Cycropia
The late-August fair at Orton Park in Madison is in some ways a typical small-town fair: booths strung along the park’s asphalt paths are selling barbecue, sweet corn roasted in the husk, and clothes. Big trees shelter a band, and a few couples dance in the parking lot. But some details suggest a midwestern college town: clothes made from politically correct Guatemalan cloth, and an unusually large number of men in ponytails and beards as well as women with the quiet, focused look of academics. Three trapezes hang from the branches of a huge tree next to the band, and several people in blue jeans and T-shirts are stringing electrical cords to lights around the tree and to a stereo on a folding table. A few people, mostly kids, are already sitting at the edge of a half circle marked around the tree with rope. When the band stops playing and dusk settles in, a crowd of a few hundred gather to sit on the grass or on blankets, and Cycropia’s show begins.
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Cycropia is a modern-dance troupe founded in 1989 that works mainly on trapezes, which are hung low–about four feet off the ground–and anchored at a single point above. The performers’ simplest, most characteristic movement is holding onto the trapeze with one hand and running in a circle: centrifugal force quickly takes over, and the person starts to half walk, half fly in ten-foot strides. The Cycropians look a lot like astronauts slowly hopping at moon gravity, and in fact the word that keeps coming up, even from the performers themselves, is “flying.”
The initial work with the trapezes, focusing on technique, is a kind of ballet barre for the flying. The students might work on how to do the astronaut bounce three different ways, or on having three dancers on different trapezes do a movement in unison. Then the work becomes more expressive, as Summerbell urges the students, “Treat the trapeze like a partner, not just an inanimate object. Run up to it like you’re running up to your friend, and take it out to the edge of the circle like you’re taking its hand and running down the block.” Finally the students and teachers just play around. Two people may get on a trapeze together, others hang upside down by their knees. Miller lies languidly along the trapeze bar and lets it gently swing and twist. Ken Loud swings up to the ceiling. Summerbell swings high, then hangs upside down so that when the trapeze is at its lowest point his head almost grazes the floor.
Cycropia performs May 31-June 2 and June 6-8 at Turner Hall, 21 S. Butler in Madison; $5-$10. Call 608-278-8793 for information.
