Canada’s ‘totally crazy’ Eloize Cirque is coming to town
The Eloize Cirque, a scintillating Canadian circus comprising versatile, thrill-seeking artists, including dancing actors, musicians-turned-acrobats, and musician-dancer-clowns, will be making its debut visit to the capital next week for eight shows between January 22 and 27 – with a total of six evening performances and two matinees – at Athens College. The circus, which emerged as part of a new generation of circus acts in the early 1980s, has enjoyed especial worldwide popularity since its launch a decade ago by a group of «seven totally crazy friends, graduates of Montreal’s National Circus School,» as a representative of the event’s local promoter described the troupe’s founders at a press conference on Monday. «The result,» added the representative, Michalis Adam of Arts Dance and Music Productions, «is a new type of circus without fire, swords and horses.» The event is being co-promoted by Arts Dance and Music Productions and the Half Note Jazz Club. The Eloize Cirque took its name from a summer lightning phenomenon common to the remote Magdalen Islands off the coast of Quebec. On its current tour, the Eloize Cirque is presenting one of its more established shows, «Excentricus,» its second original production, a breathtaking, non-stop spectacle about 90 minutes long, which has been performed to critical and public acclaim on over 500 occasions, including at such prestigious performing arts events such as the Edinburgh Festival in the UK, and, more recently, the Sydney Opera House in Australia. Based on a love story, the action is embellished with on-stage live music that fuses rock, jazz and ethnic, as well as more conventional circus music. Being both extraordinary performers and very real human beings, the circus’s cast of acrobats, dancers, musicians, actors, and clowns, will take a seat on the edge of the stage – once the show reaches its triumphant finale – to meet interested audience members. For further information, contact the Half Note at 921.3310, Athens College at 679.8100, or Ticket Hellas at 618.9300.
