So WUMCHA, being fabulous as always, got the playgroup tickets to a mini-show of "The Wizard"-the current production of St. Louis's own circus-Circus Flora. We had an AMAZING time, and I would recommend the visit to anyone-less animals, more acrobatics and good ol' fashioned family fun in a small circus tent made a great cozy and unique experience for us all.
Thanks Kathleen for taking a picture of the three of us together! -Notice I've got Rosalind in the "papoose" so some of my pictures are at odd angles because I'm trying to juggle her and the camera :).
Huxley is intense! He was so excited when they said that the story of "The Wizard" was going to be based on King Arthur and the Sword and the Stone-he knows that Disney movie (and Mom will make sure he reads the books!).
The staging was really cool with old fashioned pages from Malory's King Arthur tales!
The first act was AWESOME-this woman (aka The Lady of the Lake for the sake of the show) revolving on her hoop-talk about serious muscles!
The next act was so great-the little girl and her father and mother (and many teen circus performers) on unicycles riding around.
She can't be more than 8 or 9!!
Here she weaves through very tightly spaced positioners.
Her dad put this hoop through his leg, then up his body and out-while on that incredibly tall unicycle (he had to mount it from the ladder!).
Then -juggling on unicycle!
Then -why not have your daughter climb on top of your shoulders and unicycle together (they made me nervous, that's for sure!)?
Ohh...and then she can stand up-no worries!
Next-Sir Ector's court has fun with trained dogs (hard to snap pictures before the trick was done).
This was the "girl" in Sir Ector's court who just loves to read -notice she's on a chair "reading" her big page from King Arthur upside down. Some of the ways they connected to King Arthur were a strretchhh but hey-good entertainment regardless of the frame story.
Pretty amazing!
Next-these tweens and teens all trained at the Magic House Circus Performance classes and man were they great!
Finally, young King Arthur pulled the sword out of the stone then 'transformed' from a 16 year old to a 30+ year old through a doorway (I think the teenager was relieved not to have to do these stunts!).
This is King Arthur walking a tightrope to get his crown (hmmm, definitely a political message in that one)!
It was quite hard to take pictures looking up with Rosalind squirming a bit, but essentially this family of performers went back and forth on the tightrope (notice big balancing sticks) and, for this stunt, they are carrying on person who is on a mini-tightrope that is on the shoulders of the two men at the front and back-HOLY COW!
Here the girl lay down in the middle and the guy walked over her.
For the final act, they walked the tightrope 3 high-guy in the middle then a girl on his shoulders!
By the end, Hux was ready to go - I think he was just as nervous as Mommy with all the stunts! So we met Katie and Oliver for lunch & ice cream at our favorite St. Louis eatery-The Fountain on Locust. I love all the 20's art deco paints so tried to capture them all on our (sniff, sniff) last trip here (at least until we come back to visit!).
The boys clown around!
Oliver got "the world's smallest sundae" -so cute and festive!
Hux and I split the brownie in a cup-YUM! Hux likes to pretend his drinking coffee like his daddy as he eats the chocolate...
Rosalind was a happy girl while we ate! She was clearly excited to get some of the chocolate brownie in Mommy's tummy!
