There were high-flying thrills at the fair thanks to the i-Flip Acrobatics Team. The five person crew performed dancing trapeze, and trampoline – including the relatively new trampoline wall – as well as dive from high above the crowd.
Felix Di Pasquale, leader of the team, says it’s a mix of choreography and a bit of “street style,” playing at trying to impress each other, depending on whether or not it’s a solo by one of the members, as the team tries to impress each other as well as the crowd.
“It makes a better show when you play when your own solo and you improve. This is how we make the show, I think it makes the show better because we’re having fun doing it, and the people can tell we are enjoying ourselves.”
Everyone in the group has a different background, Di Pasquale says, and they try to incorporate the different backgrounds of the performers into the show, mixed together with a bit of art and a bit of comedy, to make the strongest performance they can.
The performance takes a lot of training from all team members, and while some people might look at them like they are crazy, Di Pasquale says that they come to understand that the training makes them safe in the end. Still, at least one person can’t get over their natural worry about acrobatics.
“Even then, my mother is still scared for me when she is looking at my show. She’s looking at the floor, sometimes she’s worried for me but she understands that I train a lot and I’m safe when doing the crazy stuff.”
It’s an international group, with members from Canada, America and France. Di Pasquale says that’s partially because while an international community, the trampoline wall is relatively new, so the community is relatively small and tight knit. He says they often connect online as they have different projects on the go and need more people to get involved.
The crew loved the crowds in Yorkton, and Di Pasquale wants to be come back year after year. Discovering how different crowds react is one of the thrills of being a performer, and they feed off the energy of a crowd as they do their show.
“If you go in Japan, they will watch but you don’t hear anything, they just wait to the end, you don’t know if they like the show. In America, the people react in the middle of shows, it’s okay to clap and go ‘yeah!’ In Japan it’s dead quiet, and you’re like, are they bored? And you finish the show people give you energy just at the end. It’s really surprising, it’s fun to have the chance to see the different mentalities as a performer.”
Weather was not always on the side of the Yorkton Exhibition Summer Fair in 2016, and the acrobatic team was no exception to this rule, having to cancel some shows, and Di Pasquale having to dig a small drainage ditch in order to get the performance area dry enough to entertain.
“We are here to perform, we are here to have fun. So an hour and a half to get the water away so it can happen.”
