Three ladies are remembering their introduction to the circus as kids. It provided not only a world of marvel but additionally freedom and refuge. The trio share and re-create cherished reminiscences of their tumbling and clowning; one beloved contortion methods a lot that she satisfied her college to incorporate one within the nativity play.
Circus gave efficiency careers to those “present ponies” (who at one stage don feathery plumes) however it has not been sort to them. In any case these years of coaching, with all that knowledge of their our bodies, they’re reaching their 40s and 50s and discover themselves shut out of an business obsessive about youth. “And you already know what they do to outdated ponies.”
Lena Ries, Anke van Engelshoven and Romy Seibt run the Berlin-based firm Nonetheless Hungry and collaborated with Bryony Kimmings on the present Raven, about juggling parenting with performing. They’ve now reunited with Kimmings to co-create a bit that demystifies and deconstructs the kind of bombastic circus act lampooned of their opening scene. Like magicians revealing their secrets and techniques, they execute methods whereas explaining how they’re achieved – a radical strategy that dangers making them seem much less spectacular.
However the unvarnished fact is what they’re after and the trio stroll a tightrope of celebrating and satirising the artwork kind, particularly its place in widespread tradition. There’s a hilarious sequence on our romantic associations of circus with plucky orphans and fortune-telling sideshows. In between these sketches are compelling aerial routines, meteor-juggling and dance breaks.
The French firm La Generale Posthume used canine moderately than equine imagery to make some comparable arguments of their scrappily lovable manufacturing Vilain Chien, concerning the expectations positioned on feminine our bodies in circus and what kind of methods performers are taught. However Present Pony is not only for circophiles. What’s putting is how most of the prejudices and expectations – make every part look easy, don’t speak about interval pains or menopause – apply offstage, too.
This can be a present that appears to the previous and future with a combination of typically mordant humour, poignancy and delight, frequently entwining insights about how the trio’s lives and the artwork kind have modified. Every of them skilled as soloists with their very own specialism and one joke finds them struggling to discover a joint routine that mixes their distinct abilities. However what emerges most is the bond between the ladies as they refuse to be reined in by circus’s biases.
