Cabiri home page
        EZID: Part 2 of the Tea Trilogy home page
        Kai  Tindall bio page
        SHOW TIMES: June 12-13-18-19-20, 7:30 p.m.
        Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center
        Transcript of Kai  Tindall interiview (PDF)


By MARK MOSCHETTI
SPU Sports Information

SEATTLE – Bodies break down. Muscles tire out. Emotions and psyches wear thin.
 
By the time they finish college, even the best, most successful gymnasts say, "Enough is enough."

 

But one year ago, Kai Tindall was saying something quite different.

"Some seniors are ready to be done. But it kind of feels like I'm finally getting going," she remarked just a few days before capping her Seattle Pacific career with a share of the national floor exercise championship. "I feel like I can go two or three more years."
 
The ultimate performer wasn't ready to stop performing. Her college eligibility complete, she needed a new outlet.
                           
In March, Tindall found one – or perhaps, "It kind of found me."

 

She went and joined the circus.
 
"Everyone said 'You're crazy.' They always find it so hard to believe," said Tindall, who has balanced rehearsals with student-teaching, completing her master's, and gymnastics coaching. "Even if I don't get as much sleep, I'm still a happier person because of it."
 
"It's really life-giving for me," she added. "It really feeds my soul."
 
This isn't just any circus, either – no beasts or bigtops here.
 
This is The Cabiri, a Seattle troupe whose members bring stories of mythology and folklore to life using elements  of circus arts, dance, and puppetry. Rather than Ringling Brothers, these performances are more along the lines of Cirque du Soleil, the internationally famous group that has made several successful appearances in the area.
                              
And, instead of taking place under a tent, Cabiri's new show, "EZID: Part 2 of the Tea Trilogy," will be performed on the Cornish Playhouse stage at Seattle Center, beginning Friday night at 7:30.
 
"Some of the stuff is very Cirque du Soelil, but it's also a play," Tindall said. "Cirque has a story. This has a bit more of a plot, and it's a very sequential plot. The acts really tell the story."
 
Whether watching a show last fall, or taking part in this one, Tindall is still getting used to this particular concept.
 
"I've definitely never seen anything like this," she said. "It's very unique in terms of the arts in Seattle."
 
RELUCTANT RECRUIT
For Tindall, graduating last June with her degree in integrated studies / elementary education didn't mean slowing down. No taking a year off or easing into the work world for her.
                                 
She immediately started pursuit of her master's degree in teaching and, last September, began student-teaching at White Center Heights Elementary, a few miles southwest of Seattle. Three or four nights a week, she made the trip back to SPU to help coach with mom Laurel's Falcon Gymnastics Club in Brougham Pavilion.
 
All of it was just getting started when friend Lena Wolfe, already with The Cabiri, invited Tindall to the group's Halloween show.
 
She went, and was intrigued.

But Wolfe's plea to join them went nowhere, as Tindall was feeling the stress of dealing with her jam-packed schedule.
 
So that was that – until this past March. Cabiri was conducting auditions, and this time, Tindall's friend took a different approach.
 
"She said, "We need you – we don't have any gymnasts,'" Tindall said. "So I said, 'OK, sure – I'll audition. I don't think I have the time, but I'll audition.'"
 
Those in charge didn't need much convincing.
 
"Kai is fantastic," said John Murphy, the founder of Cabiri and its artistic director. "She has the attitude of a champion  – the recognition that if you try harder, you will go farther. At the same time, she has the willingness to have self-reflection and to learn from things that she is not familiar with or does not know. She has all of the physical skills we could ever ask for in a performer and dancer, and she is working very hard to learn the theatrical skills."
 
Tindall's calendar wasn't getting any less busy. But the pull of performing was starting to chip away at her initial resistance.
 
 "I really wasn't ready to be done," said Tindall, who adjusted her coaching schedule and added a rehearsal day on weekends. "This is an outlet that takes something I can already do and adds something new.
 
"So I made time for it."
 
FROM GYMNAST TO WARRIOR
In an older warehouse south of downtown Seattle that is Cabiri's rehearsal studio, Kai Tindall is in the process of transforming herself. The "EZID: Part 2 of the Tea Trilogy" show has characters portraying angels, giants – and humans.
 
Tindall is one of the humans, and a fighter-type, at that.
 
"The more gymnastics-y people are warriors," she explained. "We get to protect our village and fight."
 
This show is based on the life, mythology, and many different cultures of the Kurdish people, with a focus on the Yazidi philosophy. Earlier this year, artistic director Murphy spent three months living in refugee camps in the area and visited Yazidi villages close to those camps. War has destroyed much of their country and displaced millions of its people.
 
"Much of the point of EZID is to share with Americans the folklore which enables a people to survive in times of strife that the Western mind cannot imagine," Murphy said.
 
Tindall said of her role in telling the story, "I see all these terrors – my people have nothing left. The more and more we get into the plot, the easier it is to bring out that character."

 

Though not as easy as it might sound. While Tindall's new pursuit has many of the physical elements of gymnastics, it doesn't necessarily have the same mindset as, say, the floor exercise.
 
"This is so character-based. That's really new waters for me," Tindall said. "I've had a peppy façade that I put on with the floor. But with this, there's a plot, there's a story, and I'm a character in the story. I'm doing it as the person in this story who has feeling, and has this whole depth to it."
 
Depth at some moments … dizzying heights at others.
 
"One day (recently), we did our aerials without mats," Tindall said. "I climbed up, did the whole sequence, got into position, and did a salto out of it.
 
"I looked down and it's like, 'Wow, that's 20 feet down – I hope I did this right,' she added with a slight laugh. "That's a little more out of my comfort zone."
 
ON WITH THE SHOW
From two rehearsals a week most of the year, Tindall and her fellow performers amped it up as Friday's opening night has drawn closer. One week toward the end of May, she was able to spend some 21 hours working with a former Cirque du Soleil director.
 
"It was quite busy, but we really saw the show come together," she said.
 
In the days leading up to the debut, the troupe prepared to move rehearsals from the industrial district studio into the theatre at Cornish.

 

"Without having some of the set pieces, I have to pretend to be this person," she said. "I'm supposed to be hit by a flood, and I'm imagining water.
 
"I think once we get into the theatre, it'll make more of an impact."
 
True to her busy-every-minute mantra, Tindall will be doing more than just be performing on June 12.
 
She'll be graduating with her master's degree, as well.
 
"We have hooding and graduation at 2 p.m. Then I have to report to get ready and do make-up and all that by 5," she said. "I'll be running straight from graduation to opening night."
 
After the five shows in Seattle, the troupe will continue to rehearse, as it gets occasional requests to perform at corporate functions.
 
Tindall, who will start teaching kindergarten full time at Laura Ingalls Wilder Elementary in nearby Woodinville next fall, plans to stick with it as long as her schedule – and perhaps her stamina – will allow.
 
"If it doesn't work, then something will have to go," she said. "But if it's something that will make me a happier person and a better person, then I'll keep doing it.
 
"Kindergarten teacher by day, circus performer by night," she added with a laugh and a big grin.
 
For some, enough is enough.
 
But for Kai Tindall …
 
… maybe enough never is.