Encore for Winnie Colleano! ...

Winnie Colleano, sister of Con (perhaps the reason why she never received the press and fame she deserves) will get an encore from me.

Goaded on by the comment left on my earlier post by "Anonymous," whom I can only guess may be a trapeze performer him/herself, I re-watched the video. Aside from affirming Colleano's heal catches as "fantastic," Anonymous calls the routine "basic trap tricks" the style "pretty much Circus Smirkus." Am I living on the wrong planet?

The essence of great art is simplicity, such that we do not see the actor or the circus artist's technique, but with them we take the journey. In the actor we see only the character. In the trapeze artist, only the gracefully soaring bird, No, not easy, but the greats flirt with this paradigm, and some master it.

Rarely if ever have I witnessed a single trap act so fluidly presented, such that the technical skills. "tricks," if you will, do not project as such, but are transformed by the artist's mastery into a greater impression of continuous motion.

Anonymous: Not only do you, in my opinion, insult Winnie Colleano, you also insult a charming student show, Circus Smirks. Might you be of the San Francisco school?

Perhaps you are of the newer class who fairly shun "tricks" as old circus, favoring excessively detailed choreography, often on a single trap or fabric that does not swing very far in either direction. There is now even a new term for this genre, "static trapeze." I wish those who pursue it more success than I have yet observed; perhaps they will invent something as exhilarating as what a few gifted duos (usually male-female, sometimes same sex) are doing with the "sensual fabrics" over more actively inspired rings, combining romantic imagery with terrific maneuvers aloft. All of which, as I see it, takes them out of the "bed sheets" category. Static they are not. Static, the circus was never.

The evidence on YouTube is irrefutable. There is none of the obvious muscle, of the strained interlocking movements too often the mark of a compartmentalized routine, of the stops and the starts ... Here is a gifted artist continually and gracefully in motion, flowing with a kind of a serene joyful abandon, and finishing her flight with a perfectly climactic jump from bar to vertical pole, down which she slides.

I was about to support my view by posting here similar accolades of others, from Fred Bradna to some comments on the You Tube posting, but it matters not. What matters to me is what I see and feel while watching this magnificent artist at work, who makes it feel not like work at all.

That's the essence, around my ring, of greatness.