MAS goes to the circus

MAS GOES TO THE CHINESE STATE CIRCUS
to learn new skills and build relationships with some of their clients.

On Wednesday 23 June 2004, with the weather against us, 8 members of the MAS team met with 19 clients at the Big Top, Victoria Park, Hackney.

After a warm welcome and introduction by our Managing Director, Robert Mowbray, the group was provided with some background to the circus and its owners by Larry de Wit the General Manager.

Everyone was enthralled by a short demonstration provided by the artistes. As their programme states “The Chinese State Circus is very different, displaying its skills with a characteristically quiet charm. Indeed the level of skill is so phenomenally high that any razzamatazz gloss is redundant. These distinctive Chinese performance arts – chair balancing, the Lion Dance and so on – are literally thousands of years old, yet they still retain the capacity to entertain in this third millennium!” One girl was able to twist and turn her body in a manner that is just not natural whilst balancing on one hand – never has a circus audience been so captivated and quiet! And as for the boys who juggle the straw hats – we can now vouch for the fact that it is not as easy as it looks!

Then it was our turn………..

Splitting into four groups we tried out hand at plate spinning, straw hat juggling, the Diablo and, handstands / headstand (for those more adventurous some even did them on a small chair rather than the floor!)

A guided tour around the outside of the Big Top by Larry de Wit demonstrated quite how much work goes into the Circus as a whole. It takes the team 8 hours to put up the big tent but only 3 hours to take it down. All the Chinese artistes live in a converted trailer with bunk beds and a separate day room – they even have their own chef!

To round off the event, the group were provided with plenty of drink, hot dogs and popcorn and given front row seats to the evening show. We saw that it takes years to perfect plate spinning and straw hat juggling to the outstanding level of accuracy demonstrated by the members of the Chinese State Circus.