BUSKERFEST 2010

Jugglers and tumblers and unicycles, oh my! This past weekend the St. Lawrence Market district of Toronto was taken over by face painted, colourfully dressed, flamboyant characters .. no, Pride Week has already happened this year. This was, of course, Buskerfest.

This year we went down to the festival not really knowing what to expect. It's a fun way to experience it. Wandering around the area that has been closed off to traffic, the acts spread out along many blocks, basically following the crowed and listening for applause or music or the patter of the performers. Sometimes that means you butt up against a ring of people so thick you have no chance of seeing over their heads and you pray for a "flying" act so you can get a glimpse of the performers as they soar up over the heads of the onlookers.

The first act we came upon was a charity case. Apparently these lovely birds had been abandoned in their cage. A sign stated "Please feed the birds" If you did, they danced and did some acrobatics on a swing and climbed up to perform on the top of their cage

Besides tumbler and caged birds Buskerfest would not be Buskerfest without jugglers. I am, pretty much, over jugglers. Seriously, with a few exceptions all the juggling acts tend to blur together. Almost all street jugglers use, or try to use, comedy to bolster their act. Some are good, but comedy is not a skill set shared by all. What often happens is you get this guy below, a pretty good juggler but a pretty lame comedian. His act consisted of 10 minutes of lame patter to get to 40 seconds of decent juggling

But for all the "been there seen that" jugglers at the fest you always find something fresh and original. Like this group of tumblers from the States. We got to their show a little late and I had a difficult time filming over the crowd (you will see one shot on the video below) but Collette is a good and insistent photographer so got a couple of shots

Now, the St Lawrence Market district in Toronto is an old neighbourhood, the market building itself goes back to around 1901. But the market doesn't seem the only thing held over from the ancient times, apparently dragons inhabited downtown Toronto back in the day and Buskerfest seems to have brought them back to life

Of course what these creatures were, are stilt walkers in remarkable articulated costumes complete with sound effects. They moved about gracefully with so many independent body parts I wondered how many hands the operators must have had.
Although you could say I'm all "tumbled out" the one thing I always like to see at Buskerfest are the ribbon gymnasts. And this year did not disappoint. There was lovely, traditional, elegant ribbon work as demonstrated by this young girl from the Circus School ...

.. or we saw a different take on the art, as performed by the remarkable clown Lulu. Her act involves "discovering" the ribbon rig and deciding to try her hand at it. In perfect clown fashion, Lulu grabs the ribbons and, clumsy creature that she is, tries to be as graceful and elegant as the other girls but of course it is beyond her limited skill set ... The real trick of course is that Lulu is a very skilled aerial artist and knows exactly what she's doing up there. As you'll see in the video, she is like the female Buster Keaton of the ribbons, playing this inept character with a ton of skill and dexterity that is not at first apparent.

It seems that every year at Buskerfest we come across one act that really stands out. Last year it was Dream State Circus a remarkable act from Australia featuring acrobatics, fire dancing and a graceful sexiness. This year it was couple from Japan, Gheeky and Daiki

Cheeky & Daiki seem as far away from Dream State Circus as you could get. The Australian couple are graceful and sensual. The Japanese couple are frantic and clumsy .. on the surface. Cheeky is much like Lulu: A gifted clown who hides her considerable physical skills under a zany surface of playful cheekiness. Yes, she is well named.

Cheeky was absolutely hilarious, playing off of Daiki's worried and embarrassed character. They are very much a Japanese Ricki and Lucy. Daiki, a skilled unicycle rider was trying to put on a trick show, whereas Cheeky was a mess, easily distracted and incredibly flirty. As you'll see on the video, she has a certain fondness for camera men.

As I mentioned, this was basically a unicycle stunt act and both performers were extremely skilled. But both are more than stunt people they are indeed performers. And I acknowledge the skill and art of the straight man, so Daiki is more than a guy who can do some amazing stuff on one wheel.

The couple had a lot of familiar elements in their show: Audience interaction, build ups to stunts, back and forth banter, but Cheeky is flat out hilarious, the show was lifted above the norm. I don't think I'd have been too entranced by a straight out unicycle stunt show but this pair of clowns were able to elevate it to a higher level of entertainment.

So all in all another successful Buskerfest. Collette and I were remembering our first fest, quite a few years ago. It was held at Nathan Phillip's square and I think there were a handful of performers over two days. It has grown. In Toronto that means thousands and thousands of people squeezed into limited space, most of them displaying extremely poor social skills but still .. A hot sunny Saturday, performers who work their asses off cuz if you don't like, you don't pay and a cold beer on a patio ...

What else would you want. Enjoy the video

Toronto Buskerfest 2010 from Collette Scale on Vimeo.