Urban Acrobatics: A Circus and Graffiti Spectacular: Dispatches from Urban Acrobatics NYC: Day 6, Our Culminating Performance

Polly on Silks, Goons piece in Background. Photo Credit: Ted Minos

Urban Acrobatics was in fact, a spectacular. Outside the majestic Morris-Jumel Mansion, Flutterby the Magnificent stood tall, and the performers had a lively audience of a hundred, a mix of families from the neighborhood, tourists at the mansion, and people who had heard about the event through word of mouth. The Fly ID team of E67, Clark, and their kids worked at a three-panel wall on the south side of the grounds, while Goons’ piece stood midway down the field, and Feegz stood his 3’ by 8’ panel vertically on the north side of the grounds.

Carol Ward, Interim Executive Director of the Mansion offered a few words of introduction about the Mansion, and her desire to change it from something that could be static, to a dynamic space for community engagement. We played a compiliation of selections from the panel discussions and interviews that we did over the past week, from Tatu on Xmen being a kind of circus of different writers from every place in the world, Autumn on circus being a life-risking enterprise, David Carlyon and bourgeois anxiety about “unnecessary movement,” and Feegz on graffiti, hip hop, and long-running mass public denigration of graffiti as an art, echoed by Polly and Chriselle.

Suddenly, Chriselle emerged all in black on four three foot tall stilts, her hands moving --- bird-like, or even like the vapor of paint from a spray can—was she lilted from side to side, engaging with the audience, and then dancing with Polly. Then the other circus artists emerged, and made dramatic shapes with their bodies, warming the audience up. Meanwhile, E67, Clark, and Feegz painted, the Fly ID crew slowly creating a sky scene with full bubble letters and wings,

Thanking Fly ID Crew. Photo Credit: Ted Minos

and Feegz’s piece a more abstract play with colors, can control, and post-office stickers, a detailed collage.

Feegz at work. Photo Credit: Ted Minos

Each circus artist had a solo; Leslie on Lyra, Autumn, Christi, Polly, and Leslie on silks, and Paris revving up the clowd with his juggling set to the tune of “It Takes Two.” Each circus ran to a graffiti artist and had their shirt painted,

E67, Clark, and Paris. Photo Credit: Ted Minos

Polly's Tag by Feegz. Photo Credit: Ted Minos

or even pants, while the circus artists on silks or on the drop cloth below created painted swirls at high velocity.

Silk writing. Photo Credit: Ted Minos

Forty minutes later the silks themselves, the canvas panels, the drop cloth, and the artists’ bodies were works of art.

The Present. Christi, Leslie, Paris, Autumn, Chriselle, and Polly. Photo Credit: Ted Minos

Polly and I concluded by thanking our partners; NoMAA, Word Up, Critical Massive, Moose Hall Theatre Company, the Morris Jumel Mansion, and Northwestern’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts, and asking them, and also you, to stay tuned as the project develops with our second series in the Spring in Chicago.

Caitlin Bruce and Polly Solomon. Show wrap-up. Photo Credit: Ted Minos

Wonderfully, at least twenty kids and their families stayed to paint, draw, and doodle with the crafts that we set out. Feegz worked with a group of kids, letting them add to (and even color over) his work. Some parents even got involved, letting the kid inside them play. Seeing dozens of smiling audience members, and artists, is what this is all about.