Swinging Trapeze
Discipline where the aerialist executes somersaults, pirouettes and other tricks at either end of the swing. Generally allowing for more style and expressive movement than flying trapeze, swinging is also much more common – in the UK it's taught in the two circus universities and there's a fair-sized pool of artists who work in the discipline. The nature of the apparatus, which sees actions performed at the 'dead point' – the weightless moment at the top of a swing – gives swinging trapeze a particular rhythm of tension and release that, when the artist is very good, has the power to synchronise and amplify the emotions of a large audience: it's a powerful thing.
Magazine
The programme for Migrations has as its centrefold a timeline of the history of diaspora, starting with the Phoenicians in Lebanon (c. -3000 BC), tracking the movements of the Huns, the Magyars and the imperialist British, and ending in 2007 with the arrival at Circus Space of the recently graduated degree students who are onstage tonight.
Tedros Girmaye devastates club-wielding ninjas; Pablo Meneu Barreira breaks free on straps after brushing his teeth continuously for 30 years; Maximilià Calaf Sevé is …Somewhere… Nowhere! in a hot dusty trampoline solo that draws inspiration from the writing of Paul Auster; frustrated Circus Space janitor Sergio Gonzalez Gallego impresses the ladies with acrobatics cribbed from the real students.