A strange spectacle continues to drift along the Erie Canal this week.
Noelle Evans with WXXI News and the New York Public News Network joined the Flotsam River Circus as they puttered along the waterway that connects the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean.
Below is the transcript of a radio broadcast story that aired on WXXI:
JASON WEBLEY: (to crew) “...Have you considered the Danube? And I was like, well, the Danube actually would be amazing. (To reporter) I'm Jason. Jason Webley. I kind of organize Flotsam and I play accordion. We're on the Genesee River. We're maybe about one mile from the Erie Canal right now, yeah, we're traveling from Buffalo to New York City, mostly on the Erie Canal, but we're gonna take a bunch of side trips. ... You know, I'm not a circus person. I never dreamed of running away and joining the circus. I've always been attracted to trying to make things happen that feel like they bring people together, that they kind of generate or capture or shine light on magic. And this project is sort of the culmination of the various threads of my life, and the thing that I can think of to do that has the best chance of doing that that's actually possible.”
MATTY SEMKOWICH: “I'm Matty Semkowich, I'm up on the upper deck navigating our splendid ship. Up top we have a wooden, rickety platform with a long piece of conduit attached to the motor, and you kind of stand up here, Huck Finn style, slowly trying to keep the boat straight, which is kind of tricky, because it always wants to go side to side. ... We are on the Erie Canal. We just got off the Genesee, and we are headed to Fairport. For us, it's four hours. ... We go about between 4.9 and like 5.4 miles an hour, (to WEBLEY) ten-four. (to reporter) Yeah, I guess I'll get into navigation mode here for the Lock 33.”
LOCKMASTER: (on walkie-talkie) “Copy that getting it ready right now. I'll have the gates open here, just a quick minute now.”
WEBLEY: (To crew) “So, just want to make sure the rope doesn't get snagged on the top and it slides down that way.”
DANIELA BIM: “I am Daniela Bim from Sao Paulo, Brazil. I play a captain in the show, and I also do the hair suspension act. ...When I'm hanging my favorite part of it is touching the water. And like being able to play with the water. It feels like freedom.”
EVANS: “Do you remember what your first point of contact was with the circus?”
BIM: “I took a workshop, circus workshop in a theater school, just for fun, but also to like compliment my work as a dancer. And then I ran away with the circus. ... The group I was performing with was studying the circus in Brazil in the 1930s and it was a group directed by Marcelo Milan. They were studying that era in Brazil, that time, because the circus is what got art to the smaller communities, like we are doing right now.”
EVANS: “Are there moments where, like you've ever thought, you know, if not this, what else you could be doing?”
BIM: “Lately, I've been thinking a lot more about that, because ... I'm getting older at the same time. Like, should I go like the elephants and go to the woods and die? In a circus world, right? Because, like, you're not as young or as flexible as strong, but I feel like now I have a better understanding of how my body works, and also what I wanted to say. There's beauty in all kinds of bodies, and it is part of the circus too. Like the circus freaks, right? We kind of fit in the circus because we didn't fit much somewhere else. People have different ways of communicating, or different ways of expressing themselves or being that sometimes don't fit in certain spaces. And when we come to the circus and you are allowed to be yourself, and you're like, ah, can I just be me? That that's really beautiful."
( Raucous music, ends abruptly.)
