Infrequent Nights

I was wandering about on Saturday afternoon on my way to the 2-28 Peace Park. While passing Chiang Kai Shek’s memorial hall I noticed some sort of hullabaloo in the square so I decided to wander in and see what the ruckus was about. It turns out that over the past few weeks Taipei has played host to a performance art festival, focusing on circus and related arts. On the afternoon I was there, a free performance was scheduled. It was billed as a clown show featuring Canada versus Taiwan. In actuality it was a weak troupe of Canadian performers glued onto a traditional Chinese circus troupe. The segues between acts were weak to non-existent and the actual acts varied in skill from slightly-below-average to slightly-above- average. It was apparent to me that these two troupes were thrown together at the beginning of the festival and told to make a show together.

The juggler (using worn out 95 mm Renegade clubs) did a 1-5 club act. The only moment of note was the bit when he was juggling three clubs and two of his compatriots were waving the other two around behind him. It looked alright. The rest of the act was bad, involving too many drops, poor trick linkage, and a faffed finale. Incidentally the finale was a 5 club cascade sustained for about 8 catches until the pattern fell apart and the guy dropped a couple of clubs. I know Canada has better jugglers than this guy (hell I’m a better juggler than that guy) and I feel sad we’re being represented here by acts like that. That said, the Canucks did have decent costumes and their characterization was continuous and semi-entertaining. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume their solo all-Canadian show was better.

The Chinese acts were slightly better in regards to both their choreography and actual skills. That said, I’d guess they were circus school students as the acts didn’t come off like the high level blow my mind technical skills acts I’m used to seeing from Chinese circus companies. They had nice costumes, good choreography, and the individual performers’ skill sets were well-rounded. Their best bit was the foot-juggling act which ended with a finale involving two kids from the audience suspended from a pole, and juggled by the antipodist.

At the beginning of the show the Chinese troupe performed a sort of Chinese Opera version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. If this had continued throughout the show as a theme of sorts it would have improved the entire show. As it was it just seemed like a strange non-sequitur as the 15 minute Opera was not incorporated into the circus show at all.

I’ve included a photo of a few promo clowns who were wandering around with flyers for the public. Hint: you can tell they’re not real clowns by checking out their shoes.