Under the big top

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Courtesy photo Students perform at last year's circus at Pine Hill Waldorf School.

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Courtesy photo A student performs at last year's circus at Pine Hill Waldorf School.

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Courtesy photo Students perform at last year's circus at Pine Hill Waldorf School.

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Courtesy photo Students perform at last year's circus at Pine Hill Waldorf School.

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FACT BOX HEAD

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WILTON – The circus is coming to Wilton, and its performers may come as a bit of a surprise, not only in terms of their ages but also their skills at such a young age. Pine Hill Waldorf School’s middle school circus troupe will present its 15th Hilltop Circus, which promises to take its guests from the “fanfare of a medieval court to the circus of corporate America.”

This year’s circus heralds the return of its longtime director and circus arts teacher Jacqueline Davis, who had taken a yearlong sabbatical to earn her master’s degree in education in human development and psychology at Harvard University.

Davis, who trained classically with noted mime Marcel Marceau, left home at 15 to work with a mime troupe in New York and eventually, Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center. Her husband, Rick Davis, is a former clown with Ringling Brothers Circus. As the circus arts instructor at Pine Hill Waldorf School, she drew on her own skills as a performer and learned new ones, such as juggling, to teach seventh- and eighth-grade students who perform each year in the circus.

In 2007, Davis was named middle school physical education teacher of the year by the New Hampshire Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. According to Davis, the circus acts as a fundraiser for the school, enabling the students to embrace a bit of civic responsibility, since their performances, and the circus itself, are directly responsible for providing financial assistance to the school each year.

This year’s theme is “Out of the Blue,” and features a collision of circuses present and past. The performance will feature juggling jesters dueling with acrobatic corporate executives, with the query, “Are love and laughter alive in the year 2010?” Performers will offer up their response in the form of stilt-walkers, clown acts, tightrope walkers and more.

“This year’s circus begins in the year 1010 with a medieval festival. The Queen (class teacher Elizabeth Auer) is thrilled to have come out of the Dark Ages into an age of enlightenment. She muses, ‘Humankind shall always prosper – today, tomorrow, and a thousand years since.’ This intrigues the King (played by class teacher Dirce Richards), who wonders whether their descendants will indeed laugh and play so freely in a thousand years. So he sends the time-traveling wizard Merlin (played by eighth-grader Tristen Rodgers) into the year 2010 to see how things are going. Merlin finds humankind self-absorbed, talking on cell phones and consumed with the need to make money,” said Davis, “By sending people from 2010 back to 1010, humankind reconnects with some of the simpler virtual of the past which we seem to be forgetting.”

Davis said that the theme changes each year, although this wasn’t always so. In its first and second year, the theme was simply that of a circus.

“By the third year, we saw that this was going to be an annual event, and some sort of theme would be necessary to keep the ball rolling,” said Davis. “It was Pine Hill’s 25th anniversary, so we had a celebration-themed show in 1998. The 1999 show had its first real theme: ‘A Tour through Time,’ with a crazy scientist (Dr. Cephalitis) and his clown assistant, Jo, who steals the time machine, and the doctor has to go chasing through time.”

Davis said that the eighth-graders have the singular privilege and responsibility of choosing the Hilltop Circus theme as the school’s graduating class each year.

“This is done by consensus because we really want 100 percent of the students on board, rather than by vote in which a very slim majority could leave a lot of kids unhappy,” said Davis. “So it is a real process of brainstorming, whittling down, combining and compromising.”

Circus is a compulsory program that includes every seventh- and eighth-grader at Pine Hill Waldorf, which generally enables 30-45 students to participate each year, depending on class sizes.

“One of the best features of having both classes participate is that in any given year, there is a veteran class of experienced students and a novice class who are new to Hilltop. This creates a built-in opportunity for peer mentorship,” said Davis.

Seventh- and eighth-grade class teachers usually play roles written specifically for them, and Davis said in the 15 years of circus at the school only one teacher has chosen not to be involved.

“One year, when the theme was “Under the Sea,” our French teacher Madame Johnson played Jacques Cousteau. She was fabulous. She is the only special subject teacher to have been in the circus so far.”

Other school staff members are busy behind the scenes, with great support from the office staff which deals with tickets sales and more to make the circus truly come together each year. While circus arts is not the usual fare at most schools, Davis said that it falls under the aegis of movement arts at Pine Hill Waldorf School, which would be considered physical education elsewhere.

“Circus skills are in the curriculum starting in the fourth grade when students learn diabolos, flower sticks and unicycles during their movement class periods. In fifth grade, they learn toss juggling and begin working n more balance equipment like rolling globes and rola bolas (balance boards),” said Davis. “In sixth grade, the juggling skills hopefully progress up to ring and club juggling, with more balance equipment introduced such as stilts and tightwire walking.”

The seventh- and eighth-graders review a lot of what has been learned thus far and add human pyramid building and some character work such as mime and/or clowning. There are also special skills such as poi and club twirling.

“Since grades seven and eight are performance years, we also focus on presentations and how to create and perform circus compositions,” said Davis, who feels that circus skills are one of the best kept secrets in youth development.

Over the years, Davis realized that the process of creating the circus, from dealing with the unique physical challenges to problem solving and working to cooperate and collaborate with peers, was truly a medium for positive youth development.

Davis said that common to youth circus practice worldwide there are three fundamental elements:

Physical skills that serve as the basis for all youth circus activities that are unique to circus: juggling, acro-balance, equilibristics, clowning and aerials, to name the key domains.

Youth circus is by definition non-competitive, departing from the team-versus-team tournament model found in sports and the access-by-audition model of elite performance arts groups, in favor of a troupe model where youth participate in the spirit of “all for one and one for all.”

Youth circus is radically inclusive of all young people of very age, athletic capability, body size, developmental capability, socioeconomic status, academic standing, race, gender and religion.

Leslie Vogel is another longtime participant and volunteer with Hilltop Circus. She will also lead the Youth and Community Fiddle Orchestra and the Hilltop Circus Band at this year’s performances, which will feature original pieces composed and arranged by Vogel.

“Leslie joined us for the third circus and has been here ever since,” said Davis. “She is a critical part of the circus and worth her weight in gold. She’s frighteningly talented at composing music to augment movement and will come and watch our rehearsals in order to match her music to what the kids are doing.”

The pit band for the circus has had some regular players over the past 10 years, Vogel said, including her husband. musician Fred Simmons. on trombone.

Vogel started the Youth and Community Fiddle Orchestra a few years ago with the goal of getting young people out into the community at real events, playing live music in a lively and happy style. She felt fiddle tunes would be a good vehicle for that.

The fiddle orchestra is made up of teenagers from many school districts, according to Vogel. The group includes homeschooled students from Francestown, Lyndeborough, Wilton, Milford and Mont Vernon, as well as high school students from High Mowing, Wilton/Lyndeborough Cooperative and ConVal, a student from Merrimack, one from Pine Hill and one from Monadnock Waldorf School in Keene.