A Day Out at Cortex Circus

When the circus is in town, we are always around – so when we saw signs appear around our town talking about Cortex Circus, we had to book up tickets right away. This circus was a bit more pricey then previous ones that have appeared in our local town, with pretty expensive front row seating, but it turns out that’s because. a lot of the show is actually done towards the most expensive seating – with this circus being quite different from previous ones we have attended.

Cortex Circus has a bit of a punk feel, from the spike studded leather jackets to the graffiti that they have as their sign. This punk feel persists throughout the show – and there are a lot of different costumes and such that are on display, which correspond with the different acts that you can find on the stage in front of you. A lot of the acts had dancing numbers as well, which is pretty interesting. Several of the dancing numbers happened in between major acts, with a few others happening during acts, though these were not my favorite. The ones that actually happened during the acts sometimes made it so that we could not actually see the act itself, between the dancing and fog machines. Otherwise, the dance numbers were really well done and worked quite well in the setting.

Along with dancing, there were a bunch of new acts we had not seen at the circus before! One of the first acts involved a person riding a unicycle – which was quite fun to watch! He was able to bounce around on it, move up and down steps, and then moved onto a unicycle that didn’t have handlebars, and then a super tall unicycle, that seemed almost impossible to ride, so he had someone else sort of balanced on the side with him. It was really fun to watch – especially with all of the tricks that he did!

Another really amazing act involved balancing – one person balanced on top of cylinders, which are also on top of huge tables, so high above everyone, with balancing boards as well! It’s really quite amazing and thrilling to watch, especially as he got ready to get on to the board and balance. At one point, there was a lot of sweat dripping off his face and he looked pretty scared up at the top, trying to balance on so many cylinders, moving around with the flow of the board as if he was skating.

Cortex Circus had another act that involved a girl juggling what looked like slightly weighted pillowcases, using their hands and feet. At first, she was just moving one of these pillow cases between her hands and feet, but soon were moving four of them, slowly juggling them while laying down on a strange highchair, which was really impressive. Like all circus, there was a clown, who came out in-between acts and set ups, engaging the audience as he passed out balloons and did picture tricks. He pretty basic as clowns go, with some funny aspects to it, but a few of his actual acts were quite long, which felt cumbersome. In the end though, he made for a decent clown overall.

Along with the clown, there were a lot of BMX tricks, including a really impressive stand that they built out of the centre of the stage – which the BMX bike riders (there were two) jumped over people, jumping from platform to platform, and even appearing from beyond the stage and jumping out at random, surprising us all! Another act involved spinning plates, which seemed to be rigged up in some way, but was very entertaining for the children. More dancing ensued, as well as a tightrope walker that sat on a chair on the tight rope. We had seen tight rope walkers before, but not with chairs, so it was very interesting. The tightrope walker had a bit of fire to her act, appearing with a fire hoop at one point.

One of my favorite acts of the night were the acrobatic act, which is always my favorite. This time, two men appeared and balanced on a singular pole, holding each other up, sliding up and down the area, and hanging upside-down. It was really mesmerising to watch and I found it to be quite entertaining to watch. There was a giant dance at the end that had everyone – all of the adults and even some children take part. The show was quite a long one, lasting two hours with a short intermission in the middle, which was a good amount of time, though I do wish they had some sort of real food due to the length of this! Though many of the acts really did focus towards the front of the stage, I found that the show was really well put together and something a bit different to the circus’ we have seen previously. We’d totally go back and see what Cortex Circus has in store next time!

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!