A Collaboration with Cirque Du Soleil

 

When I heard that Cirque was coming to town, I wanted my kids to see them perform........

ALL my "kids"..... (meaning my students!)

Cirque is the perfect "real world application" of the arts integration that we do at Beaumont. Our students learn about dance, music, visual arts, theater, and physical education.  The artists at Cirque blend those skills with some amazing engineering, physics calculations, a little comedy and a lot of love.  Luckily for me, I had an email address for someone at Cirque so I told them all about our school.  I mentioned their upcoming tour stop in Knoxville and asked if they might consider partnering with us in some way. 

Their response came on my birthday (best gift EVER) and it was so generous! They loved the idea of my students making art inspired by their show and offered to let us mount an art display at their venue, but also invited our students to watch a rehearsal and to meet the performers!

The kids were in awe! They were excited to watch the show but when the time came to meet the performers, things got interesting. Instead of asking the performers about what it was like to work for Cirque (what the performers were expecting) the kids wanted to talk about their art! A performer would say, "I'm so-and-so and I am in the trapeze act. Do you have any questions for me?" Hands raised in the air and students would say... "I was inspired by your performance to create my art" and then they would proceed to do a gallery walk and teach the Cirque artists all about their visual art.  It was a truly magical learning experience that my artists will never forget!