— by Margie Doyle —
Enzo Thixton performing in Purple Rain, photo by Steve Smith
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Those of us who’ve been to Grace McCune/Jake Perrine’s productions of rock extravaganzas in recent years — “Moulin Rouge” in 2014, “Across the Universe” in 2015, and “Rock of Orcas” this year, have become accustomed to soul-stirring music, brilliant instrumentals and lively choreography as our beautiful children and elders perform for the home audience.
We’ve thrilled to watch Maria Bullock and her aerial silks students move through the floor-to-ceiling silk drapery with a grace, mastery and audacity that are spine-chilling .
This year, 18-year-old Enzo Thixton blew out our expectations from previous years, as he performed to the haunting melodies of Prince’s “Purple Rain,” as sung by Gabi Carver, Maggie Thomas and Adia Dolan.
Now Thixton has mounted a video of that performance on YouTube.
Orcas Issues caught up with Thixton, via phone from Portland where he now lives most of the year to learn about the spirit that enfuses such a performance.
“Aerial silks is definitely a passion,” he says. He started with Maria Bullock in the winter of 2015, and studied with her until January, 2017, when he moved to Portland. He says, “Maria has been a huge inspiration for me. Anyone can try aerial silks, she offers beginning classes for all ages. She’s is an amazing teacher.” (Her website is islandaerialacrobatics.com for more information.)
As a kid, he always enjoyed the Circus Camps, and wished there were more opportunities to follow the circus performances and learn from them. Now, he trains with aerial silks about 20 hours a week in Portland, where he has begun several more apparati in addition to silks, including Trapeze, Straps, Lyra, and Aerial Rope.
“It’s a beautiful art form, I especially like learning new techniques and tricks.” The breath-taking “drops,” where the artist lets go of the silks and trusts that the knots made will hold him/her, “take some getting used to,” Enzo says modestly. And “performing enters a new level of fear — of tangling or of not getting the sequence right, but it usually works out,” he says philosophically.
Despite the fear of the limelight, Enzo also says performing is his favorite part of aerial silks. “It’s uncommon to see in a show like Rock of Orcas.” But he had been consulting with Grace McCune about a silks performance in “Rock of Orcas” when she suggested “Purple Rain” as the musical accompaniment. “I listened to the song a ton — the music builds from quiet to full sound — and envisioned the movements.”
Enzo finds a great challenge in achieving the strength necessary for aerials. “It takes a long time to build up strength, until you can actually perform a move, and some moves hurt a lot, and you don’t want to do them. The pain sometimes comes form moving too quickly through the silks, and suffer burns or bruises or pinches, and it may take awhile to build a tolerance for the knots that tighten down on your body. But the rewards are definitely there, both for the performer and his audience.
“Once I start working on a piece and practicing to music it’s like dancing — that freedom.”
Enzo continues to train and to hone his craft in what he envisions as lifelong performances. His “reachable” goal is to support himself as a performer and his dream goal is to have his own touring show. Now we can watch him progress towards those goals as he can be seen on YouTube.com Search “PurpleRain Enzo.” He can also be seen through his Facebook page: facebook.com/
