There were no elephants, tigers or horses with riders making a grand entrance to the circus ring.
There wasn’t even a big tent. Or a ring.
But the acts that accompanied Arkansas Circus Arts to the Magnolia Blossom Festival remained spectacular: high-flying wonders, the talent of a juggler who tossed several pins into the air and caught them with ease, and even a children’s hula-hoop contest.
About a dozen local children volunteered to take the stage at Square Park to demonstrate their hula hooping skills. The participants were all girls except one, Ian West, 10, who will attend fifth grade at Columbia Christian School this year.
Ian is the older brother of Ree West, 8, who has been hula hooping for a year. Ree, who will be a fourth-grader at Columbia Christian School in the fall, won the contest and received a pair of Costa sunglasses from the event’s sponsor, Steve’s Outdoor Sports, said Ian and Ree’s mother, Stephanie West.
“She loves (hula hoops),” Stephanie West said in a Facebook response message. We had a great time at this year’s Blossom Festival! It was very generous that (Steve’s Outdoor Sports) donated to the event. The circus act at the event was great and my kids loved it.”
Rebeka Poland, the circus’ ringmaster, spent the first part of the day wearing a bright pink, silver and orange costume, accented with a pink headdress topped with a pink rose and black feathers. Her hat was on the back of her head and she couldn’t hide her pink and blue eyelashes, shaped like butterflies, fluttering with every blink.
Poland has been working with the company since 2012, but decided to become a business partner in 2016. He said people who want to travel with the team and take it on as a job must, above all, be accustomed to vigorous, repetitive training if they want to acquire the talent. what it takes to be in the Arkansas Circus Arts talent pool. The company travels constantly to shows, but is based in North Little Rock.
“Being in the circus life is entertaining and it’s interactive in the same way you can interact with people at events. By doing a show, you can show very specific talents and you know the arts of expression, the expression of dance; These skills took a long time to acquire,” Poland said.
“It takes consistency to maintain these skills.”
Another type of entertainment that Arkansas Circus Arts brought to the Magnolia Blossom Festival was stilts. Poland aptly described them as brightly decorated flower girls wearing green grass island skirts with cascading flowers that fell several meters. Poland said crowds love stilt walkers because they offer a great opportunity to start a conversation and are always an eye-catching photo opportunity.
“Being a stilt walker gives you the opportunity to create costumes and experiences for people at events that are memorable, and they can come take pictures with us and that just adds another element.”
Among the Arkansas Circus Arts performers was Mary Milton of Little Rock, known on stage as Mary Moon. Poland said that in addition to the hoop performance she did at Magnolia, Milton is also a strap-on artist, so she has a lot of strength throughout her body to be able to stay alive, even when she uses only one arm.
“The belts are the toughest aerial disciplines. It’s almost like aerial silks, but it doesn’t ride up. They put it on their wrist and they do muscles or they wrap it around their arms and they do stance movements, spinning very quickly and there’s a lot of one-arm movements,” Poland said. “(Mary) can hang with one arm and do dynamic spins and can lift her legs over her head. “She will arch her back over his arm.”
In 2023, during the Viva Fest in Las Vegas, a circus competition, Milton took second place in straps and second place in hoop, Poland said.
Ashlyn Hollis, 16, of Conway, performed in Magnolia with the aerial silks. Before her act, Hollis said she trained in many styles of dance before giving them up to concentrate solely on circus work.
Hollis worked her way through a tangle of red silks, with the grace of a dancer, working her way into what might look like a tight red butterfly cocoon before releasing her arms in the air and then releasing the butterfly into the air. Her arms looked like butterfly wings as she began to relax into a position and return to the ground.
Poland, originally from Tallahassee, Florida, said she remembers going to Florida State University and watching the Florida State Flying High Circus set up and train for their shows. The circus has an eight-decade history with the university.
“If I had known that one day I was going to grow up and be in a circus, then I would have joined the Florida State Flying High Circus,” he said, laughing. “At that time, they had all kinds of traditional circus material.”
Instead, while at Florida State University, Poland earned an engineering degree and worked in an oil field five years after graduating. Today, that engineering degree comes in handy constantly because he can apply that knowledge to rigging.
“It’s very complementary and I can understand how much load you can put on the roof of a roof,” Poland said. “I also have 50 hours of rigging master class. I started to dive deeply into the world of the circus and I am also the rigger.”
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