BY SCOTT STIFFLER with PHOTOS BY CONRAD HANSON

Sawdust in the shoes and stars in the eyes were the lingering effects on the early evening of June 23, when an audience starved for live entertainment feasted upon the full menu of talent packed into Hudson Guild Performing Artworks!’ Circus and Dance Spectacular.

“This was our first live, in-person performance since the pandemic started,” said Conrad Hanson, Hudson Guild’s Assistant Director of Development and External Relations. “It was outdoors, so we had distancing and then other proper protocols—whatever it took. Jim [Furlong, Director of Arts] and I really wanted to put together something, and felt it was time to start entertaining people again.”

That’s not to say Hudson Guild dropped the ball while the pandemic put the kibosh on public gatherings. If anything, they were carrying the banner, by launching a new series in the virtual world (the variety show Talent Jam!), and integrating the medium’s presentational attributes into new creative endeavors. (October 2020’s world premiere of playwright Tasha Partee’s A Five Mile Radius used the multi-participant mode of a Zoom screen to show multiple cast members moving in real time.)

Kudos for remaining productive aside, Hanson and Furlong knew there was no place like home. Determined to bring live performances back to Hudson Guild, they committed to the Circus and Dance Spectacular back in mid-April, when vaccination rates seemed as if they would deliver some semblance of normality to the city.

Their leap of faith paid off, when the 50-minute performance took place on Hudson Guild’s recently christened Elliott Center Patio (441 W. 26th St.). Delivering on the two-pronged promise of its title, the cast featured acts by the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, along with dancers from Matthew Westerby Company, who performed an excerpt from The Piers Project, a new work in development, under the auspices of Hudson Guild.

Hanson said the audience ate it up. “It was really amazing,” he recalled. “You had this group of older people who had planned on going, who were very enthusiastic—and then others who had sort of wandered into it, liked what they saw, and stayed. Ever since the city made the announcement [that allowed for public gatherings like this one], people have been very anxious to get together again—but the way it was presented, with responsible distancing, I think that comfort level factor kicked in. And before you knew it, they were just an audience watching a show. That’s what we wanted when we said, ‘We’ve got to get back to the world of live performance.’ ”

NOTE: For more information on Hudson Guild and its many offerings, click here. Following the below paragraph, see more photos from June 23’s Circus and Dance Spectacular, followed by promotional posters for two upcoming gallery presentations.

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