Roll up, roll up—but leave your wallet at home. For the first time in its history, Bryant Park is trading in quiet picnics and bookish afternoons for high-flying feats, clowning chaos and the kind of gasps you can hear clear across Midtown. The New York City Circus Festival lands in the park on Saturday, August 16, from 6pm to 9pm, and admission is absolutely free.
Part of the park’s popular Picnic Performances series, presented by Bank of America, this inaugural circus showcase is curated by Monique Martin and serves as a love letter to the city’s boundary-pushing circus scene. That means you can expect acts that defy both gravity and genre: aerial artists suspended against the summer sky, acrobats twisting into impossible shapes, clowning that’s more artful than slapstick and a giant Rolly apparatus (a mesmerizing human-powered contraption you have to see to understand).
The lineup reads like a who’s-who of NYC’s most innovative performance troupes: Sxip Shirey Sound Action Ensemble, Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, ABCirque, Hybrid Movement Company, Dzul Dance, Company 29 and Minty Fresh Circus. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill big top acts—think contemporary choreography meets old-school showmanship, set to original music and fueled by downtown creative energy…