste.  While her siblings were in class we breakfeasted on Turkish delights and dates in the cafe opposite, and then browsed in the second-hand bookshop next door.  It turns out that Black Gulls Books was formerly in Camden,  and used to have a theatre attached long before the Roundhouse was up and running, so there were plenty of performance-related texts to leaf through.  Needless to say, we came out laden.   And Brian, who was running it, has grandchildren himself so was very relaxed, more so than me!, about the circus acrobatics the Toddler was performing on the library ladder.

What her older siblings got up to is best illustrated in their own words:

Hula-hooping

Daughter:  "So when Adam, our teacher walked in, he said my name and told the class that I was new.  Then we did the register and we played a game.  In fact, when your name is called you would have to run like a spider to the end of the room, then back, backwards, and then you would warm up.  Then we played a game,  we did hula-hooping, juggling, handstands, forward rolls, and we can do the trapeze another time. My favourite bit was the hula-hooping, I chose a yellow and white one.  The other children were really nice and kind to me.  I made lots of new friends."

Me and my Diabolo

Son:  "Well, first of all we had little exercises to do, games, and handstands with alternate legs.  Then I started off with backwards roll, followed by some bunny hopping through hoops. I really liked how Adam taught me the diabolo, how to start it off and throw it.   There are loads of cool tricks to do, but I can only throw it in the air and catch it.  We did some juggling.  Well, I tried some juggling anyway.  I thought that everything was going to be really hard, but it ended up being easier than I thought.  The time went really quickly.  When are we going back again?"

When indeed.  By popular demand, the kids are now going back for the next couple of Mondays and have signed up to a two-day holiday workshop at the end of July.   I see it as an investment.  We have the circus-themed Camp Bestival to look forward to straight after that, and I'm working out the kids' charge-out rates ...