Acro-Contortion - Trio Shulekin at the 24th Cirque de Demain Festival [2003] [AI Upscaled]

Описание: "Trio Shulekin" was a Russian acrobatics group-act active roughly from 2002-2003 on the international circus scene. By today's Western standards, their act would undoubtedly be considered contortion, however a trend to emphasize extreme flexibility in Russian circus saw many group acts simply called "Acrobatics" with Trio Shulekin being no exception. The members of the three-girl performance were Margarita Baranova, Marina Chernysheva and Loulia Kossolapova, who were featured on The Blink Age in an earlier release of their Solstrom (Cirque Du Soleil) performance as part of the "Party in the Castle" segment on "Wind from the Past".

Both the Cirque du Soleil special and this clip were filmed in 2003, with the above performance taking place in France at the 24th Cirque de Demain festival. The current belief among those studying Trio Shulekin's career is that this performance (which won a bronze medallion award) was what put the three girls on Cirque du Soleil's casting radar. This recording which has been upscaled and cleaned up by The Blink Age's restoration team, features the original music to the act, as well as the prelude not featured in Cirque Du Soleil's cut, where the girls are clandestinely rolled on stage and one (unconfirmed identity) wears a cloak to hide her jester costume.

As far as choreography goes, the act features the unmodified trademark group stunts that Trio Shulekin is associated with, reminiscent of the once-again popular acro-sport style making its way back into contemporary circus shows. All members of the trio are skilled backbenders, but the choreography places far heavier emphasis on the use of contortion as a means to achieving impressive group balances and flourishes rather than for the flexibility itself. The characters of the jesters are not the deepest as far as The Blink Age's experience with skilled character contortionists goes, but reflect the Eastern European youth circus tradition of assigning happy and inconsequential archetypes to child performers, and the unique foot coverings inspired by classical depictions of jester shoes add a great level of memorability to the overall composition.

(As usual, The Blink Age owns NONE of the material presented, and presents it only for historical and educational purposes.)


Special credit goes to Mixatom for curating the source recording of this performance.