This Halloween was a busy one! After a marathon of aerial acts for Bierfest, October was the month for stamina. 31st October saw me performing two aerial shows of twenty minutes in Kingston, followed by a 2.5 hour stilt set in Hoxton. Plus carrying my equipment & costumes across London! It was a lot of fun though and I'd been training my stamina with some hikes in North Wales and long aerial training sessions at the National Centre for Circus Arts.
Halloween at the Yard @ Riverside Walk Kingston
Circus Suburbia teamed up with Creative Brain Events to provide a magical family Halloween event with a spider theme, for the Riverside Walk restaurants in Kingston.
The space was transformed from service yard to pop-up performance space with eerie lighting, horror film projections, apply bobbing, pumpkin carving, face painting and mask making. Spider webs decorated the walls and a giant spider was an interactive sound installation which reacted to its eight legs being touched.
Circus Suburbia provided two ghoulish stilt walkers to entertain and scare visitors.
The highlight of the event was the doubles trapeze shows performed by my sister, Maddy Hardwick, and myself. Samuel Lebon counter weighted us, lifting us between the ground and the 10 m high rig. We started with a choreographed duo act as spiders, in amazing costumes by DesignGuise.
Our other sister, Rosie Hardwick, put a clip of our spiders shapes on Instagram - Aerial Spider Clip
We then entertained the children by trick or treating them from the air! The audience had to dodge a water pistol fire by Maddy whilst trying to catch sweets handed out by myself. We then filled balloons with flour, sweets, toys and confetti, and held them over the heads of brave volunteers. Their choice of balloon to be burst determined what they were showered with and we found ourselves surrounded by hugely excited kids!
It was a lovely event in my home community, and we were happy to have Nik Litton from Aircraft Circus to install our aerial equipment for this event.
"The girls were amazing! So strong and hugely entertaining. My kids were desperate for a picture with them." - audience member
"You entertained them in so many different ways!" - Faye Bennett-Hart
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The Locke and Holde School for Gifted Children @ Hoxton Docks
Later that evening, Petersham Road transformed another space into a Halloween immersive event. We returned to the inspiring venue, Hoxton Docks, where Anna Boglione and Theo Kingshott had created a disturbing and dark boarding school in which a team of actors and circus performers gave guests an exciting and stimulating Halloween experience.
Fire performers greeted guests along with myself on stilts, dressed in a long blood-stained dress. The school's headmaster started the guests off on their first day at school as they met the headmistress who made them get into bed, the dinner lady serving fruit punch, a half naked girl in a room full of teddy bears and a mad science teacher.
Starfiz provided regular frights with an aerial installation which came to life when least expected.
Pictures from Emma_Saunders on Instagram
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