CIRCUS8: An Ultraviolet Masquerade - Reeecap!!

WOMP WOMP WOMP - Are you officially CIRCUS8ED?

Huuuuuuuuuuuuge hugs to everyone who came out to support on Saturday night. The Majestic Theater went offfff!

You all looked beautiful by the way, your costumes and painted faces were truly galactical! I really believe we took the circus community to a new level on Saturday night. Together, you guys glowed as one ethereal blanket of neon goodness - so surreal to see live, and especially cool to view from the stage. The theme of blacklight provided each person with a giant opportunity to actively participate in the CIRCUS8 experience., instead of just kick back and observing the thing as usual. So moving to see how many people were down for this cause. Ya'll provided a very special energy to us as performers and producers, so thank you once more.

Big ups to ANA SIA for travelling to Detroit to come rage the circus with us. Cirque du Womp looks forward to bringing yo more of the freshest in muzak very soon (Summer Festival is inthe works, blagghhh!) We feel honored to have had Ana headline CIRCUS8 for us, as she has inspired many of us on crew, and hopefully she inspired you in some way on Saturday night:

Here's a few photos of all the action, in case you missed any shennanigans:

Our NextAid donation efforts were a success as well! We are proud to be donating a large portion of our proceeds to the NextAid Project, an initiative which uses the dance music scene as a platform to raise funds for projects in Africa. For more information, go to www.nextaid.org.

Thanks to our media crew: Paul Johnson, Veronica Ludington, Rachel Dwyer, Jordan Berger, Joshua Hanford & DetroitExposure crew, and Justin Grose and Patty Rooney on the video cameras. Final cut video of CIRCUS8 will be released this week, so keep an eye out for a seriously insane video!

Always a pleasure to properly womp with you, Cirque du Womp has got a whole lot of exciting shit in store for 2011. Stay tuned, and follow us on our Facebook: www.facebook.com/CirqueDuWomp.

Much Love n Light,

angela, grant, & scotty

Dubstep Circus #6: Recap!

Waaaaaaaaaaaah-hooooooooooooooooooo!!

HOLY HOPPIN' HOOPERS!

Dubstep Circus #6 was set to be our first outdoor festival, and due to circumstances beyond our own control, we had to find a new venue (and new everyyyythingggg) last minute.

So yes, we scrambled. But we did it! And it was fun!

I love this motto: "Everybody is trying their best." I like to repeat it every so often so that I can be brought back to our roots of collaboration and a genuine love for building community. The people who come together to make these events happen are wonderful and loyal and crazy-talented! They sacrifice lots of SLEEP FOR ALL OF YOU!

They also sacrifice sweat and passion and creative hands and ungodly amounts of time, so thank you thank you thank you, to everyone who makes this thing what it is.

Speaking of gratitude, we are blessed to have photographers on our team. Joe Le and John Wiley captured some truly awesome moments from the night:

Loooook at these photos, hell yes! I feel really proud, I know Grant and Scott do too, and probably you if you're reading this, for what we've created. It is not perfect, it is not without faults, but everybody is trying their best, working with what we've got, and still the support is overwhelming - so yay for all of us weirdos!

Our community outreach excites me too. Together we raised over 1,000 children's books for Sampson-Webber Academy in Detroit. We've already handed many of them out, mostly to 2nd and 3rd grade students, and gosh they just absolutely freakkkk over these books. It's awesome to hear about how positive and anxious they feel about getting their hands on a good book. Thank you to all who came out and donated.

We were also able to donate a nice amount of money to Motor Moms and Dads, a cool local project that is committed to the "development of basic motor skills which are important for the achievement of early learning success in kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade." In other words, they promote acitivity in early elementary age children, because studies have shown that an active childhood is positively correlated with success in the classroom. Motor Moms also truly needs the money to vamp up their resources and improve the conditions for the project. For example, their balance beam exercise right now is a ten foot long 2 x 4 on the ground. Our donation of a portion of our financial proceeds is going to help them greatly - another yay!

Dubstep Circus #6: A Festival for the Freaks turned out to be a jolly ole time. Cirque du Womp looks forward to taking the upcoming production to a whole new level. We are pushing ourselves HARD on this one, from the community outreach to the visual stimulization to the performance to the ambiance to the music. We are refocusing our efforts and working to get back to our original vision of spreading love and inspiring positivity within the community.

Lots of tune-ups and improvements to be made, and we can't wait to show you what we got in store on this next show.

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ULTRAVIOLET UNTZ: A Higher Octave of Art, Music, & Movement

November 6, 2010

Majestic Theatre, Detroit

9pm - 4am

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See ya at the Untz!

-angela

Dubstep Circus #6 Outreach Project : Back to School Book Drive

The Dubstep Circus is coming back to Detroit! Swing by Bert's Warehouse on September 18, 2010 for a frenzied freakshow. Here are some photos from our last event, the Dubstep Circus #5 at Majestic Theatre, Detroit:

We are very excited to host our Back To School Book Drive at the upcoming Dubstep Circus #6.

The last time we held a book drive, you all helped to raise over 2,000 gently used and/or new children's books for Sampson-Webber Academy in Detroit. Our generous donation and activist work was greatly appreciated by the students and the organizers of the Sampson book warehouse.

And so we ask you to bring the books again! We figure with school starting back up, now is the best time for this literacy outreach.

The outreach will allow for Detroit schoolchildren to access a variety of books which they would otherwise probably not have access to at home. The book drive also provides you with a chance to enter the circus for a few less dollars. Entry fee is $17 at the door or $14 with a minimum of 3 children's books, reding level k-8, either gently used or new condition. The condition of the books is more important than you may think - remember the underlying message we may send the children...

TAKE CARE OF YOUR LITERACY!

Please read some select quotations from Sally, the woman who first taught me about Motor Moms, and who also heads up the book warehouse at Sampson-Webber Academy:

"We plan on continuing to give books out to all grades to build home libraries and encourage literacy. We also plan on using some to begin a "leveled" library for K-4. This will give the kids an opportunity to learn how to use a library as their school library is not functioning at this time. We are currently trying to set up a library/motor mom room to accomodate this."

"We passed out books last week already to first and second grade. I took a couple women with me who want to go down weekly. They loved it (both my friends and the kids!). I was amazed how many kids said they went to the library over the summer. Not sure how many actually did but even for them to feel the desire to respond that they did is a positive in my eyes. Thank you so much for your help in this. I really do believe it will have an impace on literacy in the lives of these kids. Slowly, but surely..."

In addition to our book drive, we will be donating a portion of our proceeds to The Motor Moms and Dads Project. This project seeks to stimulate activity and encourage motor skills in young schoolchildren. Right now, their resources are scarce and/or bare minimum. We can help them out, and so we will!

Click here for more detailed information on the Motor Moms and Dads Program.

Our work and our activism matters, and together we really can make a difference in the life of a child in our city. So please don't forget to bring your children's books this Saturday to Dubstep Circus #6 at Bert's Warehouse!

See ya there!

Signing Off...

~ angela

Dubstep Circus #4 : Mini Reeeecap!

Dubstep Circus #4 was absolutely nutty.

New venue (twas HUUUGE!), more lights, bigger boomin' sound too, of course.

The freaks 'n weirdos WOMPED out from alllll over: Grand Rapids, East Lansing, Chicago, Eastern Ohio, and locally. Thank you for your support on this event, we have gotten 100% positive feedback so far- what a relief, what a total blessing.

Dubstep Circus #4 was an utter fit of madness, all night long. I was starting to think that we mighta scared the house lighting guy, but then I turned around to find him entering stage left to participate in the fire hoopers' burlesque performance. Oh yeah ladies! He's from Brazil, he runs parties on the beach all week out there, and he was blown away by our production - gah!

We learned a lot with this event, so that we can, again, make even more improvements on the next one (my favorite part). Dubstep Circus #4 had a jam-packed schedule filled with a variety of stellar solo acts: fire hooping, slam poet, contortion, sexy lyra duo, gypsy fire eating routine, electric violin, and more! Can't begin to explain how proud I am of our troupe, our organizers, and our community. Everybody looks out for one another, everybody is honest with each other, and everybody is makin' new friends, which is always a plus, right?

Check this link (DO IT NOW I SAY!), I can't even describe how insanely beautiful this video work is. Big love and thanks to Mister Chris Hutchinson, master of videography, you own us!

DUB LOVIN,

AngelaOohLahLah

Dubstep Circus #3

In case you haven't heard, we've been running a DUBSTEP CIRCUS in Detroit for some time now. And you need to get your wompin' ass out to it next time.

Here's a photo of the lobby. These kids are waiting to enter the event. Notice the lack of organization, the absense of an adult line. This photo does not show the 15 foot wide, two flights of stairs, the downstairs hallway, or the other side of the lobby. This photo does not show the packed ballroom either, where the party was going offff!

Here's some hotness for you to enjoy staring at for a moment:

Sexy Mamas all over, Yowwwza!

I do have to admit, we bring some of the most beautiful people out of their homes every month.

It's great!

*Big Spankin' Sorry* for those who did not get in to the coolest, most unique event of this year yet! We hope to see you out next time, where *we promise* that everything will be all good in our circus hood! (We have a venue meeting tomorrow- Fingers crossed for us please!)

Our community outreach was absolutely BANGING.

Yeah, books were a total hit, yeah, books you so legit.

I'm pretty sure I've got at least 2000 children's books for Sampson-Webber Academy!

Here are the two book winners, sorry you don't get a prize.

Harry Potter humungous pop-up book.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland- totally epic!

Don't be mad if I didn't pick your book.

During the helter skelter lame-ass line chaos, I was dealing with the door and trying to make sure all the pretty boys and girls didn't get trampled over on their way in. I didn't get a chance (here comes the pity party) to stop and appreciate all the high quality books that we were getting in. But after the event, when I was counting through the first batch of 500, I realized how excited these kids are going to be when they get to pick from this high quality selection, forreal. Be proud of yourselves!

I am really very *HAPPY* to see what we are doing- together!

We have loads of potential to do something phenomenal with each other,

and we are off to a helluva start. You guys did a hell of a job, thank you so, so, so much.

And for those who helped pile up the shipwrecked mass of books as everyone was stampeding out of the ballroom:

GOOD LOOKING OUT.

YOU PROTECTED OUR COMMUNITY.

THANK YOU. WE LOVE YA.

The books that got trampled on amount to about another 75 and will be donated to a local Good Will shop. We wanna make sure the kids at Sampson-Webber get nice, clean books so that we can teach them how important it is to own and take care of your literacy.

Books are something to treat with respect!

On another note, our party was just getting warmed up...

Big hugs and thanks to Joe Le of Joe Le Foto & of Detroit Grime Blog and John Wiley of Photastic Images for taking all the photographs that night! (These boys better get in a picture together next time, they're really cute.)

You guys showed up in big numbers to shake your bootys to the dirty beats.

So yeee-haw we'll see you next time for a totally EPIC show in a way larger venue, no doubt!

We Love You (really), and thanks for allowing us to do what we're doing.

Womps To Ya,

AngelaOohLahLah

of Detroit Dubstep