Photo courtesy of Ringling Museum.

In a collaboration that could only be born of a circus town, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art has teamed up with the musical virtuosos of the string quartet Ethel and director Grant McDonald to create an all-new multi-media performance blending music, film, photography and storytelling, all in honor of the circus. Entitled Circus: Wandering City, the all-evening affair debuts January 26, with a single encore the following night.

More than two years in the making, Circus: Wandering City began with a fortuitous meeting between the members of Ethel and Ringling Curator of Performance Dwight Currie, when the musicians were in town for a separate performance in the Historic Asolo Theatre. Telling them about the different museums on campus, Currie captured their attention with the circus museum and drew them further in with the archives. The quartet, which had previously gained acclaim through their Documerica concerts, in which they composed and performed original music set to a flickering backdrop of photographs collected from the EPA’s Project Documerica of the 1970s, decided to take the museum’s circus archives to task for their next project.

“Usually our records and photographs are used in a very traditional way,” says Ringling Assistant Director of Legacy and Circus Deborah Walk, who more often fields requests from people looking for relatives or museum staff staging an exhibit. “And all of the sudden we have this marvelous opportunity,” she says. Working through the Ringling Museum’s vast collection of circus images (more than 6,000 are now digitized, but the grand total remains unknown—“We’ve never gotten to the end of it to be able to count it,” says Walk.), she and Currie guided Ethel through the archives and the history of the circus, before setting the musicians loose to work their own magic. “And they could hear the song in circus,” says Walk.

The resulting production positions itself to be the ultimate tribute to the circus arts, not only incorporating stunning human performance (albeit musical as opposed to acrobatic) and showcasing images and film from the Big Top’s glory days, but also mimicking the structure of a circus performance itself. While the quartet performs its original composition, images from the archives are projected behind them, with those images generally following the sequence of a circus show, from arrival to aerialists. Over the top, interspersed with the pictures and music, spoken memories from those who lived the circus provide the final accent.

For Walk, the chance for audience’s to see the archives in a new light is an exciting one. “I hope that they will see the circus’ importance in connection to American history and how the country grew,” she says. “Having gotten a glimpse, I just know it’s going to be beyond amazing.”

Circus: Wandering City premieres January 26 at Ringling Museum, with another performance on January 27. Tickets are $30 and $10 for students.

Photo courtesy of Ringling Museum.