Probably the best flippin' circus festival to hit Dublin all summer

Despite the threats to life and limb (you don't mess with gravity), a comedic atmosphere permeated the Temple Bar Circus Festival in Dublin at the weekend, writes FRANK McNALLY

There’s a famous Californian juggling troupe called the Flying Karamazov Brothers, whose show-stopping trick is something called “the gamble”. It involves their audiences nominating three objects that the company’s best juggler – “the champ” – must attempt to rotate through the air 10 times. Certain objects are excluded on health-and-safety grounds: live animals, anything “bigger than a bread-box” etc; and “the champ” can also modify objects where necessary.

But there is always scope for the ingenuity of a sadistic audience, so that the juggler never knows exactly what will be thrown at him.

The Karamazovs were not among the line-up for the Temple Bar Circus Festival in Dublin at the weekend: more’s the pity. They don’t tour much outside the US these days. Even so, their comedic spirit permeated the festivities. And as with most events held outdoors during our version of summer, the gamble – Irish-style – was an ever-present feature.

The difference is that, here, the playful suggestions are all provided by the weather. Performers can consult the forecast all they like.

They can move their show-times around accordingly. But in a country where the meteorological conditions change every five minutes, they can never be certain what the elements will throw at them, saying: “See if you can juggle that.”

And having survived the gamble – just about – chief juggler Sean Gandini explained that, for jugglers, the wind was actually bigger problem than the rain. “See?” he demonstrated, flinging a few light plastic clubs in the air, where the currents messed around with their trajectories. For simple juggling, the wind is not a big challenge. But to the highly advanced patterns the Gandinis do, it adds yet another layer of complexity.

It’s a truism among jugglers that their art is easier done than said. Hence special kinds of notation – music-style – have evolved to describe long and complicated acts. There are even juggling composers at work now, writing ever more challenging pieces. But if the genre ever produces a masterpiece – say the “Handlers’ Messiah” – then, unlike the musical version, it will hardly be premiered in Dublin; or at least not in the open air.

For another of the weekend’s acts, Tumble Circus, rain rather than wind was the main worry. This is because much of their show involves the performers hanging on to each other by various body parts, upside-down, 15 feet in the air, without a net or safety wire, while also engaging in slapstick comedy.

It’s the sort of act that you’d think the insurance industry would have banned by now. But back on the ground, and right-side-up, Dubliner Ken Fanning was reassuring. “It’s not really dangerous,” he insisted. “We just make it look that way.” His Swedish performing partner, Tina Segner, was more specific, explaining that they always maintain two points of contact and have system of early-warning signals when anything goes wrong.

“We quite like our lives,” she explained. “We don’t want to lose them.” As for the weather, she said, they never start a show in rain. If the rain comes later, the rule is that of another Scandinavian, Magnus Magnussen: having started, they will attempt to finish, “unless it gets too dangerous”. Typically, in Tina’s experience, some of those who approached them after the show yesterday were people inquiring where they too could learn such tricks. This is not because Irish people have an unusually high tendency to want to run away with the circus, she says. It’s just that, almost alone of European countries, the Republic does not have a dedicated circus-training space.

Belfast has one, which is why Tumble Circus is based there by default.

But the troupe would quite like to move south. So if anyone has a suitable premises – the prerequisites are at least 7.5m roof space and heating – Kate and Tina would be thrilled to hear from you.

In the event, the Temple Bar festival did cater for trainee acrobats, albeit with an emphasis on those natural circus performers: children.

Parents who should have known better could and did enroll their kids for workshops with the likes of Ali Mswabi, who normally makes his living as a street performer in Dublin, Galway, and – his home these days – Cork.

Mswabi first started as an acrobat aged eight, and used to perform for tourists on the streets of Kismayo in his native Somalia. Yesterday in the calmer (and weather-proof) surrounds of the former church of St Michael and St John on Essex Quay, he guided a class of junior contortionists through the basic skills: somersaults, cartwheels, limbo-dancing and human pyramid-building.

The class participants couldn’t believe they were being allowed to do this stuff. But when they got over the surprise, they learned fast. The mothers and fathers who so hastily signed their offspring up for the workshops will probably have the opportunity to repent it at leisure, as the next generation of circus performers continue their training at home, using beds, sofas, clothes-lines, and anything else available.

You can never start too young in this business. One of the weekend’s big hits, for example, was The Pitts, an Australian husband-wife team whose show was an acrobatic homage to the sort of act you might see in the outback. Assisting them in the performance was the couple’s four-year-old child, whose starring role made even the youngest workshop participants seem a bit long in the tooth.

The festival also featured open-air film screenings, including Adventureland, on Saturday night. This too featured the gamble, Irish-style. The free show was booked out well in advance. But after the day-long deluge, only about half of the expected audience braved the elements.