The Quiet Circus

Headlong presented The Quiet Circus, a 15-month-long series of performances and conversations held at sites along the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers that explored Philadelphia's maritime and industrial heritage while considering human interaction with an urban landscape, community, and the contemplative. In collaboration with curator Mary Jane Jacob, Headlong offered activities to encourage audiences' close observation and sensory awareness of the sites, and a deeper engagement with the urban landscape. A series of 36 evolving performances occurred in weekly runs of three months, followed by periods of reflection guided by Jacob. Performances included Island, a dance-theater score created with Ishmael Houston Jones and Polly Motley; Landscape, a performance game that invited audiences to create their own scenery using nine large-scale sculptures; and The Luminous World, a durational piece in which subtle human actions reveal a buzzing, luminous performance of the environment.