If there is one thing we adore here at GR Presents it’s highly skilled circus performers.

 

Here is one of our favourites available as part of a specially tailored Gersch and Rox Presents circus production.

 

Amy Offley is an experienced and professional circus performer, specialising in circus Aerial Hoop and circus Straps. Her performance skills also include Aerial Silks, Dance and Singing.

 

With a background in gymnastics and dance, Amy graduated from London Studio centre in Dance and Musical Theatre, where she trained professionally in Ballet, Jazz and Contemporary.

 

With over 10 years of circus performing experience, Amy has worked for various high profile companies and circus shows in the UK and internationally.

 

She specialises in creating beautiful spinning circus aerial acts, with a highly emotive lyrical flow, guaranteed to leave any audience mesmerised! With a combination of dance and circus aerial acrobatics, her circus acts consist of incredible spins, splits and jaw dropping stunts, demonstrating incredible flexibility and strength with grace and precision.

 

All of Amy’s circus acts can be adapted to suit specific themes or venues. She is experienced in all types of circus events, whether it be Corporate circus, Cabaret or Theatre, working as a soloist and ensemble! She also has Aerial circus acts that are suitable for venues with lower ceilings if required, with more of a dance effect!

 

Amy has a strong commercial look and physique and exuberates elegance with her long lines and flexibility which also works really well for sports modelling and movement projects.

 

LINKS

 

Showreel: https://youtu.be/6EYaNne4Fb4

Hoop: https://youtu.be/7YHicH6B2aY

Straps: https://youtu.be/xud2DGYPBwM

Duo Promo (Piano and Aerial with my sister): https://youtu.be/2iveIa-AtDw

 

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New Years Eve is fast approaching and so what to do for your New Years Eve Party? 2019 will bring us to the end of an era. Goodbye teens and hello 2020. But are you stuck for ideas? Firstly what theme to pick to create the ultimate New Years Eve celebration? well then let Gersch & Rox help a little as we present the Top 10 New Years Eve ideas:

Set sail into the New Year on a sea-life, nautical adventure! Life on the high seas is a thrill ride and a nautical themed New Years Eve party is a real splash of creativity! Want to live your Mermaid dream? Love a good ol knees up and party with Pirates? This theme is a great alternative idea to New Year’s Eve parties and encourages guests to dress in their finest clobber. Like stepping foot on the Titantic. Live out voguing sailor dreams or feel like they are in a Wes Anderson film.

From Mermaids to Pirates and Sailor boys to Tropical show girls. Be the captain of the deck and when the clock strikes midnight witness incredible pirate fire performances to ring in the New Year. A nautical ocean themed event will send your guests on a voyage leaving them thirsty for more. We tailored an aquatic themed New Years party for White City House in 2018 and it went down a splash (see more here)

Venture into a garden of mystical and earthly delights. As you choose a Mystical New Years Eve party, a new world of wonder awaits. Elfin and Pixie like characters, Flower Faeries and en-pointe ballet dancers will bring out the Arthur Rackham in your guests.

Enchanting them to follow each fairy will take a person to another fairy and give them a surprise, a petal/ a poem/ a feather. The fairies can read palms, feel auras and tell the future. Get ready to ring in the New Year with a Mystical tree man with swagger and charm. Leading games and sitting down to play a hand of poker with whomever crosses his path off carefully laid twigs and branches. The mystical New Years Eve Party is a wonderfully alternative way to start the New Year.

As we enter the roaring twenties, 100 years ago alcohol was prohibited and deemed a menace in society. Now there’s a new devil, social media! On New Year’s Eve enter a modern-day Prohibition. As social media is outlawed and guests step into a Dystopian Orwell’s Big Brother future. Phones are banned and anyone caught with one will be publicly humiliated by the phone police. Captured and thrown in to social media prison. Run by social media mobsters this New Years Eve Theme is a tech saloon of hedonistic delights.

An underground Neon party. With caged go-go dancers hooked into VR machines. Performers gather together to follow guests and create conga line. A social media ‘nerd’ sticks verified sticker ticks on people as if liking them on Facebook. A people’s corner where performers one by one stand on a plinth and give their ‘news’ as if it’s been banned on social media. On stage and on the dance floor mixed cabaret performances from a performing Emoji to Let Me Take a Selfie Burlesque dancers perform. This is a modern day spin on the Prohibition theme perfect for a New Years Eve party.

A New Year’s Eve surprise that is fresh and original to 2019. The year the internet tried to storm Area 51. A familiar New Year’s Eve scene on the outside with signs saying ‘Studio 54’ disco balls sparkle and disco music is heard. Guests are signed into a sparkly studio 54 reception and taken to the lifts/stairs/hallway entrance. Inside these entrances sirens go off and red lights flash ‘this is a government warning you are now entering a classified zone. Please keep your eyes down on arrival’.

You are entering Area 54 where disco and aliens collide. From extremely tall alien freaks walkabout breathing out of strange apparatus. On a gurney lies a giant alien of which government medical experts are experimenting on. Aliens on shelves and tv screens display the ‘real news’. Welcome to Area 54, an out of this world disco! Mad max style crews keep guests out of top-secret areas and DJ’s with cyclops eyes spin industrial tunes. United States presidents, half president half lizard with giant lizard tongues and glitchy dance moves. Gorgeous alien GoGo girls decorate the dance floors with choreography and LED space vibes. This is a top-secret New Years Eve party theme we love!

Prepare yourself for the glitz and grim of Victorian England. A blast to another era that will make your New Years Eve parties stand out from the rest. From cloakrooms manned by London pickpockets to glitzy showgirls and chandelier contortionists. This theme brings to life the Victorian era welcoming guests to dress in rags or riches. Old english buskers, comics and mimes litter the hallways of your event. A travelling circus showmen and his wonderful cast of eccentrics from strongmen to dwarf performers light up New Years Eve party.

This New Years Eve theme is filled with roaming Victorian characters and decor that essences rich Victorian England. From cockney sing alongs, choreographed Victorian dancers with smudged lipstick and dirty stockings to an underground Victorian lock in with live performances. Ring in the New Year with and Older Year!

Walk through the main Metro Goldwyn Mayer and into a night of Hollywood glamour. Gorgeous Hollywood movie stars with cigarettes in silver holders, fake furs and dripping with glitz they speak in American drawl. Actors describe the auditions they have just come from and how they are going to ‘make it one day in Hollywood’. Welcome To Once Upon A New Years Eve in Hollywood and submerge your guests are into a live movie set. A sign reads ‘Filming in Progress. Runners are carrying pots of paint and décor. People with step ladders. Directors in director’s chairs and movie cameras. Scene clapper boards, local reporters with old cameras.  Reporters scribbling down interview questions on small note pads. The director shouts ‘Scene’ and ‘Cut’ and scenes are carried out.

The Prop & Costume department. There are large interesting props, billboards and places for guests to have their photos taken. Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Temples and Laurel and Hardy’s practice acts in the spaces between props. The ‘Wrap Party’. Directors and producers are congratulating one another on a fabulous shoot. Whilst glitzy dancers parade. Can-Can girls and stripy acrobats entertain as glitzy Synchronised swimmers do choreographed acts. At Midnight, the Grand New Year’s celebration starts and as New Year’s hits so do glitzy fire performers.

The glitz and glamour of New Year’s Eve sparkling with Golden delights, wealth, grandeur and prosperity. We have the talents to add sparkle, glitz and glamour; from our beautiful golden burlesque dancers to glitter golden partially clad male performers. Decorating venues into a luxurious gold opulent event. With golden Chinese pole performers, A troupe of white and silver feather fan dancers, A Fabergé Egg performance.

A white baby grand piano with tuxedo suited pianist and glitzy songstresses draped beautifully, A dove magician and his divine assistant to Silver clad tap dancers in choreographed routines. Walkabout butlers each with their own talent to entertain guests with acrobatics, up close magic, card tricks, beatboxing and even comedy pick pocketing. This theme lends itself well to the most glamorous of all dressing up and keeps the feeling of wealth and glamour throughout.

New Years this year is time we celebrate our collaborative graduation from 2019 and our teen years and welcome in our 20’s. Think prom, think 80’s, think lamé. Draped in metallic lamé and housing rubix cube seating will be decorated with interactive and immersive performers that bring the theme to life. A double ensemble of frat boys wearing jersey jumpers and speak with American drawl, they carry American footballs and tackle each other throughout the evening and dish out the cheesiest of chat up lines.

An 80’s aerobic dance troupe perform choreographed routines throughout the evening and encourage guests to join in and learn the basic moves. Unconventional Prom king and queen made up of drag king and drag queen sit on elaborately over the top thrones and get progressively drunker as the event goes on. 80’s Breakdancers and bgirls with a large walk about ghetto blaster do dance off challenges with each other and guests. At midnight a dirty dancing double act perform ‘I’ve had the time of my life’ and all performers create a human tunnel for guests to run through all followed by a giant conga and a huge amount of confetti that falls from nets on the ceiling

As we enter the roaring twenties, it only makes sense to have . the popular theme Great Gatsby on the list on New Years Eve Themed Events.

Outrageous. Era-defining. Legendary. Studio 54 is the Party at the mecca of disco culture, the notorious 1970s New York nightclub Studio 54. Nile Rodgers called it ‘the hippest place on the planet’, but the seminal Manhattan venue had a life as short as it was glamorous, closing its doors in February 1980 after only 33 months. With Studio 54 expect the unexpected. Disco glam all the way we have an array of exotic performers to include towering 7ft tall disco drag queens, roller skating double Afro girls, the white horse act itself with LED performance, disco space GoGo dancers and of course a choreographed neon disco troupe!

Don your hot pants and experience the days off glory for yourself, Don’t be surprised to find a real white horse outside…

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As a stage manager at festivals I tend to come across performers of all types and over the many many years as an event professional (Event co-ordinator, stage manager, creative director..the list goes on) I have never really been taken with the art of giant people on giant pegs or whatever it is that is hidden underneath their giant trousers. I actually find it all a bit…well… cheesy.

Cheesy isn’t something we will ever do. Ever. Its not in our remit and boundary pushing cheese just isn’t a thing. So I had to get myself into the mindset of how and why an event professional might want to hire a stilt walker. What is it that makes a stilt walker more bookable and hireable than say a fire performer or fire dancer? For one thing of course insurance is far easier to come by but then all fire breathers are insured for millions of pounds public liability (including ours, just so you are sure). So its not necessarily that.

Fire performers can only work at certain venues. Listed buildings for example are a no go zone and places such as the Tate Gallery or the Arts Club in Mayfair where they have exceptional events and walls covered with priceless art means that bringing fire into the equation even with a considerable amount of insurance just doesn’t weigh up.

So I had to have a good look at what Stilt walkers bring to an event. They are imposing for one thing. They can be seen from a mile off whether inside or outside. Standing sometimes ar seven or eight feet tall it is pretty important that your venue has tall ceilings and no hidden beams, nor steps for that matter.

I noted before adding stilt performers to our repertoire that in fact we would need some personality involved. With such a mighty distance between eye line and soul of the ‘stilt’ the walkers are really high up in comparison to any guests attending an event. It is likely, I surmised, that Stilt walkers are meet’rs and greeters designed to welcome or in some case unnerve guests upon arrival. So personality in stilt performers was hands down a must. As of course was acting ability. They needed to be able to pull off all manner of characters from Lord of the Rings themed events and the requirement for giant Orks to Giant venus fly traps designed to capture passing guests at an event at Kew Gardens, perhaps.

So for stilt walkers here are the criteria or so it would seem ‘Costuming; must be hand tailored and bespoke with a wide selection to fit with a multitude of events, the ability to walk and walk well, a friendly face and personality where required but also the ability to take on other characters and insurance, plenty of insurance.

Once I had discovered the finer points of stilt performance we were able to conjure an interesting ethereal display of stilt walkers for the annual Savitiri charity event at The Arts Club Mayfair. Standing tall were two sensational performers cast and styled as part of a GR Presents creative

collaboration. In between the portico at 40 Dover Street Mayfair they looked sensational. Bentleys were stopping in the street to take a peek from half way up the road and they weren’t even privy to the entertainment we had curated for inside the club itself.

All in all stilt walkers are now my thing and I no longer associate them with fairgrounds but one of the most impressive yet simple tools in taking an event and its personification higher up while remaining personable.

I shall (when I’ve caught my breath) begin to tell you about what they call ‘Bouncy stilts’ because they are quite another ball game.

To book stilt walkers for your event or to talk to us about creative please drop us a line at events@grpresents.co.uk

Speak soon

Saph

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