By Wendy Rosenfield

One show in this year's Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe lineup will surely have both parents and hipsters jostling for tickets: 7 Fingers' Traces.

The Montreal-based company, founded by Cirque du Soleil vets Shana Carroll and Gypsy Snider, presents an anti-Cirque aesthetic with acrobatics stripped down, maskless, mixed with wall-scaling feats of parkour and a casual vibe that Snider compares to the backstage ambience she saw while growing up among the Pickle Family Circus. The 7 Fingers' skills landed them on America's Got Talent, and their cred scored them this headlining Live Arts spot.

But Traces is merely the hottest of this year's hot all-ages festival tickets. Kids can get another high-flying fix in Germantown, at the School of Circus Arts' Green Fairy Cabaret. A success at spring's Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, the show returns for the Philly Fringe. Its title pays tribute to absinthe, a potent spirit particularly beloved by turn-of-the-20th-century Parisian bohemians, but daytime performances are family-friendly, with a no-less-intoxicating mix of homegrown aerialists, acrobats, comedians, and jugglers.

White Box Theatre and Philadelphia director Sebastienne Mundheim helm another PIFA return engagement, Paris Wheels and the Ready-Maids Present: Not the Henri Rousseau That Some of You Know. Whether your kids don't yet know Rousseau and his primitive paintings of curious jungle creatures or already are fans, this interdisciplinary adventure, bursting with performance and puppetry, views Paris through the artist's eyes. Since the show clocks in at just 35 minutes, there's plenty of time to whisk your offspring over to the Philadelphia Museum of Art before or after, to introduce them to the man himself, via his paintings.

Once artistic cross-pollination catches their fancy, younger audiences can visit Zon-Mai, a collaboration between Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, French filmmaker Gilles Delmas, and an international group of 21 dancers, all of whom have immigrated or otherwise experienced displacement, performing inside their homes. The videos, projected on huge screens in the shape of a house, are sure to inspire future living room (or kitchen, or bathroom) performance opportunities. Even better, the installation, located across from the new, strollable Race Street Pier, is free and offers parents a sneak peek at the Live Arts Festival's future permanent headquarters.

Bright Light Theatre Company goes one step further, pairing with Fulbright scholar Mohsin Mohi-Ud-Din, whose Lollipops Crown Music and Arts Initiative taught filmmaking to orphans and street children in Tangier, Morocco. Combining live music with dance and the kids' own films, Bright Light's All Places From Here makes multimedia performance a relevant and eye-opening experience for youngsters, visible proof of art's transformative power.

While the Philly Fringe specializes in blurring genres and blasting boundaries, there's no denying that children love tradition. Ombelico Mask Ensemble, a festival family favorite, brings roughly 500 years of commedia dell'arte stock characters and zany slapstick (think Punch and Judy with humans and masks) to Run Grunt Sing: An Open Air Theatric. Expect improv, live music, and lots of audience interaction in a show its creators, Brendon Gawel and John Bellomo, liken to an earthbound Cirque du Soleil crossed with The Simpsons.

Of course, with nearly 200 productions between them, it's almost unfair to narrow down the Live Arts Festival's and Philly Fringe's potential kid-pleasers to a mere six. The Festival Guide's Live Arts section suggests the age-appropriateness of each curated work, and since many Fringe show descriptions hint at their family-friendliness (or unfriendliness), why not team up with the little ones and do some curating of your own?

Family Highlights

Traces, $10-$55, Merriam Theater, 250 S. Broad St., 9/15, 7 p.m.; 9/16-17, 8 p.m.; 9/17-18, 2 p.m.

Green Fairy Cabaret, $20, Philadelphia School of Circus Arts, 5900A Greene St., 9/8-9, 8 p.m.; 9/10, noon, 9 p.m.

Paris Wheels and the Ready-Maids, $15, Crane Old School, White Space, 1417 N. Second St., 9/10, 17-18, 11 a.m.; 9/10-11, 17-18, 1:30 p.m.; 9/10-11, 17-18, 4 p.m.; 9/11, 13-15, 7 p.m.

Zon-Mai, free, former pumping station, 140 N. Columbus Blvd. (at Race St.), 9/2-17, weekends and Labor Day, noon-8 p.m.; weekdays, 5-8 p.m.

All Places From Here, $17, the Loading Dock, 1236 Frankford Ave., 9/2-4, 8 p.m.; 9/7-10, 8 p.m.; 9/14-17, 8 p.m.

Run Grunt Sing, Free, Liberty Lands Park, 913-61 N. Third St., 9/2-4, 9/7-9, 9/11, 6 p.m.