Cirque Éloize
Saloon, A Musical Acrobatic Adventure

(can be printed)

Pre-performance Discussion of Saloon, A Musical Acrobatic Adventure

Taken from Cirque Éloize’s website.

About Cirque Éloize

Cirque Éloize has been creating spectacular performances since 1993. Saloon, A Musical Acrobatic Adventure is their eleventh original creation. The company is contributing to a growing appreciation of dance. One contribution is that their performers come from varied backgrounds. Some are professional circus artists with a multidisciplinary profile with skills in drama, dancing, singing, or music. Some performers are athletes who excel in trampoline, gymnastics and acrobatic sports. Some are professional dancers with a specialty in urban dances such as hip-hop, breakdance, popping, locking, or waacking and who have stage experience. A background in acrobatics is considered an asset. The performance utilizes Korean plank, aerial straps, the Cyr wheel, hand-to- hand, and more movements as well as live music. All builds on the elements of form, rhythm, and dynamics around complex sequences of movement and sound.

About the Performance

Saloon, A Musical Acrobatic Adventure is about America expanding. The railroad is snaking westward. A town comes to life. The saloon doors swing open revealing a cast of characters, each with a tale to tell. In Saloon, dynamic folk music and strains of fiddle set the tone for an acrobatic comedy that sweeps up the audience in a flurry of energy. Jeannot Painchaud, president and artistic director of Cirque Éloize and creative director of Saloon, says about this choice of setting, “I see the saloon as a place of improbably encounters, a fabulous playground for artistic exploration. It’s also a place of opportunity, one that makes us want to try something different.”

Discussion Tools

Taken from “Visible Thinking,” Project Zero Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Think/Puzzle/Explore: A Thinking Routine that Sets the Stage for Deeper Inquiry

This routine activates prior knowledge, generates ideas and curiosity and sets the stage for deeper inquiry. It helps students take stock of what they already know and then pushes students to identify puzzling questions or areas of interest to pursue. Teachers can get a good sense of where students are on a conceptual level. By returning to the thinking routine after seeing the performance, they can identify development and progress. The third question is useful in helping students lay the groundwork for independent inquiry.

The class can engage in the routine together to create a group list of ideas. Between each phase of the routine, that is with each question, adequate time needs to be given for individuals to think and identify their ideas. You may even want to have students write down their individual ideas before sharing them as a class. In some cases, you may want to have students carry out the routine individually on paper or in their heads before the group discussion.

Keep a visible record of the student ideas. If you are working in a group, ask students to share some of their thoughts and collect a broad list of ideas about the topic on chart paper. Or students can write their individual responses on post-it notes and later add them to a class list of ideas.

Note that it is common for students to have misconceptions at this point—include them on the list so all ideas are available for consideration after further study. Students may at first list seemingly simplistic ideas and questions. Include these on the whole class list but push students to think about things that are truly puzzling or interesting to them.

1. What do you think you know about this topic?

2. What questions or puzzles do you have?

3. What does the topic make you want to explore?

Post-performance Discussion of Saloon, A Musical Acrobatic Adventure

These thinking routines to aide classroom discussion are from “Artful Thinking,” Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Helpful terms to use when doing the routines are 1) observe which means to describe how something appears, 2) elaborate which means to expand on something in detail, and 3) interpret which means to explain what something means.

I SEE/I THINK/I WONDER Thinking Routine

This routine is for talking about why aspects of Saloon, A Musical Acrobatic Adventure look the way they do. Ask students to make an observation about an aspect of the performance and follow up with what they think might be going on or what they think this observation might mean. Encourage students to back up their interpretation with reasons. Ask the students to think more deeply about what makes them wonder.

What did you see?

What did you think about that?

What did it make you wonder?

Student responses to the routine can be written down and recorded so that a class chart of observations, interpretations and wonderings are listed for all to see and return to during the course of study.

ELABORATION GAME Thinking Routine

This is a thinking routine to encourage your students to develop careful observations and descriptions.

As a group, observe and describe several different sections of the performance.

One person identifies a specific section of the performance and describes what he or she sees. Another person elaborates on the first person’s observations by adding more detail about the section. A third person elaborates further by adding yet more detail, and a fourth person adds yet more. Observers: Only describe what you see. Hold off giving your ideas about the performance until the last step of the routine.

After four people have described a section in detail, someone else identifies a new section of the performance and the process starts over. Four more people take turns making increasingly detailed observations. Then the process starts over again, and so on, until everyone in the group has had a turn or all sections of the performance has been described.

After the performance has been fully described, as a group, discuss some of your ideas about it. For example, what do you think is going on? (And what did you observe that makes you say that?).

More Resources 

Books About or Set in the Old West

Art of the American frontier: from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West by Peter Hassrick was published in 2013 by the High Museum of Art.

After Lewis & Clark: The Forces of Change, 1806-1871 by Gary Allen Hood was published in 2006 by the Gilcrease Museum.

Lure of the West: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum by Amy Paston was published in 2000 by Guptill Publications.

Daily Life in a Covered Wagon by Paul Erickson was published in 1994 by Puffin Books.

Children of the Wild West by Russell Freedman was published in 1990 by HMH Books for Young Readers.

Women of the Frontier: 16 Tales of Trailblazing Homesteaders, Entrepreneurs, and Rabble-Rousers (Women of Action) by Marie Brandon Miller was published in 2013 by Chicago Review Press.

Which Way to the Wild West? Everything Your School Books Didn't Tell You About Westward Expansion by Steve Sheinkin was published in 2009 by Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings.

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake was published in 2012 by Knopf.

Iron Rails, Iron Men, and the Race to Link the Nation: The Story of the Transcontinental Railroad by Martin Sandler was published in 2015 by Candlewick Press.

Dance Vocabulary to aide in Discussion 

Taken from the Des Moines Performing Arts Momix: Botanica Curriculum Guide.

Body is an element of dance that refers to the awareness of specific body parts and how they can be moved in isolation and combination.

Choreography is the arrangement of movement in space and time. It is a series of moves usually set to music.

Collaboration is the sharing of ideas and working together.

Creativity is the ability to go beyond traditional ideas, rules, and patterns in order to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, and interpretations.

Eclectic describes a collection of very different things.

Ensemble is a group of dancers performing together.

Energy refers to the force applied to dance to accentuate the weight, attack, strength, and flow of a dancer’s movement. Adjectives such as explosive, smooth, free, restrained, wild, etc., describe some different types of energy that dancers can exhibit.

Imagery is memorable sights, such as the lights and bright costumes.

Rehearsal is the practice in preparation of a public performance.

Space is the area in which a dancer moves, encompassing level, direction, floor pattern, shape, and design.

Teamwork is to work together in order to create or solve a problem.

Technique is a set of skills which dancers develop to perform a certain dance form. Cirque Éloize uses a variety of modern dance and acrobatic techniques.

Tempo is the time, speed, or rhythm of the beats of a piece of music or the pace of any movement activity.

Surreal means larger than life or dreamlike.

Unison is the same movement or series of movements performed at the same time by more than one dancer.