The Example Of Neymar

Today I bring the curtain down on my Buskerfest series with one more act from the group finale show. I featured Les Dudes in the opening post of this series, and I close with them. Philippe and Senja make up two thirds of the troupe of acrobats, and they took part in the finale, starting with him juggling. While she distracted him with a horn.

Then it moved into the hoops. She sang, as you can see in this video I did of the act.

He was in the midst of hoop action when she blew the whistle on him and red flagged him.

And so he did what pretty much any soccer player would do in similar circumstances and faked a bad leg in a classic soccer dive. Neymar is apparently infamous for this sort of thing. Philippe did it better.

Then Senja took over with the big hoop, and the pair finished up their splendidly entertaining and funny act.

The Acrobats At Work

As Fraser Hooper's act had been finished at this spot before the finale took place, he also took part in the finale show, bringing a kid up from the audience for a bit of goofing around.

The Checkerboard Guy returned as well. He took an element from his solo show as his part of the show- shuffling three unconnected wooden boxes back and forth, including behind him and behind his legs, keeping them held in a line- and over-reacting on one occasion when they didn't.

And two more acrobats took part. Kim from Street Circus collaborated with Reuben DotDot Dot again, as they had in an evening group show, for some handstand tricks.

Bounce And Trickery

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the group finale show took place after Fraser Hooper's last show at this location, with several of the buskers participating. It started with the husband and wife team of Sean and Heather McManus doing their blend of comedy and bouncing acrobatics on the trampoline.

Their son joined them for the last element of the act- the three of them somersaulting together. I wasn't quite fast enough with the camera to catch them in the moment.

Jaardu the magician also participated, using his cobra in the basket shuffling cards trick. He selected a woman from the audience, had her select a card, and walked her around the crowd to show the card.

Then she had to hand the whole deck over to the cobra in the basket.

After a bit of shuffling, the cobra came back up with the same card she had selected- you can see the snake (fake, of course, but it moves like the real thing) in these last two shots. I have more from the finale show over the next two posts.

Chaplin And Rocky

Fraser Hooper is a busker from New Zealand, and he regularly appeared during Buskerfest. I caught his last solo show on the Monday- the finale show took place at this location when he was finished, so we'll start looking at that tomorrow. His act borrows a bit from Chaplin- the walk, the Chaplinesque hanging around with a kid early in the act- have a look at this video I did from earlier on in the set. As the act progressed, he had one kid pitted in a tug of war with four adults.

He then moved into the finale of his act, assigning the woman in the above shot to handle the sound effects- ring bells and the sound of boxing gloves- while having two of the men serve as ring posts, holding up the ropes for a boxing ring. The last guy would be holding up a punching bag. In the form of a balloon.

The punching bag bit progressed into flared tempers for Fraser. 

And then into a hilarious boxing match. The first half of it featured Rocky music as a backdrop; check out my video of it here. The music changed for the second half- the main theme of Chariots Of Fire by Vangelis, and the two opponents moved in slow motion, trading punches and resting in between rounds. On the knees of the guys serving as ring posts, who were occasionally in the line of fisticuffs.

And then there was the knockout.

The crowd was in an uproar of laughter. This boxing match, albeit a fake one, was a showstopper of hilarity.