In the circus, storytelling often takes a back seat to spectacle and skill. The forward momentum of narrative tends to be at cross purposes with the focus and technique required of the bespangled aerialists of the traditional big top or the sinuous acrobats of Cirque du Soleil. And as contemporary circus artists continue to explore new ways to tell stories, they often find that less is more. Such is the case with Circus Abyssinia, whose touring show, “Ethiopian Dreams,” is now running at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
Inspired by the true-life circus journey of co-creators and brothers Mehari “Bibi” Tesfamariam and Binyam “Bichu” Shimellis, “Ethiopian Dreams” is a joyous 80 minutes of circus only lightly tethered to a perceptible story. It’s easy to see the bare thrust stage of CST’s Courtyard Theater as one of the Addis Ababa streets where, 20 years ago, Bibi and Bichu — as they’re known — honed their skills, making their own juggling balls out of socks full of seeds before moving to the UK to launch their now-global careers. As the show progresses, no identifiable characters or context emerge, and the production here is minimalist, with simple costumes and props and apparatus built to travel. But the lo-fi production belies the abundance of talent tumbling across the stage.
In 2010, Bibi and Bichu founded Ethiopia’s first circus school; Circus Abyssinia, the country’s first and only professional circus company, came seven years later with this, their signature show. Set to an upbeat score of traditional and contemporary Ethiopian music, and performed by a young and energetic all-male cast, the show opens with an exuberant flock of acrobats vaulting, somersaulting and diving through a series of hoops themselves only lightly tethered to the ground— a stray foot or wrist can send one flying toward the audience. The virtuoso straps act that follows evokes the yearning of an artist to follow a dream — even one still unformed — as the aerialist, Daniel Amera Seid, reaches for new heights.
The straps act is a showstopper, but most of the show is grounded in the props and skills of the street: expert juggling, tumbling, balancing and light goofing around. A nail-biting yet comic expression of rola bola, in which the performer balances on a growing pile of boards set atop a rolling cylinder, is followed by a sweet bit of clowning in which another performer plays at learning the skill, and pulls a jump rope out of an IKEA bag whispering, “Magic, magic.” Laying it on the stage, he mimes a tightwire and, later, coaxes some audience members to join him on stage (a warning to those seated in the front row). And Bibi and Bichu themselves deliver a deft set of the dual juggling that made them famous.
Throughout the show, the performers exhibit the key circus skill of making it all look like no big deal. One performer expertly climbs and manipulates a freestanding ladder with a winking, graceful aplomb. And in a jaw-dropping bit of hand balancing, Seid returns to hover atop growing spindles of increasingly precarious degree of wobble. Hamming it up with the audience, he climbs within alarming reach of the lighting grid. When he pauses at the top, shoulders straining, it felt as though the audience collectively held its breath, exhaling only when he at last began his descent.
“Ethiopian Dreams” is hands-on and homespun, as cast members run each other’s props and rig the stage with one last apparatus for the finale. Here, the show catches a bit of razzle-dazzle, with moving lights flashing and a group of acrobats performing across two Chinese poles with breathtaking synchronization. Here it is, the big time, it would seem — the culmination of the dream. It’s all delivered with such charm and humor, the audience clapping along, that the performers scarcely seem to believe their luck.
And, in truth, some performers were not so lucky. At the last minute, seven members of the cast — including all the women, whose contortion acts feature prominently in the show’s marketing — were denied visas by the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia and were unable to travel to the States, according to Chicago Shakespeare Theater Executive Director Kimberly Motes. The company quickly pivoted to bring in other performers who had worked with the group in the past and the show was reconfigured to their skills, Motes said.
That it succeeds as well as it does is a testament to the flexibility of the art form. Bibi and Bichu have set themselves the goal of bringing the richness of Ethiopian culture — a culture until now without its own circus tradition — to the world. The family-friendly “Ethiopian Dreams” may not have much of a plot, but it communicates its message with every tossed club and tumbling pass.