STONY BROOK Staller Center for the Arts Circo Aereo presents "Espresso," half cabaret, half circus, an innovative "theater without words" from Finland.
The story is about the narrator's torrid sexual affair with a half-Armenian, half-Guatemalan circus performer named Puray.
But when the antics die down, and this two-and-a-half-hour circus has packed it in for the night, what stays with you?
Barbette began performing as an aerialist at around the age of 14 as one-half of a circus act called The Alfaretta Sisters.
Sirens in bikinis, gamines in tank tops, perch-pole acrobats, Roman riders, slender ethereal pinups, and simple musclemen.… Whether they had spent the early forties in Naples, Marseilles, or Frankfurt, it had been a hungry, fearful half decade for circus people, with their animals maybe starving, their wives and children huddled in cellars, the husbands in uniform, if not in combat.
But let's get the statistics out of the way to make this breathlessly clear: in a mere day and a half, we saw a circus, a dance recital (with our daughter in it), an orchestra recital, and four -- yes, four -- full-length musicals (one with our daughter singing and tap-dancing away).
After high school, Barbette began his circus career as one-half of the aerialist team The Alfaretta Sisters.
According to "Circus!" more than half of those who've attempted the feat have gone out with a bang — permanently.
Of parents who had never taken their children to see the circus, more than half who were surveyed last year said they would go if their children asked them to.
"Flags are flying half mast at the Powerclown circus tent.
