As you may imagine, this is a huge and daunting task. There are many factors to keep in mind: quality, energy, variety, pace, balancing solo and group acts, and ensuring each act contributes to the specific vision of that season.
One of the main sources for acts is the circus festival. There are a number of festivals around the world that attract circus owners and directors who are eager to discover new and established talent.
This year, I had the privilege of attending The Monte Carlo International Circus Festival. This is one of the big ones, now in its 38th year.
. The first four nights of the festival are "competition" shows, with acts vying for a variety of awards, hoping to stand out from a very crowded field. Each of these evenings was four hours in length, packed to the gills with every imaginable type of circus act.
To help me navigate through it all, I thankfully had The Big Apple Circus Artistic Director Guillaume Dufresnoy as my guide. Guillaume has attended this festival for many years, and knows all the in's and out's. He and I would compare thoughts and notes during and after each of the shows, sifting through the acts to see if one bubbled up as a possibility.
One of our favorite acts from the festival has actually already appeared in The Big Apple Circus - "Desire of Flight," who presented a version of their act in Legendarium. They are amazing, and rightfully won a golden clown - the top award at the festival.
Along with appearing in circus festivals, artists regularly contact circuses around the world, sending videos of their acts and hoping to land a contract. I have looked at hundreds of videos over the past year, hoping to find those that make me say "wow" out loud. That "wow" factor is very difficult to describe - it's something that an act has or doesn't, based on their skill, technique, and artistry.
My ultimate goal is to find as many "wow" acts as possible. The search continues....
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