SOPHIA ROOKSBERRY
Staff Writer
This weekend, Chautauquans will have the opportunity to witness the dizzying circus acts of Troupe Vertigo not once, but twice. Following tonight’s performance with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, Troupe Vertigo will return to the stage at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Amphitheater for a second performance of its Cirque Cinema show — without the symphony, but with the same movie magic.
“We have an international cast of world-class circus performers performing to some of your favorite movie themes throughout the history of cinema, and we’re going to include an opportunity to learn more about how we build these acts and combine them with this iconic music,” Rex Camphuis, co-founding technical director, said.
The soundtrack includes numbers from “The Pink Panther,” “The Incredibles,” “How to Train Your Dragon,” “Mission Impossible” and others. While the same score will accompany both performances, the Sunday show will include an exclusive conversation with the artists.
“You have these extraordinary circus arts happening right in front of you, but then we’re going to do this really informative little talkback, which is very unique,” Aloysia Gavre, co-founding artistic director, said. “We usually don’t offer that type of thing, but thought that this audience would really benefit and really appreciate it.”
Camphuis and Gavre’s collaboration dates back to the 1990s, when they met while working for the Pickle Family Circus, Camphuis as a stage manager and Gavre as an aerialist. Gavre discovered aerialism and acrobatics at 8 years old, and by the age of 14 she was performing with an elite circus troupe.
“It was an extraordinary mixture of the athleticism and challenge of sports, but the beauty and the lines of dance, and then the theatrics of a theater,” Gavre said. “It’s about presentation and performance, it’s about showcasing beauty and athleticism, but unlike the other aspects that I dove into, I felt like it was really about the group coming together, all types of bodies, all types of ages, all types of skills.”
Between meeting Camphuis and co-founding Troupe Vertigo together, Gavre toured Europe with the iconic Cirque du Soleil.
“After that, I realized it wasn’t necessarily that my body was aging, it was really that my mind needed continuous stimulation and I needed to continue to be a dreamer and a visionary,” Gavre said. “Moving to Los Angeles, joining back with Rex, it really felt like, ‘Can we imagine using our own creativity to put artists on stage in a more intimate way where the audiences get the ability to connect and have fun with the theatrics?’”
The resulting project was Troupe Vertigo, which has been performing for almost two decades and has seen many iterations, from corporate events to performing dozens of symphony shows each season.
“Our circus is theatre,” Camphuis said. “We don’t have animals, we’ve never had animals. We come from a theatrical background. The nouveau circus movement was more about storytelling and character work, a precursor to what we understand Cirque du Soleil does, so that’s our background — infusing our circus acts not just with a bunch of spectacle, but also with little human moments that make the audiences connect to what’s happening on stage.”
For this performance, the happenings onstage will include jugglers, contortionists, aerialists, acrobats and a 10-year-old hula-hooper, in addition to the talkback with the performers, which both Gavre and Camphuis believe aligns with Chautauqua Institution’s pillar of education.
“We’re going to take an opportunity to introduce some of the artists to the audience … and sort of peel back the curtain of circus arts, and allow the audience to hear more about how they came to get these skills and how we integrate music into these acts,” Camphuis said. “It’s going to be a really fun afternoon.”
