“BETTY BRAWN,” who bills herself as the world’s strongest woman, balanced two break-dancers on her back yesterday as other performers unicycled and wriggled their way out of straitjackets in Martha Schwartz Square at the Grand Canal Dock. This was just a preview for the AIB Street Performance World Championship, from June 18th to 21st, during which Merrion Square will be full of street performers doing comedy acts, hammering nails into their heads and making sandwiches with their toes.
The championship, bringing together 31 of the most bizarre and impressive acts from around the world, is being held in Dublin for the fourth year. It will also be held for the first time at the Cork Midsummer Festival on June 13th and 14th.
The main prize for first place, chosen by audience members voting after the shows, is that they can come back to Dublin next year to perform again, said co-founder Connor McCarthy (29). “Irish audiences are the best in the world,” he said. McCarthy and his partner, Mark Duckenfield (30), founded the competition during a “particularly boring period in both of our careers”, according to McCarthy. They met at Trinity College where they were studying computer science.
Kim Potter (36), of New Zealand, performs as a character named “Vinyl Burns”. The act involves a unicycle, music and a ukulele. New Yorker Magic Brian (37), started his act, which includes freeing himself from a straitjacket and 40 foot of chains, nine years ago. He bought a straitjacket and had his roommate put him in it. “I rolled around on the living room floor for a while and told him not to leave until I got out of it,” he said.
American break dancers Julio “Klown” Santiago (41), William “Ill Will” Sanchez (26), and Anthony “Ready” Rosa (26), started their career in Times Square. Their act is unique because they engage the audience with dance-offs and comedy skits, Santiago said.
Other acts include Betty Brawn, from Australia, the “strongest woman alive”; Alakazam, from Australia, who can squeeze his entire body through the mouth of a squash racket, contortionist Bendy Em from the UK and American Rob Williams, who makes sandwiches with his feet.
Toons (38), of Denmark, performs a routine he called “the professional idiot”, which he’s been practising since getting a unicycle at age 10. “Ireland is one of the countries that you go to, and it starts raining, and the audience stays,” he said.