Circus is coming to town, and club wants city’s help

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: For one night only, the circus will be in town.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: For one night only, the circus will be in town.

At Monday’s city council meeting, the Boys and Girls Club of Whitehorse announced its plans to bring acrobats, trapeze artists, a contortionist and the international yo-yo champion to Whitehorse on Sept. 19.

“There’s quite an array of things,”  Dave Blottner, the club’s programming director, told reporters.

No animals take part in the event.

In their formal presentation, he and David Prodan, the club’s executive director, asked council to waive the rental fees of more than $5,000 that will be charged for the use of the Canada Games Centre over three days.

While the show will be staged on Sept. 19 only, the three days are needed to set things up the day before and take things down the day after, Prodan explained.

If the city does waive the fees, it would be listed as a title sponsor for the event and bring more opportunities for the community, he said.

“The circus will show the Canada Games Centre can be used for more than sporting and recreational (events),” he said.

It is also set to bring professional development opportunities to town, Prodan added, with the Vancouver Circus School set to give workshops and school performances during their time here.

It was the family programming factor of the Canada Games Centre that made the club select the complex as the site for the event.

“Here in Whitehorse, there’s not an awful lot for families to go out and do something together,” Blottner told reporters outside city hall following their presentation.

“When we think of (those) places, the Canada Games Centre kind of stuck out in our mind as a place where families do go together and we kind of wanted to carry that motion forward.

The event will showcase the talents of local youth, Blottner said.

“Our urban arts program, for example, which is teaching kids hip hop or breakdancing and stuff like that, when the circus comes up here they’ll have a chance to take part in that as well,” Blottner said.

“All these opportunities kind of grew out of this initial conversation.”

That conversation goes back to youth at the club complaining there was nothing to do in Whitehorse. Blottner asked what they’d like to do.

“I said, ‘Well, what would you guys want to do? The sky’s the limit. We could have a circus’.

“A lot of them said they had never seen a circus and one of them even asked what a circus was,” he said. “So that kind of inspired us. Every kid should see the circus.”

With that, the wheels were in motion, and work began on bringing the Vancouver Circus School performers up.

While students from the circus school will host the workshops to be #held, it will be the professionals of the school’s inner ring that will take on the main performance on Sept. 19.

The circus school has been “monumental” in fund-raising for various organizations like the B.C. Cancer Foundation as well as raising awareness, something Prodan is hopeful the club will get out of the event.

“One of the reasons we’re bringing the circus is to give a little bit more profile to the Boys and Girls Club, to show we do have a presence in the community to offer children and family programming,” Prodan said. “We thought it would be a unique opportunity to work with the city on a major event.”

Though the circus won’t act as a fund-raiser for the group (ideally,  sponsorship and ticket sales will cover the cost of hosting it), it is hoped it will help kick-start a donation campaign shortly after.

The 500 available tickets are expected to sell for about $30 each with a reduced rate for youth and family packages as well.

“At the Boys and Girls Club, we have a strict policy that we don’t turn any youth away so anyone that can’t make it into the circus, we’ll find a way to get them in,” Blottner said.