Madame Zingara’s flying high

Published Jun 30, 2015

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The Theatre of Dreams is setting up shop in the heart of Cape Town for a night of entertainment, good food and much craning of the neck, writes Theresa Smith

WHEN they are working out a new routine, aerial strap performers Bethan Williams and Martin D’Oliveyra can easily train up to six hours a day, six days a week. That goes down to about three hours a day once they have the routine down pat.

Why so much effort for a six-minute performance? In a circus tent?

“It gives an amazing sense of flying. And, there is something magical about watching people dancing in the air,” says Williams in an interview from Durban, where they were finishing up a run of Madame Zingara’s After Forever tour.

Williams, 29, started training as a classical ballerina, while D’Oliveyra started as a gymnast. She discovered aerial straps via acrobatic pole dancing, but they met and bonded at circus school.

UK-raised Williams’s Durban-born mother made sure she spent time on South Africa’ s south coast, but she was halfway through her degree course, specialising in aerial straps, at The Circus Space (which is now called the National Centre for Circus Arts) in London when she saw D’Oliveyra practice one evening: “This guy was doing amazing tricks on the straps, a friend introduced us and we started training together. We got on really well, so we put together an act and were having such a great time,” she said.

Brazilian-born D’Oliveyra was in contact with the Madame Zingara crew, having worked here six years ago, and when she finished her degree in July 2013, they came out to Cape Town.

Initially, their first act was inspired by tango dancing: “We were looking for an act with lots of passion and that was exciting so we started taking tango dance classes and found a great piece of music, and added new tricks and techniques”.

For The Celebration show, though, it’s a triple storey volume space to work on in the new spiegeltent: “It’s going to be fantastic because we’ have so much more height so we can really get up there and move. The whole production is going to be bigger,” said Williams.

Madame Zingara founder and director, Richard Griffin, echoed this sentiment: “We are able to increase the volume of artists in an act because we have more space to work with.”

Four of the acts from After Forever come through to The Celebration.

“With the (Diabolo Girls) troupe coming out from China, we have seven in that one. Also, lots of triples… Korean plank for the first time in the country, the teeter board. Those three boys are coming out of Paris so Craig Leo will be working that whole act,” explained Griffin.

“We have Saulo (Sarmiento from Spain) opening up the act. He’s an incredible (aerial pole) artist. He got the judges award now for Montreal, did Cirque du Soleil and just got a whole new batch of awards. It’s a skill we have never really seen in South Africa.

“It’s all about demonstrating the height of the project so the acts that we chose are all about high spaces, lots of bouncing up and down and they have to do it in different mediums, so it’s not one-dimensional,” said Griffin.

Other shows include vocalists from South Africa like The Specifics or Tarryn Lamb; Bike in the Air from Russia and the US; and Brendan van Rhyn returns to the tent in his Cathy Specific guise, to host the evening as the tallest aviation goddess any tent has ever seen.

Williams and D’Oliveyra finished up in five months in Durban last week and start rehearsing in earnest in the new tent this week. They’ll have two weeks to adjust to the new height and their slot might change once they start interacting with the new space

“You can fly more in this new space, you can go right up to the roof, it’s more exciting for us and the audience,” said Williams.

She says she could keep up this pace for about four to six more years before the stress on the body begins to tell and at that point she might go back into teaching or choreography.

“But right now we are having such a wonderful time with Madame Zingara, it’s a fantastic show.”

There are circus schools popping up all over and it’s a changing industry with aerial straps especially morphing into something more than just people swinging through the air: “It’s becoming more of an artform and there are more and more adult classes with people wanting to enjoy it as a hobby.”

YOU JUST CAN’T KEEP A GOOD SHOW DOWN

MADAME Zingara’s Theatre of Dreams is a travelling dinner cirque extravangaza, housed in one of the last remaining antique mirror tents.

Created in 2007 after the original Madame Zingara restaurant on Loop Street burnt down, the Theatre of Dreams travelled Cape Town, Joburg and Durban for two years, headed for London and hit the economic crash in 2008.

The success of the Madame Zingara’s Bombay Bicycle Club Restaurant helped restart the Theatre of Dreams and they returned with The Love Magic Tour in 2010. Recently they completed their After Forever tour and now they bring The Celebration to Cape Town’s Grande Parade.

Directed by Madame Zingara founder, Richard Griffin, the production is now housed in a new tent called The Queen of Flanders.

While you cannot take photos of the artists performing as this compromises their safety, there are opportunities for selfies beforehand with pop-up performances in the foyer and around the four bars. The staff are not only decked out in fab costumes but change their looks as the night wears on. Check the Madame Zingara instagram account (@themadamezingara) for proof.

No persons under 16.

• The tent will be open on the Grande Parade from July 7 to Sept 26. Tickets: R650 - R1250 via 0861 623 263 or Computicket.

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