Victoria still the spiegeltent queen of elegance
She has travelled the world for nearly 90 years but now Victoria has arrived in Christchurch.
The ornate spiegeltent, named Victoria by the family that built her in 1930, has been erected on a vacant site in central Christchurch. Featuring wood panels, a stage, stained glass windows and a bar, the 750-seat spiegeltent will be the main performance venue for the Bread & Circus – World Buskers Festival, which starts on Thursday.
Built in three days and transported from South Africa in two 12-metre shipping containers, the new venue has popped up on the corner of Worcester Blvd and Oxford Tce.
Rik Klassens said the tent was built by his grandparents in 1930.
They established the company in 1920 and toured Belgium, using the spiegeltent as a portable dance hall.
‘‘It would travel from fair to fair. My grandfather towed it with two horses,’’ he said.
The Klassens’ family business has seen spiegeltents change from travelling circus and dance hall venues in central Europe, to popular hubs for festivals around the world.
When Rik Klassens took over the company from his father in 1984, the tent was touring Europe. It then went global with the advent of the internet.
‘‘Because of the internet, festival organisers saw it and then it went really fast all over the world,’’ he said. He has now 15 tents in use. Bread & Circus producer Jess Rankin said the central Christchurch site was chosen for the spiegeltent as Bread & Circus will be based around Worcester Blvd.
The expanded and revamped festival will be held in seven venues clustered around Worcester Blvd, running from Christ’s College to Cathedral Square. Prestigious Australian events company Strut & Fret was appointed to run the event in May last year after the World Buskers Festival made a series of financial losses. The company renamed the event Bread & Circus – World Buskers Festival.
The line-up for this year’s festival has been expanded, with 527 performances compared with 344 last year and 29 street performers compared with 14 last year.
Shows will be staged from January 10 to February 3 at street busking pitches, the spiegeltent and indoor venues at Christ’s College and the Arts Centre.
Rankin said the arrival of the spiegeltent ‘‘means the carnival has come to town’’.
‘‘We know from experience that the spiegeltent is like the biggest billboard in town.’’
Klassens said walking into a spiegeltent was like ‘‘stepping 100 years back in time’’.
‘‘It is like stepping into another world. People say it looks like a big jewellery box.’’