Quebec-based circus company Cirque Alfonse came flying into KSC’s Redfern Arts Center for a series of shows throughout the weekend of Sept. 17-19, where its performers showcased spectacular skills ranging from acrobatic tricks and aerial routines to balancing acts and teeterboard launches.
The show itself, La Noce D’Alfonse, was themed after a 1970s wedding party and celebrated a lucky couple who were chosen from the audience. It featured a live band that played traditional Québécois folk songs, as well as several other crowd participation moments.
As previously reported by the Equinox, Cirque Alfonse was invited to perform at the Redfern as the first featured artists in the revived Redfern Presenting Series, which invites professional performing companies from around the world to play a residency of shows at the Redfern.
Performing Arts Program Manager and Artistic Director of the Redfern Stephanie Bass Abrams said she was excited about choosing Cirque Alfonse to kick off the Redfern Presenting Series because of how immersive the show is for the audience. “They’re really fantastic at creating an environment and a world, and really bringing the audience into it,” said Abrams. “Then the integration of the circus acts with the music, it feels like a big collaboration…They’re just amazing at putting all that together.”
As part of the Redfern Presenting Series, each professional performing company will host a workshop during the weekend of their performances that is open to all KSC students and community members.
Cirque Alfonse hosted a workshop on Friday, Sept. 18, where four performers were available to answer questions about the show and the preparation process from an audience that mainly consisted of KSC students studying theatre and dance and music, as well as students from the New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA) in Brattleboro, Vt.
Abrams said she was a circus artist herself for 30 years, and that she personally invited the NECCA students to come to the workshop so that they could learn from the Cirque Alfonse performers and to build a sense of community between the NECCA students and the KSC campus.
“Part of the vision for the Presenting Series is to really create more of a community, not just within our campus community but reaching out to the community in this region,” she said. “I coached at NECCA when I first moved to this region and I live in Brattleboro, and I felt like there was a disconnect…The young people that are training in circus feel really isolated in Brattleboro, and I don’t think that they even know there’s a campus with a lot of other young people here.”
Abrams continued to say that she saw this as an opportunity to “kill all those birds with one stone” by reaching out to the community, bringing more patrons to the Redfern and allowing NECCA students to network with KSC students and the Cirque Alfonse performers.
During the workshop Q&A, the Cirque Alfonse cast members explained that the core of the group is a family of performers from a small village in Quebec, where the shows are created. They said the group currently features around 12 performers, and that the company has toured several different shows over the last 20 years. These performances in the Redfern were the first time they played their newest show, La Noce D’Alfonse, outside of Quebec, they said.
They emphasized the importance of representing the Québécois culture of the small village they are from in each show, which primarily comes through in the traditional folk music that is played live throughout the performance and accompanies each act.
The main advice the cast members gave to KSC students and NECCA performers attending the workshop was to be patient and not give up when it came to finding performance opportunities, while encouraging them to embrace versatility and not to put themselves in a box with their skillset.
Abrams said she hopes students were able to enjoy the experience of attending a live performance through the show, especially if they hadn’t had an experience like that before. “When you see live performance and it’s really incredible, you feel like you did it even though you know you weren’t onstage doing the performing,” Abrams said. “They couldn’t have that connection without you, so you’re a big part of it. I hope that they feel that.”
Junior Abby Singlar and first-year Kendall Toupin said they enjoyed the show and were surprised by it after attending the opening night performance. “That was incredible. I didn’t expect anything like what happened on the stage tonight,” said Toupin. “It was so amazing and wonderful, and vibrant and colorful.”
“It’s nothing like you’re expecting coming in,” she added. “You’re like, ‘Oh, it’s a small circus show.’ It’s way bigger than that and it was such an amazing experience.”
“I wasn’t sure what to expect with this, but after seeing it I highly recommend it to everybody,” Singlar said. “I don’t think enough people know about the shows.”
Both Singlar and Toupin said they hoped to see more shows like this visiting the Redfern in the future. “This was a really different show than I’ve ever seen in a theater. When you think ‘circus,’ you think of a big tent outside, but this was in a theater so it shocked me,” said Toupin. “This is a great opportunity, especially with the free student ticket that allows you to see so many things. If they do different shows like this, it opens our doors and our minds to different shows and different things they can put on in a theater.”
The next group of performers that will be visiting the Redfern for the Presenting Series will be Anvil Orchestra, which Abrams described as a complete departure from the maximalist show that Cirque Alfonse put on. According to its website, Anvil Orchestra is a performing duo from Vermont who compose original music to accompany 1920s silent films and perform them live.
“If people haven’t ever seen silent movies and experienced it with live music, that’s also a very interesting experience because you are watching cinema but it’s still a live performance,” said Abrams. “You get transported into the world of the film, but then you’re immersed in the world of the music live, so it’s really cool.”
Anvil Orchestra will give one performance of the silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari on Oct. 21, which Abrams said was a deliberate booking to get audience members into the spooky mood of the Halloween season. The performance will be preceded by a residency workshop that is open to all KSC students and followed by a reception.
Justin Dearborn can be contacted at
jdearborn@kscequinox.com
