Flipping Out

Tim Barsky’s Kamikaze Heart is the story of a boy with a cumbersome mechanical heart who falls in love with a beautiful grantwriter, whose magical pen has earned enough treasure to start an urban circus. If the tale sounds grounded in fact, it is no less elevated by magic. After all, Tim Barsky is all about magic: He studied storytelling with Hasidic folklorist Fishel Bresler, and learned to beatbox on a flute. His early one-man beatbox opera, based on his experience as an outreach worker, wove junkies and homeless vets into tales of an Irish fisherwoman who falls in love with a selkie, a mythological seal-person. Who better to be named artistic director of City Circus, where contortion, acrobatics, and aerial dance are conjoined with hip-hop, breakdancing, and parkour? His ever-so-slightly autobiographical Kamikaze Heart draws on top talent from last year’s City Circus debut And If We Shadows, including world-renowned aerialist Chloe Axelrod, B-boys Iron Monkey and Finesse, and Broun Fellinis drummer Kevin Carnes. And, while the story is sure to include references to Proposition 8 and tours of duty in Iraq, there are just as sure to be magical swans, moon spiders, demons, and B-boys with death-defying hearts full of love.
Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Starts: May 1. Continues through May 31, 2009