Auburn UPC's most recent Tiger Nights event, Cirque d' Auburn, entranced audiences and raised the standard for student events to new heights. The Cirque du Soleil inspired circus and carnival event took place Friday, April 12 at the student center from 7:00 p.m.-midnight.
"Our theme is circus, or Cirque du Soleil, we kind of mixed them together," said Amanda Hurite, sophomore in industrial engineering and coordinator of the event. "We did a lot of food that's circus themed: corn dogs, hot dogs, funnel cakes; we have fried Oreos this year."
Cirque d' Auburn's admission was free with a valid TigerCard and $5 for any non-students.
"Everything we give out is free. We use the student's activities fees through SGA so we're trying to give back to Auburn," Hurite said. "That's what UPC is about."
Besides a variety of free food and circus inspired activities, the event featured two performers.
"Aerial artists are going to be doing acrobatics and a ribbon show, and a magician is going to be doing a hypnosis show and wandering around doing magic tricks for students," Hurite said.
Aerial Arts Entertainment, based out of Pensacola, Fla., provided the acrobats for the evening.
"Louis McCauley will be doing our hand balancing, we'll have another dancer doing ribbon and we'll have two aerialists," said Amy Tuttle, one of the act's aerialists.
McCauley said that all of the performers had backgrounds in gymnastics and diving.
"Imagine gymnastics, dance and acrobatics," Tuttle said. "We just do it up in the air."
Students reacted positively to the acrobatics, saying it was one of the features that made the event particularly special.
"The acrobatics were glorious. Truly amazing," said Mary Palmer Cook, freshman in chemical engineering.
Preston Estes, freshman in English, said that he wished he could be that graceful on land, let alone in the air.
"This is my first Tiger Nights event, and it's awesome," said Austin Dupper, freshman in industrial engineering. "All of the different free stuff, the performers, it's a blast."
Mark Irish, comedy hypnotist, was accompanied by his rabbit Einstein. Irish's act took place in the student center's ballroom with an audience that had to resort to standing because it was so crowded.
"His name is Einstein, the world's largest mind-reading rabbit," Irish said. "The rabbit's physic, the magician's psychotic, together we make a great team."
Einstein, a 10-month old Flemish Giant, performed a card trick where he would correctly choose an audience member's card out of a deck. Irish said like most of us, the rabbit worked for food, offering the rabbit a carrot after each trick.
Irish's hypnosis act began with approximately 20 volunteers from the audience. That number shrank to 10 as less susceptible volunteers were identified and excluded.
"I think that 95 percent of all people can be hypnotized," Irish said. "But, they're less likely to be hypnotized in front of other people because they're not sure what they're going to do."
Irish's volunteers were subjected to a variety of skits after time spent ensuring that they were completely relaxed. Some of the skits included telling the volunteers they were watching different genres of movies, making them believe they were Martians, or interpreters, and convincing them they were on "The Jerry Springer Show," confronting their fiance about being in love with a shoe.
Irish said that college and high school students were more susceptible to hypnosis because they cared less about what other people thought about them.
"I had one guy during 'The Jerry Springer Show' skit actually get down on the ground and start punching the shoe," Irish said.
Cook, a hypnosis volunteer, said all she could remember was laughing a lot and envisioning her backyard and a cloud floating in the sky, Irish's method of getting his volunteers to relax.
"It felt like it only lasted a few minutes," said Estes, another hypnosis volunteer.
Irish said the volunteer's response to how long they believed they were on stage was indicative of how hypnotized they were. The ones who felt like it only lasted a couple minutes were more deeply hypnotized.
Irish left his volunteers with a gift: from now on, whenever they pressed their thumb and pointer finger together, they would become more focused on whatever task they were doing.
"I feel really focused," Estes said. "I'm thinking that this should be weird, but it seems natural."
Other activities during Cirque d' Auburn included balloon artists, a photo booth, trivia questions and a student who performed as a mime artist, acting out many of the traditional mannerisms.
" , , ," the mime said.
Hurite said that they had 60-70 staff for the event, and are brainstorming ideas for future events.
"Hopefully, we'll get something with extreme sports, but we're not sure what's going to happen yet so I can't give you any details," Hurite said.
UPC's next event is an open mic night at Starbucks in the student center on April 16.
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