With straight jackets, piles of glass and mind reading, Adult Circus duo Chris Chelko and Michael DuBois entertained a full house in the Student Union Theater this past Tuesday night.
The Adult Circus has performed at UB twice in the past year.
"We did our stage show here a year ago and we did Spring Fest this past spring, and it was really fun," Chelko said.
The act began as DuBois ran out onstage and demanded energy from the audience of almost 200 people, asking those present to clap every time he bounced a mini basketball on his head. In the middle of the stunt, he surprised the crowd by stripping down to a muscle shirt.
DuBois then chose audience member Julianne Stiene, a freshman pharmacy major, to assist him in a juggling act. He began juggling three balls, with Stiene gradually throwing him balls until he juggled seven.
"It was a lot of fun. I was shocked," Stiene said.
According to DuBois, juggling seven balls at once is a feat that only about 50 people can do and only about five actually perform.
Next, Chelko performed a trick in which he and his assistant each shredded a newspaper and then attempted to unfold it whole. Chelko's newspaper mysteriously came out whole while his assistant's fell to the floor in pieces.
The magician did, however, offer the crowd an answer. While performing the trick again in slow motion, DuBois appeared on the stage in a Superman costume and replaced Chelko's ripped paper with a new one.
"Didn't bring your Superman, did you?" Chelko said to his assistant at the end of the trick.
The newspaper routine is one of Chelko's favorites.
"Everybody loves that routine because it's funny and people think they're going to learn a trick when really they get spoofed," Chelko said. "It's really just a fun time and everyone seems to let loose at that time in the show."
DuBois' big trick came toward the end of the show when he was strapped into a straight jacket and got onto a seven-foot tall unicycle. While the crowd cried, "Don't do it!" DuBois freed himself from the straight jacket without falling.
Chelko and DuBois also astonished the crowd with their mind-reading skills. DuBois wrapped his head in aluminum foil while Chelko went out into the crowd to ask audience members their birth dates, all of which DuBois was able to guess correctly.
They ended the show with a stunt that they are known for performing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Chelko jumped onto a pile of broken glass and winced as DuBois stood on top of his shoulders and juggled three foot-long machete knives.
"That last part with the glass and the machetes was really cool; it was pretty nifty," Stiene said.
Other students who watched the trick were impressed, but uneasy.
"It was amazing - I've seen the circus, but nothing like that," said Alex Sisca, a sophomore business administration major. "The glass was really creepy and the mind-reading was ridiculous."
According to Chelko, the Adult Circus has a unique act, offering more than just the standard magic show.
"We decided to do a variety show because our philosophy is that if we do a magic show or a juggling show people tend to get bored 15 minutes after they've seen the same kind of thing," Chelko said. "By us changing it every 10 to 15 minutes in the show to a new segment, people don't usually get bored."
According to Chelko, the college crowd is their favorite kind of audience.
"College audiences are always great because they're a younger-minded crowd," Chelko said. "They get what we're about."
Students were impressed with the duo's show and left the theater satisfied.
"It was better than I thought (it would be)," Sisca said. "It was really cool. I didn't expect it to be so crazy."
