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thewidowstanton · 6 years ago

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The Widow’s Best of 2018

In what has been another miserable year in many respects, the arts have been more important than ever in keeping spirits high. Here are some of the things we’ve liked. They lean a little, but – suffering as we are from ‘circus fatigue’ – certainly not all the way, towards that art form. But first we have something to say. Last year when we posted our ‘Best of’ round-up, one of our favourite cabaret acts had a fit of pique and unfollowed us and blocked us because she hadn’t made the cut. So this time, before offending anyone else of a similarly delicate disposition, we’d like to point out that to be considered for our list, we have to have seen your show – even if it’s an old one – during the year. So, now that’s clear, let’s proceed. All shows are in London unless otherwise stated.

BEST SHOW: Knot by the hand-to-hand duo of Nikki and JD – American Nikki Rummer and Frenchman Jean-Daniel Broussé – seen (again) at The Place. This show has it all: skill, emotion, humour, dance, music. We simply loved it! Don’t miss it on tour again in 2019.

MALE CIRCUS ARTIST OF THE YEAR: Laci Simet, whose 40-year career has encompassed appearances on high wire, Wheel of Death, motorbike on the wire, skywalks and more recently The Semaphore – a recreation of the Koch Sisters revolving act – during which he balances on a knife edge that is constantly falling away from him. His was also the MOST READ WIDOW INTERVIEW.

FEMALE CIRCUS ARTIST OF THE YEAR: Rhiannon Cave-Walker from Fauna, not just for her stunning skills but because she’s such lovely person. Fauna ran at Flora Herberich’s Battersea Circus Garden during Wandsworth Arts Fringe.

BEST ACT: The flying Russian cradle in Cirque du Soleil’s OVO at the Royal Albert Hall, Barcode’s Russian bar with flyer Alexandra Royer and bases Eric Bates and Tristan Nielsen, seen at Cirque de Demain in Paris, and anything Lewie West did in Gravity & Other Myth’s Backbone, which ran at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

BEST SURPRISE APPEARANCE: The stupendous Rowan Heydon-White, who popped up unannounced in Circa’s Peepshow during the Underbelly Festival.

MOST INNOVATIVE CIRCUS SHOW: The holograms used in Circus Roncalli.

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BEST THEATRE SHOW: Mother by Peeping Tom Dance at the Barbican during the London International Mime Festival.

MOST WELCOME RETURN FROM INJURY: Lydia Harper, who returned to Cirque du Soleil’s TORUK after four months off following hip surgery. And Andrew Adams of The Silhouette. Having fallen 30ft from the Wallendas’ high wire and being badly hurt, he recovered and appeared with Sasha Harrington at Cirque de Demain.

BEST CIRCUS 250 SHOW: Chris Barltrop’s self-penned one-man show, Audacious Mr Astley – seen at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – tops the year celebrating the birth of circus in the UK. Chris also gets BEST COSTUME for Astley’s beautiful and authentic red coat.

BEST MC: The inimitable Calixte de Nigremont, whom we met at last at Cirque de Demain.

BEST MAGIC TRICK: Yann Frisch appearing a pack of cards from nowhere during Le Paradoxe de Georges in his spectacular movable theatre Le Camion-Chapiteau – which gets BEST VENUE – in Paris, and Eric Chien’s Ribbon act to become 2018 FISM close-up champion.

MOST ARRESTING IMAGES: Phia Menard’s show about suicide, Les Os Noirs, at the Montfort Theatre in Paris.

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BEST ONGOING NIGHT: Rose Thorne and Benjamin Louche’s Double R Club at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club.

MOMENT OF WONDER: Cai Guo-Qiang’s exquisite daytime powder fireworks. Plus Lewie West skidding on this hands in Backbone, and Daniel Cave-Walker balancing on his head in Fauna. Look, no hands!

BEST CIRCUS CABARET: Black Cat Bohemia at the Underbelly Festival at Southbank Centre. A simply wonderful show! It transcended the format, which can often look tired, and its line-up included our interviewees Lj Marles, Katharine Arnold and Nicolas Jelmoni, as well as others knock-out acts such as the lovely Jo Moss.

MOST UNIQUE SHOW: Crème de la Dregs by Dina Martina at Soho Theatre.

BEST ‘IN CONVERSATION’: Performance artist Rose English and Stine Hebert during Crying Out Loud’s Circus Sampler at Somerset House.

BEST DANCE: B-boy Elihu Vazquez in Barely Methodical Troupe’s SHIFT, seen at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, and German Cornejo and Gisela Galeassi’s thrilling duets in Tango After Dark at the Peacock Theatre.

BEST DANCE CIRCUS: Motionhouse’s Charge also at the Peacock. BEST CIRCUS FILM: Psycho-Circus with Christopher Lee from 1966, in which a circus becomes the location for stolen loot and murder!

MOST FABULOUS: Régis Marvin Merveille N'Kissi Moggzi in the joyous French teen movie/documentary Swagger, which is set in one of the country’s most under-privileged neighbourhoods.

BEST INTERVIEW: Gaylord Fields speaking to the tireless Petula Clark on WFMU. Hoping for some UK concerts in 2019.

BEST MUSIC IN A CIRCUS SHOW: Elliot Zoerner and Shenton Gregory’s soundtrack for Backbone, played live onstage.

MOST SHOWBIZ: Mr Murray Hill. Nobody cared when his show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe drifted off course and never came back. It was enough to be in the New York icon’s presence.

BEST SHOWBIZ BOOK: Spun Into Gold: The Secret Life of a Female Magician by Romany, Diva of Magic.

BEST BURLESQUE: Dita Von Teese, naturally, plus the stunning Zelia Rose, but certainly not the rest of the cast in The Art of the Teese at the Carré in Amsterdam.

BEST TV CHARACTER: Ciro di Marzio from Gomorra and Joséphine ‘Maître’ Karlsson from Engrenages/Spiral.

MOST IMPRESSIVE MEMORY FEAT: Laura Linney in I Am Lucy Barton at the Bridge Theatre, who was word perfect in this 90-minute monologue.

BEST GIG: Winter Kills (Piano Magic) at Antenna Studios, Barry Adamson at Union Chapel, and Sevdaliza at The Barbican.

BEST SOLO SHOW: Songs for Nobodies, Bernadette Robinson’s astonishing portrayal of five divas: Garland, Cline, Piaf, Holiday and Callas, at Wilton’s Music Hall.

MOST UPSETTING: The news that the spectacular French variety show Le Plus Grand Cabaret du Monde, hosted by Patrick Sébastien, is ending in June 2019. Sob!

MOST CHARISMATIC: Isabella Rossellini in her theatrical lecture, Link Link Circus, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall; a sort of follow-up to her wonderful Green Porno.

ONE TO WATCH: Mieke Lizotte, currently with Gravity & Other Myths.

MOST ANTICIPATED IN 2019: Aurélia Thiérée’s Bells and Spells at the Theatre Royal during the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, and Isabelle Huppert in the film Greta!

MOST MISSED: Circus artist/actor Raphael Cruz, who died at just 32, and our lovely friend Merian Ganjou of the fabulous Dior Dancers, who died aged 79. Keep on flying, Merian!

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Look out for the first of our interviews in the new year, which will be with one (or more) of the artists from Cirque Eloize show Hotel, which is coming to the Peacock Theatre in February.

Pic credits: Fabio Affuso; Nicholas Brittain

Follow @TheWidowStanton on Twitter

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thewidowstanton · 7 years ago

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Rhiannon Cave-Walker, hand balancer and hand-to-hand artist: Fauna Circus

Australian Rhiannon Cave-Walker started circus training when she was four in Byron Bay – "a magical part of the world" – with Spaghetti Circus. She trained at DOCH in Stockholm, with her husband, Daniel Cave-Walker, and the other members of Fauna Circus: Imogen Huzel, Enni-Maria Lymi and Matt Pasquet. Musician Geordie Little completes the line-up.

Rhi has been a member of Australian circus company Gravity & Other Myths, and has performed with Dan and Geordie in their own show Cadence. As she prepares for a new run of Circus Fauna’s acclaimed debut show, Fauna, she chats to Adrian Arratoon.

The Widow Stanton: First off, are you any relation to Nick Cave? Rhiannon Cave-Walker: No… I wish. [Laughs]

How did you start training when you were so young? I was very lucky to have Spaghetti Circus, such an amazing youth circus, in my area from such a young age. I was a very energetic kid. My parents were both artists – my mum a dancer and my dad a musician – so they were very enthusiastic about pushing me into the arts and being active. I started at Spaghetti Circus just as my after-school activity, and continued for up to four times a week until I was 18. I grew up in such a progressive and amazingly arts-supportive community; Spaghetti Circus was not only a great outlet for physicality but it was lovely to be able to be part of such a community and develop stuff from such a young age. It was the family vibe there that taught me a lot; it was just a bonus that I was able to do some flips. There was no competitive level to it; only your own personal competitive desire to get better for yourself. It sounds like a nurturing environment… Without doubt, it was amazing. All the kids that I grew up with are like my brothers and sisters, and Leonie Mills, who’s the founder/owner, is easily my second mum. Then I would have my amazing home to come back to, so it was this pretty loving childhood [laughs]. That's the beauty of youth circus; you are pushed to be creative as well as physical, and find your thing. I did so many forms of dancing when I was a kid, ballet included. I loved that discipline, and thrived on that, but it was more a way of finding a place to go, ‘Hi, I'm Rhi. Look at me!’. [Laughs]

Were you always set on doing circus professionally? I always knew I wanted to be a performer or in the performing arts. There was a turning point when I was 14 or so when I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do dance or circus, because I could have gone down the professional dancing path; it was always those two things. Now as an adult there are other avenues I’d like to go down as well as circus. But as a kid it was always, 'Be on stage. Try to be the centre of attention!'. [Laughs].

In your biog you say you were exposed to circus at a professional level in Europe. In what way? When I was 18 I came with Spaghetti Circus on a tour of Europe. We visited a lot of youth circuses, such as Albert & Friends in London, and went to the International Youth Circus Festival there, then came down to Bristol and worked with Invisible Circus, and went over to mainland Europe as well. Even though in the main these were just youth circuses it was a completely different environment to what I’d grown up with. Just being exposed to different circuses, environments and people was amazing.

Then, after I’d left Spaghetti, it was more the professional culture of the training facilities and the schools that was just so inspiring for me. I was like, ‘Wow, you can push your body and push your level and your professionalism to the next level’, which was really inspiring. It was finding out about the circus universities in Europe that was the most inspiring thing.

Then you went to DOCH. How was it there? Next-level awesome, yet very gruelling. The hardest part was the fact that it was in Sweden, which is just a completely different culture and climate to Australia. I did get used to the cold after a while but it was more the darkness that took some getting used to. I love going out in the sun; it gives me a lot of energy, and when you’ve only got two-and-a-half, three hours of sun each day, and that's in the middle of the day when you’re training, and it's minus 27 outside and you don’t particularly want to go outside…! It's like a life of indoors for four months. That was very challenging.

But I really loved the intense training – from eight in the morning to half past ten at night – and we'd be exposed to so many different dance choreographers, and be pushed to perform a lot and create a lot. For me at least it was a really great place to develop my personal circus flavour.

What made you choose hand-balancing and hand to hand? I tried absolutely everything as a kid. I'm short – 4ft 11ins – so flying and doing hand to hand, even as kid, being so short, I was obviously put at the top of all the pyramids. So I was exposed to being thrown around from such a young age, and I loved that. And handstands are just something that sort of came to me. I started doing them when I was 16, 17, not super-seriously. It wasn’t until I auditioned for DOCH that I started training really intensely. And I trained in handstands because I didn’t have a base. Then I met Dan just before we went to DOCH, but he was already in a hand-to-hand duo, he was flying, on a bigger base; Ben Smith, who's the musician in Svalbard Company. It wasn’t until Gravity & Other Myths asked Dan and me to join that I really started to experience how much fun it is to fly and be thrown around, and use my handstand knowledge but to do that on someone.

How different is doing hand-to-hand with Dan compared with another partner? You always have to adapt yourself to different partners. I try to keep the same technique so I'm not changing too much in my body. But it's always about the trust and relationship between each person, and I have to say, the major difference between me training with someone else and with Dan is the connection and the trust we have with one another. We have a very special connection on and off stage in terms of training, and supporting each other, as well as our artistic kind of creative outlet.

What was Cadence? That was a show we did for just a few performances at the Adelaide Fringe. Dan and I met Geordie when we were street performing in Edinburgh. We just clicked, and did a few creations to his music when we were back at DOCH. And we all had in the back of our minds that we should create something. He was living in Berlin but there was this moment when we were all in Australia at the same time before the Adelaide Fringe. There were two other musicians too, and we decided to spent two weeks creating something. It was a really amazing organic kind of collaboration that we performed maybe eight times or something there. We won some awards and then it was like, ‘Cool, that was satisfying’.

How long were you and Dan in Gravity for? Just over two years, 300 shows; it was a lot. We actually left DOCH halfway through our third and final year to be a part of that company, because they were kind of at a turning point where they were deciding whether they all wanted to commit to becoming a professional company or move on to different projects. And their producer, which is now ours, Aurora Nova, said they needed to make the show a bit bigger and longer, so they asked Dan and me to join to develop and create a bigger show, and help step up the level of tricks. So we dropped out of school and pursued that, which was a really massive decision, obviously, but it felt like the right decision. All you do in your final six months of school is create an act to then sell yourself and we were like, ‘Done! Great! That went swimmingly!’.

For such a new company, Fauna has done really well… Yeah, surprisingly. It’s just been fantastic. It obviously helps to have a strong group of really lovely humans, and we're all really close friends. We've all trained and nurtured our circus passion and values from the same place, at DOCH. It’s lucky that we all have the same kind of drive and the same vision in what we want to create. And individually, we've all worked with bigger companies or gone off and done our own stuff. So individually, each person had quite a good reputation already in our industry. Then opportunities just seemed to come and I wasn’t afraid to ask people for help. The ball just kept rolling and still is. We're travelling a lot this year, going to places in South America and all through Europe and a bit in England, which is so great.

We are really lucky that we have a really beautiful relationship with both our producers [Follow the Rabbit is the second] and other industry people in the UK. Having nurtured those kinds of relationships means everything seems to have come together really organically; we haven’t tried to push anything, we’ve just been really appreciative of the things we have got.

Do you intend Fauna to be a long-term company? Well, at the moment we're all just loving what we have and are in the moment of just, 'Wow, look at what's happening with all this’. And we're all dedicated to making our own art, and the fact that we've created a platform for all six of us to create our own art is a massive plus. So the answer is yes, we do. At the moment we want to push this show, Fauna, as much as possible definitely for the next two years, then after that we will all question, we don’t want to let a show fizzle out and get so we get sick of performing it. We're all very proactive in terms of creating new stuff, so I definitely think there'll be another creation. Whether it’s all of us in it or not, maybe we'll make a couple of different creations under the umbrella of the company, but that’s yet to come.

What's been the highlight of your career so far? [Long pause] That's… very hard. The actual touring and the places I’ve been able to go; I’ve been able to perform in Zimbabwe and with Gravity we took Simple Space over to the circus festival in Montreal. Being immersed in really amazing environments has definitely been such a highlight. But I actually think the real highlight has been the satisfaction in creating my own show and our own show; knowing that some really passionate and amazing people have created a piece of art and a company that I love.

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Rhiannon will be performing in Fauna at: Amsterdam’s Koninklijk Theater Carré from 19-21 April 2018 (for tickets click here); London’s Wandsworth Arts Fringe on 12 May (for tickets click here); and Theatre Royal Brighton from 16-19 May as part of the Brighton Festival (for tickets click here); and then touring. Fauna Circus website; Rhiannon on Facebook

Follow TheWidowStanton on Twitter

Read our interview with Fauna Circus’s Imogen Huzel here

#circus #fauna #handbalancing #hand to hand #amsterdam theater carré #Wandsworth Arts Fringe #Brighton Festival #Spaghetti Circus #DOCH #rhiannon cave-walker #daniel cave-walker #interview

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