Barefoot Monkeys Strive for Poi-fection Through Inclusivity - CircusTalk

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Barefoot Monkeys Strive for Poi-fection Through Inclusivity

This past Sunday, Apr. 15, the Barefoot Monkeys’ Spring Show performance dazzled with fire, props (the professional term is toys), music and choreography. The Spring Show was one of four major shows the Barefoot Monkeys perform annually. A typical show consists of around 20 acts and 35–55 participants.

The Barefoot Monkeys refer to themselves as a circus and fire arts group, but they are aware that they do not conform to just one idea of what circus is. Vice President Liat Kugelmass ’18 explained, “In Europe, they have developed a much more contemporary idea of circus. It’s not as much of the showy showman kind of thing—it’s a lot more focused on artistic style and performance. I think we blend a little more into that than we do into the clowning and the big-ring circus.”

Referring to specific differences between the Monkeys’ style and that of traditional circus, President Jessie Prutisto-Chang ’18 acknowledged the difficulty in labeling their diverse work: “The common conception of circus has stuff like acrobats and trapeze artists. We definitely are a circus in some sense, but not in the traditional sense necessarily. Like hula hoops are very circus-y, juggling is also very circus-y, but poi (a ball at the end of a string) is something you don’t see in a circus as often … a lot of people refer to this as flow arts instead of circus, but it’s a big messy territory of stuff.”

 

Link to Full Article at The Miscellany News

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