It was the twenty-first of December and how better to while away the longest night than at Newcastle Circus Arts’s festive Youth Cabaret?
Celebrating their first year as a community interest company, it was an exciting night full of daring aerial acts, slapstick clowning, impressive acrobatics, graceful hooping and teamwork juggling - all from a group of young people aged from around five/six years to later teens who’d been clocking up training hours together since September. Their hard work is clearly paying off. I so admired the strength and fearlessness of especially the really wee ones, and was struck by how well they all worked together as a troupe, and in their pairings, often matching younger and older performers.
It is great to see kids getting these sorts of opportunities and outlets. I can see by some of the shapes the joints make on some of them that some are hypermobile, and what an excellent way to get strength training and develop coordination that will prepare them for later life.
The creativity involved is worth noting, too, as these young people collaborated on writing and structuring a show with a narrative linking the individual acts and setting up lots of comedic situations and callbacks for the clowning comperes. Audience participation was encouraged and built in.
These folk are young. They are early in their training. Mistakes happened. Hoops were missed and balls were dropped, and they recovered gracefully every time and worked it into the act. They aren’t being trained solely to excel, but to make mistakes safely and to embrace their mishaps by creating art and joy out of them. That’s the life lesson I unexpectedly took from the night: we can learn strategies to recover with grace and fun.
I’ve been sharing an office with Newcastle Circus Arts director Hannah Guy for really just a couple of months now and her enthusiasm has brought so much joy into my life at a very challenging time. Hannah has faced her own challenges recently, and is meeting them in just these ways with grace, openness and good humour. The night went so well and was so enjoyable that you wouldn’t know she’d had anything disruptive going on. The youth performers and everything she’s built and keeps building are too important. My privileged position behind the scenes is a good reminder that there is always more going on beneath the surface.
The event was free (with donations and raffle ticket purchases and buying drinks from the bar encouraged) as a showcase for what NCA provides and to celebrate the wider community and the value of circus arts for all. I look forward to sharing more of their highly skilled antics.
NCA are based in the John Marley Centre in the west end of Newcastle upon Tyne. Find more here.