BRATTLEBORO — A bit of the circus came to a grassy meadow off Town Crier Drive on Sunday as the New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA) celebrated the first step toward building its new home on the site.
NECCA purchased three acres of land that sits just above Putney Road earlier this year. It plans to build a $1.2 million, 15,000-square foot facility and move from its current school site at the Cotton Mill.
But until construction begins, the school set up its outdoor flying trapeze on the site. Previously sited in Guilford, NECCA will be doing its outdoor aerial classes here for the rest of the summer.
The school held a “free fly day” to give people a taste of the trapeze, and about 70 people of all ages signed up.
The founders of the school, Elsie Smith and Serenity Smith Forchion, weren't able to attend Sunday's ribbon cutting. Pinch-hitting was NECCA board president Kerry Secrest.
Secrest said that the sisters “were committed to finding a place that would suit the needs of our community students as well as the regional, national, and international students that we frequently host.
“This property is important to us because it meets all these needs: proximity to a vital downtown, easy to get to from downtown and further afar, the feeling of nature while being close to services like lodging and food, easy to walk to, and easy to drive to.”
She saluted former Brattleboro Development Credit Corp. Executive Director Jeff Lewis, “who supported the vision of NECCA from the very beginning, when they won the Business Plan competition and were awarded $20,000 to start up.”
And she praised Diana Bingham of Brattleboro, calling her “a fierce supporter of Serenity and Elsie and the NECCA vision,” who donated the money to buy the Town Crier Drive site. Both Lewis and Bingham joined Secrest and Bill Forchion for the ribbon cutting ceremony.
Secrest was the first person on the trapeze, and she admitted that she needed to draw upon her gymnastics training while she was flying through the air.
“My first thought was, 'Oh, my gosh, this is crazy,' but the next thought was, 'This is so awesome!'”
For Desiree Dukes of Troy, N.Y., she drove almost two hours for a chance to go on the trapeze.
“I've been thinking about and thought I have to go back to Brooklyn [her hometown] to do it,” she said. “Then I saw this was happening and had to come.”
Sporting a Superman T-shirt, Dukes said she loves to do things “that are different and unusual,” such as roller derby and rugby, so the flying trapeze was right up her alley.
Safety lines and a landing net made the trapeze experience a safe one for those who dared to try it. Getting up to the 50-foot-high platform was another story.
Eight-year-old Annie Siegel said climbing up the narrow metal ladder to get to the platform was as scary as taking that first swing out in the air.
“It was fun,” she said. “I was scared, but it was fun.”
And, she added, she would love to do it again.