By Khalida Sarwari
On a late February afternoon, about half a dozen parents took a break from work to visit the Montalvo Arts Center for a performance that had contortionists, jugglers and even a clown. The proud parents beamed as they watched the performers–their children–in costumes and elaborate face paint smile and giggle while juggling peacock feathers, hula hooping, walking on stilts and riding unicycles.
The children, ages 6 to 12, learned the techniques in the popular circus arts camp at Montalvo, one of two winter camps where kids had an opportunity to learn or improve important skills by engaging in creative movement and performance art during Saratoga’s annual school break.
“We’ve had a really, really fun week,” circus arts instructor Texas Holly told parents at the start of the half-hour show.
Over the course of the weeklong camp, nearly a dozen children learned how to juggle, tumble, build pyramids and walk on a ball, among other things. On Feb. 22, the camp culminated with a performance where the kids demonstrated the skills they learned throughout the week.
For 12-year-old Adam Czarnik, a seventh-grader at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School who spent the week focusing on juggling, those skills included hand-eye coordination and balancing.
The camp “definitely made me more flexible than I was,” said Adam, sporting a blue and orange leopard tail, a bright red clown nose and a pink, brown and black dinosaur head.
Adam credited his newly learned skills to Holly.
“Texas is a really great instructor,” he said. “She’s flexible and open to anything.”
Donning a pouffy blonde wig with a pink bow, bright pink lipstick, colorful suspenders and giant clown shoes for the performance, Holly remained on the stage to assist students with every act.
For 7-year-old Joss Broward, it was his second time at circus arts camp. The second-grader at Cherry Chase Elementary School in Sunnyvale said he came back just for his friend, Holly.
“It’s a good creative outlet for him,” his father, Mike Brown, said. “He’s always excited to come back.”
After a short break for lunch, most of the kids transformed from circus artists to detectives in spy camp, armed with makeshift briefcases made out of cereal boxes. Their assignment? Find a print sculpture of the Horse Tomb Figure that had gone missing.
According to instructor Charlee Wagner, spy camp is centered on espionage and adventure. In this camp, the kids got to create their own identities in order to complete various assignments around the grounds of Montalvo and design a 3D map of the property. Throughout the week, they learned how to create and use codes, ciphers and invisible ink as well as how to navigate the Montalvo grounds.
On the last day of the camp, the kids gathered in a herd before branching out to various parts of the facility on a search for the sculpture, using clues written on colorful pieces of paper that the kids found in bushes and plants.
One clue asked the kids to define “shadowing” and another one asked them to define “mole.”
After successfully making it out of a room where the spies navigated through “laser beams,” 8-year-old Bella Marty reflected on her first time at spy camp.
“You have to have the guts to be a good spy–and the creativity,” she said.
Now in its third year, the camp promotes problem-solving, critical analysis and spatial orientation by way of role-playing and exploration, Wagner said, adding that there are also a lot of visual arts components due to the “dramatic act of taking on a spy persona.”
Both camps will return to this summer at Montalvo, with spy camp taking place June 10-14 and circus arts camp June 17-21.
For more information about Montalvo’s camps, visit montalvoarts.org/programs/camps.
Youngsters participated in a circus arts camp and spy camp at Montalvo Arts Center
