| Buskerfest
2004 had a great run this year here in the nation’s capital.
After getting over a setback a few days of rain can cause, the
crowds arrived to check out all the talent Sparks St. had to
offer. The festival benefited from the civic holiday on Monday
as your humble scribe and hundreds of others decided to come
downtown under sunny skies and see the jugglers, magicians and
acrobats. Monday
August 2nd was the last day for the festivities. So your humble
scribe decided to allow the beautiful weather pull him downtown
to enjoy a day outside. Although the program stated that Jeff
Hill would be the first performer of the day it turned out
that the balancing and juggling act of Peter Sweet would delight
the crowd instead.
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| Peter
Sweet |
| This
San Francisco performer is master of slack-rope balancing. You
have two types of rope that acrobat can balance and move on.
The tightrope is the most famous, but the slack-rope, its ignored
cousin, is also quite a difficult rope to balance on. Peter,
or “Pete” as he calls himself while performing,
involves seven strong male members of the audience to help.
After setting up the trapeze, Pete gets four men to hold the
rope he will be balancing on. He adds three more to hold the
metal structure that keeps the rope up in the air. The last
man holds the three torches that Pete will juggle. After preliminary
jostling and humour, Pete uses the torch holder as a ladder
and steps up onto the rope. He walks frontward and backward.
He then lays down on the rope and returns into an upright position.
He finishes his act with juggling of three lit torches while
balancing on one foot. |
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| The
Checkerboard Guy |
| The
second show your reporter attended was the antic-filled fun
of The Checkerboard Guy. This Canadian is quite a showman. Although
his feats with balls and unicycles are quite spectacular, it
was his sense of humour that made the show most enjoyable. From
sniffing and tasting sweat soaked balls to getting an audience
member to pick his nose, The Checkerboard Guy’s stunts
definitely do not involve haute-culture. His finale was to juggle
a shoe, an axe, and a flaming torch while on a 6-foot unicycle. |
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| The
AcromaniAcs, a two-man acrobatic team, was the nest show attended
by this tanned and thirsty writer. While your humble narrator
powering back a cold bottle of water the Hamilton-based duo,
Edge and Dan, performed balancing tricks the named: the distorter,
the picnic table, the high chair, the hook foot, the Titanic
and a few others. All the while they would be building up
to their finale aptly called the Neck to Neck. As described
by the two performers, this feat of balance and strength is
the most difficult and dangerous in any show of this type.
Performers have been paralyzed or worse when this trick is
bungled. The crowd was dead silent while Edge took Dan’s
weight and flipped him upside-down. With Edge’s head
jutting forward and Dan’s feet touching the sky, they
unwrap their arms and place them at their sides. The audience
starred unbelievingly at two men balancing on a stage with
only the base of their necks holding them in place. Once the
two danger lovers disengage the crowd went crazy with applause. |
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| The
final show attended by your cooked and dehydrated writer was
The Fasthorses. This First Nations husband and wife team from
Minnesota was the least spectacular of all the performers
your humble narrator watched. Concentrating more on teaching
us about superficial trivia of the aboriginal sort such as:
corn and chocolate were invented by natives, six out of every
ten people have native blood in them, and the English language
has been influenced and changed by various native languages,
the Fasthorses seem to think a buskerfest is grade school
classroom rather than a performance-based festival. In between
theses kernels of knowledge, we did see two native dances
called the Eagle Dance and the Butterfly Dance. We see the
wife manipulate a crystal ball with her hands, spin red and
purple streamers at the end ropes, and spin a staff lit on
fire at both ends around here waist. All these actions can
be learned quite easily by the average person so they lack
the prerequisite element of danger and exceptional skill that
makes a performance enjoyable. |
| After
watching four performances, using most of his sunscreen, and
emptying his wallet of 45 dollars, your humble scribe decided
a trip home was in order. With the size of the crowds and
the amount of money being put into busker’s baskets,
I think the warnings by every performer that a lack of generosity
will inevitably kill these types of festivals were heeded.
You humble narrator is confident that the Buskerfest (its
14th) will return next year for more fun and excitement. |
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Monday
August 2nd, 2004 |
by:
Scott D. Brown |
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