Music, Magic & Me, page 2

"MUSIC, MAGIC & ME" BY BEN ROBINSON PAGE TWO

In 1994 I was hired by the new audience department of Lincoln Center to produce the second evening called LIVE ART -- Downtown Comes Uptown, headlined by the Off B'way sensation STOMP (still running). I had known the original members before they were formed into a show when I was a street performer in Covent Garden in England in 1986, where they originated playing on rubbish bins and anything else they could use rhythmically. I am proud to be one of the first producers to bring rock 'n roll to Lincoln Center along with the Joffrey Ballet who danced to Prince's music the year before.

Below: the garbage can lid some of the cast members signed to me thanking me for bringing them a one-nighter that supplemented their incomes. It was one of the thrills of my career to introduce them on stage by screaming their name into the microphone as they came banging on through the audience.

In May of 1995 I went on a tour promoting a soft drink with the bucket drummers (of Times Square fame), "Drummin' 2 Deep," or as I knew them, Choclat and Larry. We played 11 towns in Texas before the tour was abruptly shut down. This was fortunate for Choclat who went right into Savion Glover's Bring in Da Noise Bring in Da Funk on Broadway. (When I saw Choclat at the premier party before the show went to Broadway from Joe Papp's Public Theater, he hugged me and then told his date, "Now I've done some s#*% with this man!") In the show with the bucket drummers, they opened by ferociously playing double drums atop a psychedelic painted school bus, as I danced on and began my set as they finished theirs.

The next month Dan and I condensed our multi media show utilizing magic, large illusions, shadows, contortionism, movies, stills, dance and rock 'n roll into a 7-minute performance. This performance was commissioned by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council as the opening act for the gala celebrating the 1995 New York Buskers Fare -- the largest street performers festival in the world (at the time). In our 7 minutes we were to display as many of the disciplines involved in the festival as possible.
	Dr. Busk (the producer of the event) was made to appear at the end of our "rock 'n roll circus." The show was tightly rehearsed at the Pink Inc. studios to Dan's song GHOST. The original 3:45 song was expanded to 6:45 to fill the bill. In that time the short synthesis we had developed in clubs was brought full circle. Our success was marked by an invitation to appear on the Today show on NBC-TV as the lead in to the outdoor performance of the hit musical act, Earth Wind and Fire.
Bryant Gumbel interviewed our contortionist while Katie Couric interviewed me as I jumped on a trampoline and made a ball of tin float through a hoop.

The video of the show helped sell the show in Seattle for a 20-week contract, which only lasted 10 weeks. We were booked in the famous rock club MOE, where the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow had just finished performing. Jim Rose had broken new ground by having his troupe appear as the opening act to the Lollapalooza rock festival and when Lollapalooza ended, Jim went to MOE. My goal at the three-tiered club was to change our production into a full evening's entertainment with the backing of the owner. Because our stay was cut in half, we only expanded

the show (with brilliant video by Jon Dix's HPX ) to about 20 minutes. The rain and our slot at 11pm on Tuesday nights really kept audiences from the door in January and February of 1996. Adding insult to injury, a mean-spirited TV magician later gave a sanitized version of our edgy show and Disneyfied our themes of a grandfather's home movies and ghosts on TV shortly thereafter. Unfortunately this was my fault. I had done a deal with this jerk and sent him a tape of our show titled GHOST --An Art Rock 'N Roll Circus in 7 Minutes.
Later, my business manager told me later that he would pay me not to do business with this guy because he thought the TV magician was a "sleazeball." Cirque du Soleil's artistic director Andrew Watson wrote to me after he saw the tape of the show, "Your work is quite interesting...keep me informed." If you saw Cirque du Soleil's "one of a kind" brilliant performace at this past (2002) March 24 Academy Awards, I am not being pompous in saying that was our show done with a lot more time and money minus the live rock band. We were raw meat. They were filet mignon.
	Interestingly, Dan and I originated our title unaware of the Rolling Stones' Rock 'n Roll Circus which was never released when it was filmed in 1968, but was released in 1996, a year after our show broke. People were paying attention to our efforts. (Actually, I think the release of the Stones' work had more to do with the interest in the 1995 Beatles' Anthology than any reaction to our work.)

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