Jenni Taylor Swain did what so many children have dreamed of for decades. She ran away and joined the circus, traveling England for a summer with a French circus troupe.
She loved it just as much as she thought she would, so she brought that passion home with her. What she has created -- a presenting organization called Potluck Arts -- will debut this month.
FAQ
‘Gravity & Other Myths’
With A Simple Space
WHEN — 7 p.m. Tuesday; 7 p.m. Thursday; 7:30 p.m. Oct. 7; 2 & 7:30 p.m. Oct. 8; 2 p.m. Oct. 9
WHERE — Springdale Civic Center on Arkansas 265
COST — $25
AND
L’Homme Cirque
WHEN — 7 p.m. Oct. 11; 7 p.m. Oct. 13-14; 2 & 7 p.m. Oct. 15; 2 p.m. Oct. 16; 7 p.m. Oct. 20-21; 2 & 7 p.m. Oct. 22; 2 & 5 p.m. Oct. 23
WHERE — Luther George Park in Springdale
COST — $25
INFO — potluckarts.org
Arts patrons in Northwest Arkansas know Swain as vice president of programming at the Walton Arts Center, where she was on staff for 26 years. But with her sons both off to college, she was able to explore what she might want to do for the next installment of her career -- to reinvent herself, she says.
"I have always been fascinated with contemporary circus," she explains, crediting WAC performers such as Pickle Family Circus, Momix, Pilobolus and Cirque Eloize for bolstering her interest.
"In the last two years at the arts center, I began to get very much involved in the international world of contemporary circus," she goes on, and what she found seemed perfectly suited to fill a niche in Northwest Arkansas. Potluck Arts was created to "work with organizations interested in creating diverse audiences," she says. "And at the same time, I became very interested in the conversation happening in downtown Springdale and felt there was a really opportunity to bring people together. The community offers a really nice palette to experiment and look at taking arts outside of the theater model, creating new places where families can come together for a shared experience."
In partnership with the Downtown Springdale Alliance and with seed money from the Walton Family Foundation, Swain has created "Circus Sites," bringing contemporary circus performers from Australia, Switzerland and Mexico to alternative performance spaces in Springdale.
"The first company, Simple Space from Australia, will set up in the Springdale Civic Center (on Arkansas 265)," for six performances starting Tuesday, Swain says. With a limited house of 300, the audience will be close enough to engage with the performers as they "deliver a playful, intimate, gravity defying performance experience," intended for a multicultural, multilingual, intergenerational audience.
Next will be L'Homme Cirque -- "Circus Man" David Dimitri -- scheduled for 12 shows in Luther George Park.
"David Dimitri is one of the most world-renowned physical theater artists of our time," Swain enthuses. "He grew up under Dimitri the Clown, trained at Juilliard in dance and worked under Philippe Petit, the high-wire artist who walked between the World Trade Center towers."
For "L'Homme Cirque," she explains, Dimitri does everything, including pitching his 200-seat tent with the help of community people.
"We wanted this tent to be on the Razorback Greenway, one of the amenities we feel really brings a diverse group of people together, one of those cultural sectors where people meet," Swain adds.
Swain says "this is not a carnival show. This is an arts show," intended to appeal to both "connoisseurs of the arts" and "novice" theatergoers. The difference between it and everything else offered in Northwest Arkansas, she says, is that "our goal for the project is to mirror the community's demographics."
"It's an entry point that crosses cultures."
NAN What's Up on 09/30/2016