“It’s hard to be jaded about the trapeze,” says aerialist Raven Hinojosa. “Even if you’ve already decided you’re not going to be all that impressed by anything in life, you’re going to be impressed by the trapeze. You’re so totally engaged when you’re up there that it’s hard for the audience not to be engaged too.”
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Hinojosa, who’s 25 and a native of Austin, Texas, ran away from home when she was 15; that’s also when she changed her name from Monica to Raven. “I was very angry and independent,” she says. “I was ready to be on my own and thought, ‘I’ll be damned if anyone tries to stop me.’” She spent the next few years bouncing around between Austin, Atlanta, Utah, South America (her father’s Bolivian), and a boarding school in Colorado. When she was 19 she studied solo trapeze and tightrope for several months at the School of Circus Arts in San Francisco.
There’s not much of a trapeze scene here, she says, so she’s making her own, teaching a friend her bag of aerial tricks and performing when she can. This weekend the second edition of the Tingle Tangle Menagerie will include two stages, art installations, puppet shows, musical performances, a midsummer’s eve pageant, and oddities like a performance piece featuring a vibrating mass of sand. Each night will conclude with Hinojosa performing an aerial dance on the static trapeze. Shows start at 8 Friday and Saturday, June 20 and 21, at Texas space, 3012 S. Archer. There’s a suggested donation of $10; call 312-375-6746 for more information.
