Cirque de la Symphonie aerialist Janice Martin plays the violin at a recent Sioux City Symphony Orchestra concert. Photo by Bruce Miller.
In Sunday’s (10/22) Sioux City Journal, Bruce Miller writes, “Talk about pressure. At Saturday’s Sioux City Symphony Orchestra concert, Janice Martin played the violin while hanging from silks suspended over the Orpheum Theatre stage. When the silks twisted so her back was to the audience, she bent backwards and, yup, played upside down. The orchestra’s contribution: Solid accompaniment and a series of numbers from notable horror films…. Martin … rocked the silks and offered her part of Danse Macabre Op. 40 with all sorts of contortions. She returned in the second act for another aerial turn with Hector Berlioz’s ‘Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath.’ Again, she played an electronic violin while suspended in a hoop-like contraption…. Elena Sanders offered up two contortion displays; Aleksandr Deev spun cubes in the first act, hoops in the second…. Vitalii Lykov donned skeleton makeup for his first aerial number. Demonstrating the control of an Olympic athlete, he rolled up and down two aerial straps during ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and ‘March of a Marionette.’… Conductor Ryan Haskins … was more than willing to join the audience in holding his breath during the aerial displays.”
