Our friends Tom and Jenny Wertz invited us to see a performance of Birdhouse Factory by CirqueWorks at Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City on Friday. We picked them up and had dinner at the Iowa River Power Restaurant then went over to the auditorium. We had great seats; row G, right in the middle.
The performance was a Cirque de Soliel type of thing. The general idea was that the performers were workers in a factory that made bird houses in the 1930’s. There would be general activity on the set with nondescript sort of busy-ness, then one of the performers would be featured doing their specialty. There were about 8 or 10 set pieces altogether. The first was one of the very best. A contortionist from Mongolia whose backbone was so flexible that she could almost touch her boom-boom to the back of her head, writhed around in all sorts of impossible poses, most of the time balanced on one hand. At the end she pretzelled up and supported her whole weight by biting onto a plate at the end of a long stick.
Another impressive act was the guy and the German Wheel. At first he just rolled back and forth across the stage moving around inside the wheel, but as the act progressed he started to roll around on the outside of the wheel. Speeding down towards the floor you thought he was going to be smashed, but at the last minute he would flatten out and miss the floor completely.
There were other great acts as well; an acrobatic tango, vertical dancing on ropes, a rail thin hula hoop artist, twin trapeze artists, and a ballet on a suspended twirling ring. One of the most fun ones was at the end. Three guys were up on a platform goofing around when one of them appears to lose his balance. It’s a setup of course. He bounces on a trampoline and rebounds right back up onto the platform. The others follow suit and soon they are intertwined bouncing left then right between each other all while mugging for the crowd. It was a delight.
Although this is not the performance exactly as we saw it, here is a you-tube video that gives you a pretty good feel for what it was like.
We saw something like this in Branson -Chinese acrobats but thesw were chikdren -it was amazing
we saw something like this in Branson.Chinese acrobats but these were children-amazing !!
Thanks for passing this along, Butch. If we get the opportunity, Dan and I would love to go see it. Cirque de Soliel is beautiful but not as
edgy/play-like as this. I bet it was great fun.