She Walks the Line  Seven feet above the sawdust circus ring in New York's Lincoln Center, Molly Saudek is swaying to the music. The audience can feel her ferocious concentration as she tries to keep her balance on the half-inch-thick woven cable that is her stage, her dance floor, her friend. A vision in brightly striped spandex, Saudek moves like a snake, a panther, fan dancer, as she leaps, bounces, and slithers from end to end of the 21-foot-long wire, flirting with her partner below, casting her spell on the audience. But something is wrong this afternoon. Her ballet-slippered feet are starting to wobble. She loses her balance and jumps, catlike, to the floor below. Then she climbs back up and goes on with the show, all thoughts of failure seemingly banished from her mind. Her seven minutes in the spotlight leave no room for fear or indecision, for bad moods or musings on muscle aches—it's 420 seconds of absolute physical and mental concentration. Back in the air, she continues her sinuous performance with a leap, a jump, a glide. She slips again, jumps down again, climbs back again, but the audience doesn't seem to mind. If anything, the spectators are collectively holding their breath, silently transmitting their good wishes to the fragile-looking young woman with pale blond hair and translucent skin. When she's finished, they reward her with enthusiastic applause. This season is Saudek's first with the Big Apple Circus, the New York—based one-ring show that turned 20 last year. The theme of the current tour, at the Boston Marine Industrial Park through May 9, is "Happy On!"—a play on an old English music-hall expression. The piece that the 22-year-old Saudek has choreographed for herself is a sexy, witty spoof on film noir, complete with a trench-coated private eye who never gets the girl. Saudek plays the seductress, and Norman Barrett, this year's guest ringmaster, plays the lovelorn detective. This piece is the culmination of Saudek's work over the past decade—the hours of practice and sweat, the falls and sprains, coming together in a rush of adrenaline and exhilaration. Even after four years as a professional wire artist, she still sometimes struggles for the exacting balance that tightwire work demands, slipping off as she did in this performance. In those seven minutes, however, she has managed to wow the audience with her seemingly effortless artistry, poised and polished, both daring and fallibly human. She has touched the audience with an understanding of what it means to take bold risks every day. Those potent moments of connection—when her energy and focus crystallize in a performance that reaches her audience—are the reason Molly Saudek does what she does. "It's a life practice," says Saudek, whose flirtation with circus life began at age 11. "It's a question of challenging yourself every day. People meditate for hours to find a center. In the circus, you have to find your center immediately, to find the place in your head where there are no questions. For me, it's intensely personal—it's finding a life force, making the discovery that you're alive." |
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