The Real Circus Island

This fall I performed on what I liked to call Circus Island. But Mexico's Circo Frandan definitely has us beat!

Photo credit: Manny Casilino

A View of Circus Island

 Good lord... you can see the hot pink triangle!

And I can see my caravan!

The Art of Circus Island

Oddly enough, I’ve rather enjoyed my month long exile on Circus Island. What with all the power outages and dinosaur installations, hardly a dull moment was to be had! The place certainly has potential. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is utterly ridiculous.

Ah, Circus Island. At first glance, it looks a lovely place. Sprawling gardens and hidden lawns wend their way across the island. True, the entire space is still in development and just behind the sprawling gardens are fenced off areas of mud and garbage waiting to be transformed. All in good time, I’m sure. All in good time.

Not bad.

I’m still not entirely sure what the goal is for the island. There are numerous large sandboxes. There are tiny little electric Renaults that you can zip around the perimeter of the island in. And of course the startling number of circus tents. But the thing that really makes me raise an eyebrow is the art.

I’ve already mentioned the dinosaurs. They’re on the far end of the island, away from the parks and circuses. The dinosaurs have since been joined by a pile of bricks, three concrete orbs, and a large metal spider web. A little ways off, there is a spotlit dead tree on a small hill. This scene is accompanied a disk of Latin music that is played on repeat all day long. Security guards are present 24/7, presumably to prevent anyone from turning off that infernal racket.

This is the least curious  artwork on the island.

First, we have the severed fingers.

 

Then we have a poor little birdie mourning the death of his little birdie friends.

 

From there we move on to this guy. 

 Hey there!

There’s only the one, and it’s in the middle of a field, and for some reason it is surrounded by stones painted as fruit.

 And, inexplicably, one painted as steak.

 

These rocks disguised as fruit litter the island. There are dozens of them. I only managed to find one other stone painted as meat.

 Wait, that one doesn't look right...

 

And if all of that is too mainstream for you, perhaps you would enjoy the blinding glory that is that giant, fluorescent pink scalene triangle?

Seriously though, why? Why would you do this?

 

The one piece of artwork that made any sense to me is actually hidden away in some lost little corner between some very large bushes. It is the only thing on the island that fits in with the theme of circus. It is a bronze statue that looks like a contortionist who just fell on her face. But still, a contortionist!

With construction workers wandering about daily, who knows what other exciting additions lay in store? I, for one, hope they don't come with music.

Trampoleze

Seeing as I was informed of the change of dates two days before my flight and wasn’t entirely sure where I would be staying for the next month, I decided not to bring my trapeze with me to France. This was probably a good decision since it’s terribly heavy and I need all the weight allowance I can get in order to move all my stuff back to Canada.

However, I really wasn’t keen on no longer being able to train trapeze, especially after the amount of work I put into training over the summer. But there are places to train in Paris, and certainly some of them must have a trapeze I could use?

As it turns out, there’s a small recreational facility on Circus Island! Perfect, right? I mean, sure, their trapezes don’t have weights on them, but that’ll be fine. And the padding is made of velour for some reason, and is much too low, but I can work with that. And the tape on the bar looks as though it’s been mauled by rabid puppies, but hey, it’s still a trapeze!

If it were only that, I think I would have been fine. But this trapeze seems to be having some kind of identity crisis and thinks it’s a trampoline.

I have never in my life been on a bouncier point. Before I started doing aerials, I’ve always thought that aerialists were just a bunch of whiners when they would go on, and on, about how the point was bouncy and made their lives difficult. Side note, I probably sound that way to them when I have a shitty floor for wheel. But anyway, whiners. And when I started doing trapeze, I definitely came across some bouncy points, but honestly, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

But that was before the Trampoleze.

I needed a rope in order to reach the bar. Only when I put my weight on the rope, the bar came down so low that I was standing comfortably on the mat, bar in hand. Stand to ankles seemed to go well enough, though it was more of a butt, rebound to ankles. Half turn to ankles from front support was out of the question. I tried to do a small cast for the tempo and the trapeze ate so much of the movement that I didn’t even come off the bar. Then I made the extremely foolish decision to try a release move. You know the one where you have the ropes in your hands but are hanging from your knees, then drop down, do a half turn with your torso so that your knees come off the bar and then catch hands? I got about as far as “turn with your torso” before the trapeze rocket launched itself toward the cupola and left me to crash and burn into the mat.

Bravely (stupidly?), I tried it again. That attempt, and the one following it, was no better.

At that point I about gave up, did some foot hangs, and called it a day.

And yet in some ways, that point was better than the ones at the next place I would train...

Blargh!

Just when you think things can't get any worse on Circus Island, or at the very least, that things have calmed down, someone kicks in your window and tries to steal your stuff.

If that seems like a poorly constructed metaphor, it's because it's actually a sad description of reality.

The good news, for me anyway, is that it wasn't my window, but D's. The better news is that nothing was actually stolen. The frightening news is nothing was stolen because she walked in on the guy trying to do the thieving.

This is the second bit of burglary since I've been here. I had some friends come to visit and they had pretty much all of their possessions stolen out of their car (mac book pro, ipad, iphone, lots of cash, passports, driver's licenses...). They had been on the island for less than an hour.

We haven't even started shows yet. Not only have we not even started shows yet, the rest of the troupe will not be arriving for another few days. Some technicians will begin to arrive tonight. I'm not even going to bother to ask what else could possibly happen because I'm pretty sure the Universe would take it as a personal challenge.

The Image in My Mind

I came across this picture the other day, and this is exactly how I picture the present state of my circus in my mind. All that's missing is the acrobat who refuses to believe that it's over, a trapeze dragging in the dirt behind them as the wander the abandoned circus grounds...

Seriously, people need to get here soon.

A Wee Problem

Have you ever been in your caravan, surfing the internet, when suddenly a French construction worker stands right next to your open window and starts peeing?

No?

Lucky...

Bad, Bad, Bad...

Typically, when night falls on Circus Island, I tend to retire to the warmth and safety of my caravan. But on this particular night, I thought it might be a good idea to swing by the office caravan and hit up the internet.

There was a knock at the door.

There shouldn’t have been a knock at the door.

And yet for some reason I thought it might be one of my colleagues who lives in Paris. She tends to drop in from time to time. Apparently I decided to ignore the fact that she would have texted me to tell me she was coming, and why on Earth would she be coming to an empty circus island at that hour?

I opened the door to find a man.

I will spare you my first horrified reaction as it involves telling an entirely different story. At any rate, what actually happened may have been worse.

This man and his wife had come to see the show!

Seeing as I’m the only one here and there’s absolutely nothing in the tent, that was going to prove to be difficult. I was beyond mortified. Normally, ticket holders had been notified of the change of dates, and tickets had been reimbursed or exchanged. Moreover, that very afternoon I had received an e-mail from the office asking if there were any signs on the island notifying the public of the change of dates (answer: no).

To make matters worse, the island is only accessible to the public from 8am to 8pm, and by this time, the island was closed. I don’t have a key to any of the gates. And while my friends who have come by after closing just jump the fence, I was pretty sure that such a suggestion would not go over terribly well with this elderly couple.

Shit.

A few frantic phone calls and deeply embarrassed conversations later, I was able to find someone on the grounds that could help. Of course, he didn’t have a key either. Such is the wonder of Circus Island.

By this time, the couple was understandably irritated. Fortunately, this led to the clarification of some key facts.

First off, they had purchased their ticket on Monday. Monday! The dates were changed weeks ago! If the FNAC is selling tickets to shows that don’t exist, that is a very big problem. Secondly, upon closer inspection of the ticket itself, it was discovered that they had purchased tickets for the 26^th of October.

I think I actually felt the embarrassment slide off of me and latch on to the two of them.

I was in the clear!

Of course, they were still trapped on the island.

The good news is a key was soon located. The bad news is, when the couple was let out, there were more people found at the gate hoping to get in and see the show. The only silver lining there is that they were hoping to get tickets at the door. But the entire debacle highlights some serious public relations issues.

I, for one, removed myself from the situation entirely and went to shower. Of course the water heater had gone out and I could not for the life of me get it to light again.

Frickin’ Circus Island...

Circus Island

The wait for shows to start continues here on Circus Island. If you're thinking I call it Circus Island because I am stranded here alone like a castaway, you would be wrong. Well, you would be right, but only metaphorically. I call this Circus Island because it is quite literally and island covered in circuses. Not my most inspired naming, I know, but it gets the job done.

You may recall the Tent City photo I posted a while back. That photo was taken on this island.

Now here's the fun part. The island is located way the hell out of Paris, but quite close to where the Eiffel Tower is. If you take the tram here, you can see it in the distance for most of the journey. At night, you see it's beacon circle quite clearly.

So I figured that if you can see it from the tram, and you can see its beacon from the circus grounds, then the view from on top of the tent must be simply stellar.

When I climbed up onto the tent, this is what I saw:

Oh, come on! If it weren't for that one building... way to drop the ball, Paris. Way to drop the ball...

There is one spot of the tent that does offer a better view, but it's also a rather precarious place to sit. I did manage to get a picture, though.

However disappointing the view of the Eiffel tower might be, the view of Circus Island from the top of the tent more than makes up for it.

Zzt!

It was uncharacteristically cold when I woke up that morning. Right away, I knew something was wrong. But it wasn’t one of those things where you think “uh oh...” No. Not here on Circus Island. It was definitely more of a “not again...”

The power had gone out. This happens somewhat often. There is a lot of construction being done and sometimes they need to shut the power off. Usually it’s off for about an hour. So I trudged off to the kitchen to make tea on one of the gas burners and waited.

And waited.

And waited...

I should probably mention that it was Thanksgiving Day and I had some serious cooking to do. I had squash and chestnuts to roast, cookies and garlic knots to bake, and of course, the turkey. It would have been fine if the gas oven was working, but naturally it wasn’t. It was electric or nothing. So... nothing.

When I called the site director to find out what was going on, I was told that that morning, the cables that supply electricity to the island had been backed over by a truck and were sliced in two.

I wish I could say that surprised me.

Seriously, Circus Island. Get it together.

I was told the power would be back on by the end of the morning. It came back on at quarter to five, and then promptly went back out again. By five it was on for good and Thanksgiving was saved!

It’s always an adventure on Circus Island...

New Neighbours

So I’m in the kitchen, minding my own business, making some soup, when look out the window and see two dinosaurs staring back at me.

Specifically, a stegosaurus and a velociraptor.

This place gets weirder every day.

Tent City

 
Population: me