Life’s a circus in the Bradenton area

When people talk about the state of the performing arts in the Bradenton area in recent years, there’s a lot of enthusiasm about the depth, breadth and growth in theater, dance and classical music.

In theater, the astonishing success of Sarasota’s Urbanite Theatre and the gradual but growing popularity of the Bradenton Kiwanis Theater at the Manatee Performing Arts Center has shown that local audiences are embracing intimate theater in a way that surprised most observers.

In dance, the Sarasota Ballet and Sarasota Contemporary Dance continue to perform at exemplary levels, with innovative programming, and both attract major national and international figures in their respective genres, and the Sarasota Ballet has achieved more national attention than it ever has before.

The Sarasota Orchestra has never sounded better, and MPAC has provided a venue for classical music ensembles to perform in downtown Bradenton. And for the first time, Bradenton has an orchestra it can call its own, the Bradenton Symphony Orchestra based at State College of Florida.

One art form that’s often left out of the discussion is circus. If there’s ever been a better time for circus in this area than in 2018, you’d have to go back a long time to find it.

We’re circus connoisseurs around this area, and we appreciate the artistry and athleticism and skill of circus artists in a way that most people around the country don’t. We all got a little shocked and saddened, and maybe even angry, about the shuttering of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, but from an audience perspective that was just a week or so of circus every year, and it was up in Tampa.

Starting Feb. 14, Cirque du Soleil will be in Tampa for more than three weeks, under a big top. It’s a few miles farther away than Amalie Arena, where the Ringling circus has appeared in recent years, but it will be faster to get to because it’s right off the interstate, in a part of town with little traffic. (Take I-275 to the Bird Street exit, about four miles north of downtown Tampa, turn right and you’re there.) It’s a new show called “Volta” that includes extreme sports — motorcycle stunts and the like — that are new to Cirque du Soleil but had been a big part of the Ringling Circus in recent years.

Closer to home, Cirque Italia’s Water Circus is in Palmetto through Monday. Cirque Italia is based in Sarasota but tours nationally, and features traditional European-style circus performed in, around and over a huge pool. Circus Sarasota will perform under a big top at University Town Center later this month, and the young performers of Sailor Circus will perform later in the year.

In January, the Manatee County Fair featured the Anasastini Circus, one of the oldest circuses in the world. And the Ringling premiered a piece called “Circus: Traveling City” written and performed by the acclaimed contemporary string quartet Ethel. The members of Ethel spent two years creating the work, which celebrated the circus arts with images and materials from the Ringling’s Circus Museum. It wasn’t a circus performance per se, but it gave audiences a chance to look at circus artistry through a new lens.

And just a few weeks earlier, Cirque Dreams had been at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall with its holiday show.

There’s no doubt other circus stuff is going on. It’s hard to keep up. That’s kind of the point. For the circus aficionado, there’s no better place than here and there’s no better time than now.

This story was originally published February 2, 2018 at 5:10 PM with the headline "Life’s a circus in the Bradenton area."