It was a boring Thursday when my girlfriend called me to remind me she had tickets for Circo Aereo, a French/Finnish group dedicated to juggling and other acrobatics.
Since it was already 6:30pm, and the show was scheduled to begin at 7:30, I hurried to the dining hall in order to get some food before sitting through the event that would hopefully improve my Thursday night. I met my girlfriend outside of her dorm and she gave me my ticket, which looked something like this:
The show was possible thanks to the effort of The Modlin Center for the Arts here at UR, and they’re constantly looking for artists that they can bring to campus. Before, I’ve seen Second City and Rockapella, both of which were very good, so I was excited bout this show as well.
When we got there, it was already a little late and the place was packed. It took place at the Alice Jepson Theatre, which is really big considering it has a balcony and all, but there were almost no seats left. I was extremely surprised by this, because I had never heard about Circo Aereo before, and they were having a show the next day too, so I wasn’t expecting to find that many people there.
Contrary to what happened at the Craig Karges show, I was decided to take pictures of the performance. I even had my camera ready, when I heard a deep voice through the speakers: “Out of respect to the artists, and in order to make sure the show isn’t disturbed in any way or fashion, please refrain from taking pictures or recording any part of this performance.”
I was definitely out of luck, and even more so after the show began. Most of their acts were really impressive, and though there were some parts I couldn’t understand at all, I just accounted that to the fact they’re foreign. Not to sound stereotypical or anything, it’s just that I’m sure they have a different perspective of what is considered artistic. I even stayed after the show for a Q&A session with them, and they seemed really nice people, haha. Still, they admitted that the styles are way different than what you would find here in the US. It also turns out they’re actually really famous, especially in Europe, and their performances are frequently requested, so I was happy I got to see them, and realized I’m extremely lucky to be at a place like UR, where we constantly get artists from all around the world to show us what they’re capable of doing. And even though there were some parts of the show that I couldn’t completely understand, the two hours went by fairly quickly, and I was able to say, at the end of the show, that my Thursday night had indeed improved.
