Travelling troupe use art to inspire youth to dream

A TROUPE of travelling clowns, acrobats, magicians and actors descend on East London today to spread a message of hope through art.

The Action Arte Foundation, a Cape Town-based non-profit organisation which works closely with the Cape Flats community, uses their travelling circus as a platform to inspire and to spread hope to schoolchildren across the country.

The foundation was founded in 2013 by professional stage performers Hanne La Cour and her partner Marlin Roos after they had attended a circus training school in Madrid.

They shared some of that knowledge on their return, eventually forming the circus.

Visiting the city for the first time, the circus is visiting six schools in East London, Mdantsane and Chintsa respectively.

The group will also make appearances at Lilyfontein Primary today to perform ahead of the Tomato Trot race and the Chintsa Sunday market Tea in the Trees tomorrow, where they will hold workshops.

Foundation coordinator Nielson La Cour said their tour began in early January with a visit to a number of Northern Cape schools, moving on to Port Elizabeth and now East London.

According to La Cour, the 10-man circus group uses their art to tell their own unique stories about the challenges they’ve overcome and how they managed to remain motivated in the face of obstacles.

“Many of the children we perform for have been forced to grow up in the face of a host of social ills but they succeeded in life despite that,” La Cour said.

“This show is meant to motivate them so they want to succeed in life but also to show them that performing arts is a way in which they can remove themselves from whatever situation they are facing and it can be a career choice for them.”

La Cour said audience members can look forward to a hair hanging act, rope acts, acrobatics, a clown and some theatre performances.

All performances are free. The crew rely on donations.

“We used to charge an amount of between R5 to R40 or whatever the schools could afford but we soon realised that many of the schools that really needed to see us couldn’t afford this fee so we made it free.

“So far we have support from the Department of Arts and Culture, who have been kind enough to sponsor us with petrol money for the tour. We generally camp for the night but are sometimes lucky enough to get a night’s stay from certain businesses or some of the schools we are visiting offer to put us up for the night.

“What we are trying to do now is to get the department of education involved so we can reach as many schools as possible,” she said. — zisandan@dispatch.co.za