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BuskerFest 2008 By Laura Godfrey A busker’s bread and butter The noise was deafening. The fire seemed to crop up everywhere you looked, day and night. The road was blocked off for days. That’s right, folks, it was an event you won’t soon forget – the most eclectic, family-friendly festival of the year: Toronto BuskerFest! This celebration of world-class street performers, which took place August 21 - 24, shut down Front Street near St. Lawrence Market and didn’t let go until its permit pulled it away, kicking and screaming. The annual event owned the street all weekend with artists hailing from Canada, the US, Sweden, Australia, Japan, England and beyond, and featured every type of performer from street musicians and chalk artists to stilt walkers and fire jugglers. Feeling peckish? Not in the mood for a chocolate caramel apple or a strawberry-and-icing-sugar funnel cake? Then surely, what’s on the menu for you is a double-edged Scottish sword. If you caught a performance by Space Cowboy, Guinness World Record holder for most swords swallowed at one time, you’ll know that swords are the bread and butter of this Australian performer. “At the moment, there are only 42 known sword swallowers who are alive and performing today,” claimed Space Cowboy during his act. “‘Alive’ is the important word there. This basically means, with a world population of 6.5 billion people, and only 42 known sword swallowers, the stunt that you’re about to witness right now is literally one in 155 million.” That’s some quick math! After slicing up a cucumber to prove to the audience that he wasn’t using a trick sword – it was, in fact, sharp enough to make a salad – the tattooed-and-pierced performer swallowed the sword amidst the gasps and partially turned heads (for those who couldn’t bear to watch) of the crowd. But if you thought that was the main event for this act, you were mistaken. How about a ride on the three-metre “sui-cycle”? While juggling a flaming torch and a couple of large, pointy knives – blindfolded? It’s no wonder that buskers are inclined to ask, politely but very seriously, for your very generous donations after seeing something that you couldn’t do yourself. This is how buskers make a living. While you crunch numbers in front of a computer, or snack on the free donuts at your Monday meeting, professional street performers spend their lives imagining new ways to amaze, delight and shock you. So don’t skimp on their Christmas bonus – fill the hat when the show is over. Pop, drop and out of control If BuskerFest is anything to judge by, reality TV is certainly good to its contestants – and not winning the show doesn’t mean you won’t make an impact. B-boy Robert Muraine, 21, started dropping jaws with his mix of popping, breakdancing and contortion on the latest season of So You Think You Can Dance? Although he made a great impression, and returned for a dance battle on the show’s finale, he left early to focus on his own style of dance. Muraine (aka Mr. Fantastic), who grew up in northeast Los Angeles, only started dancing five years ago. At this year’s festival, he performed with fellow b-boy Garvin “Gyroe” Tran as the dance duo Pulp. “I didn’t learn [to dance] in a specific place, but me and my friends were always interested and we pursued it,” said Muraine. “I got lucky and met the right people who guided me along the right path, so I got to learn very quickly.” Most recently, Muraine got to show off his skills in a unique Ikea commercial choreographed specifically for his dance moves. On another stage further along Front St., Mookie Morris of Canadian Idol fame took fans by surprise on Friday evening. In semi-coordinated but totally rock star fashion, Morris, 18, made his entrance hanging many storeys above the crowd from a cluster of oversized red-and-white balloons. After descending upon the stage, Morris bravely mixed many of his self-written songs in with a few Idol favourites, before finishing his 40-minute set with The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout.” While the finale didn’t exactly reach Ferris Bueller-like proportions, the concert inspired many to dig deep in their pockets to support Epilepsy Toronto, the cause of choice for Toronto BuskerFest. All donations after the concert went to the cause, and twenties were astoundingly abound – one woman produced five of them. But at a festival as diverse as this one, the low-key acts are just as likely to delight you and throw an unexpected curveball. As I walked by the street vendors selling hand-crafted goods from Kenya, crafty pins made out of bottle caps and elaborate circus-style face painting for children, Lurk the stilt walker emerged from behind a concrete column at Front Street Market. He is an imposing figure of indeterminate height, his face painted white and his head covered with an aviator’s cap. “Now those are high-heels,” said a passerby to her boyfriend. And suddenly, as I stood by watching as Lurk mocked passing pedestrians and danced, his covered stilts flailing comically, stilettos didn’t seem so bad. Lurk danced on, oblivious. Did that statue just move? Although performers convened for this festival from all corners of the Earth, there was at least one busker you may have recognized from downtown hot spots such as Yonge-Dundas Square, the Harbourfront Centre and Queen St. West. You may know her as the fallen angel, gesturing towards the sky and blowing kisses to generous pedestrians. Or maybe you’ve seen her as the playful mermaid, blowing bubbles and flipping her tail. But you’ve most likely seen this living statue as her signature piece: the dramatic, elaborately-costumed Marie Antoinette. “I developed this saucy, arrogant character,” Kate Mior, the Torontonian living statue, told me between acts. “I have her invite people to kiss her hand, I have her make fun of ‘the peasants beneath her,’ and the signage that I normally use benevolently suggests to the audience that I’m allowing them to give me their change.” Mior, 25, has been performing for five years, and is pretty saucy herself. She began busking while studying English literature and philosophy at the University of Toronto, “as an alternative to working at a crappy part-time job like Starbucks.” Her memorable Marie Antoinette costume was actually her high school prom dress, a custom-designed historical garment for which she was thrilled to find a new purpose. Although she has been performing for several years, it was just earlier this year that she began to train professionally, studying corporeal mime under world-renowned artist and teacher Dr. Giuseppe Condello. And while Mior’s act has taken her to the streets and festivals of the US and Europe, she always returns to the place where she started. “It’s such a welcoming city, and the people here are so wonderful,” said Mior of her hometown. “A lot of audiences don’t understand busking, so when they see something, they walk away from it. They don’t understand that a tip would be nice, and watching a performance would be nice. A lot of people will walk through a stage and not realize that they’re in the middle of somebody’s show. But I find Torontonians are fairly good, they don’t commit those kinds of faux-pas.” At this year’s BuskerFest, Mior certainly had the crowd’s full attention while standing on her pedestal as Marie Antoinette on the corner of Front & Market. With her purposeful, endearing gestures and expressions, she flirted coquettishly with young men and gestured sweetly for little girls in floral dresses to come hold her hand. She may not have the most conventional job in the city, but one thing is obvious: she’s certainly better loved than the queen she portrays.                  |