Your Town Follies: turning your world upside-down.
If your Inner Mini-Me has been throwing tantrums lately, the surefire cure is a trip to the circus. Happily, July has a clutch of cirques to soothe your cranky psyche.
Like your circus with a soupcon of sexy? You’ll definitely want to check out Aurelian Roulin‘s BEYOND at El Portal Theater in NoHo. The Del’ A’ Rue production combines cirque and cabaret, aerialists and Asian fusion, acrobats and Bollywood, a smoky torch singer and authentic French can can. It’s a veritable multi-culti fest of fabulosity! If you want the full French experience, consider the July 14th Bastille Day celebration, which includes wine, hors d’oeuvres, and “more to be announced.” It’s mysteries like this that make Bastille Day so exciting.
“Americana cirque” may seem like an oxymoron but it’s that stylistic contradiction that gives YOUR TOWN FOLLIES its sly humor and sass. Creator and local lad Stefan Haves returns from international stints designing comic acts (Kooza, Banana Shpeel) for Cirque du Soleil (the only circus not in town this summer!) to light up the Largo at the Coronet stage with music, acrobatics, and comedy. Plus card tricks! Your Town Follies features some of Stefan’s Cirque du Soleil pals plus Teatro Zinzanni luminaries from San Francisco. And it wouldn’t be a Your Town Follies without Our Town performers like “Juggler, Ropewalker, Foolish Mortal” Moonie the Magnificent (a.k.a. Philip Pearl), “performance bizarrist” Michael Carbonaro, and long time, Pink Floyd back-up singer Durga McBroom. (Presumably, “the Wall” will make only a supporting appearance.)
If you’re a traditionalist, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus pitches its tent at the Staples Center mid-July. Highlights of “Funundrum”, one of the 140-year-old circus’s three touring shows, include The Flying Caceres who are only the third flying trapeze act in Barnum’s history to attempt (for the first time in 30 years) the quadruple somersault, which they successfully performed earlier in the tour. (Fingers crossed for the L.A. run, Go Go’ers!) You also won’t want to miss the Paraguayan Torres Family, a crowd fave whose seven members, led by mama Ariel, race motorcycles at speeds of up to 65 mph inside the 16 foot “Globe of Steel”.
Otherwise known as the giant, South American, Hamster Ball of Death….
Ready? U Know U Want 2 Go Go….
