For the past 3 years or so, two good friends of mine have been building their skills and their audience through the performance of a mutant hybrid of yoga and acrobatics. Aptly named AcroEntertainment, Kaci Torres and Katie Magee have been performing on street corners, in night clubs and warehouses, and at children’s parties and other events. In the past year or so, they’ve been joining up with performers of many stripes to bring a festive and entertaining show — jugglers, hula hoopers, and fire dancers, to name a few. Together, they’ve been bringing the streets and venues of Raleigh a type of performance not yet seen before.

The next couple of months will see even more developments and opportunities for the loose group of performers.

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One of my favorite spots to view the city skyline: the intersection of Davie and McDowell Streets.

I started out with only a Facebook status update and the vague directions “across from the Carmax on Glenwood” to go on. An hour and a half later, I found the Water Garden.

Walking along Glenwood Avenue after it leaves downtown Raleigh, one feels beyond doubt that this is not a place intended for human traffic. Furniture warehouses and car lots sit in misanthropic isolation off of a busy road with no sidewalk. You’re not supposed to walk around here, and if you do, you feel small and lost in a blinding, concrete commercial desert. On foot, you realize how far apart everything is, how much space there is that possibly no one has walked in years.

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