A Day With The CIRCUS

What do you remember about the circus? Maybe you remember gaudy costumes, or carved wooden emblazonry, or thick crowds, their collective waistline at your eye-level. Maybe you remember the smells: sawdust, roasted peanuts, canvas, hot caramel and the wet-leather-on-a-radiator musk of exotic animals.

Elephants leave a particularly durable image. As a boy, I accepted the skill of the acrobats, equestrian and trapeze artists with some indifference, but the elephants had bulk. Like the blue whale and the dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History, the elephant is an undeniably massive presence at the circus.

The elephant is a skilled performer as well, and this is the real attraction. Some claim that a circus is incomplete without clowns and elephants. I only partially agree. I've never liked clowns. I'm repelled by their enforced hilarity and mask of painted smiles. I don't trust a person who is always happy. I wonder what lurks under the facade. An elephant, on the other hand, not only never forgets; it never smiles.

Last Thursday I went to The Big Apple Circus, a one-ring show with the big-top pitched at Marine Industrial Park, twenty minutes by foot from the State T-stop. The Big Apple is a two-elephant circus. That is how a circus used to be advertised, by the elephant-count. In the late nineteenth century, circus owners competed for the elephant crown. In 1881, Barnum had four elephants, Forepaugh had five, and the Sells Brothers called their gig the "Great European Seven Elephant Railroad Show." No match for Pompey, who is 61 B.C. advertised a celebration at the Circus Maximus in his own honor and promised that five hundred lions and twenty pachyderms would be slain.

Ringling Brothers was the last circus I had seen, twelve years earlier. Their three-ring extravaganza in a vaulted coliseum whose ceiling receded into darkness hyperstimulated the senses of a ten-year-old. Brightly clad acrobats, new smells, band music and peanuts demanded simultaneous attention. To get back to my seat, I parted the madding crowd by holding my cotton candy out in front and marching straight ahead.

The Big Apple is different. The scale is much smaller: A clown at ground level can throw an inflated beach ball to the top row, and the ring is just three and one-half elephant lengths across. The audience remains seated except during intermission. The air is well circulated, and there is a noticeable lack of circus smell. You are close enough to the action so that in slow moments you consider what percentage of the ticket price goes for liability insurance. With the lights lowered, you share with the performers a living-room intimacy.

Barnum called himself "Prince of Humbugs," but today the circus has become respectable. The troupers study theater, ballet, and circus arts. Many have college degrees. I half expect to find in the program a list of corporate contributions and NEA matching funds, and, in fact, I do. The Big Apple is a not-for-profit organization; a donation of $2500 gains admission to the Ringmaster's Circle. And although The Big Apple is officially non-profit, the concession stand rakes it in. A cotton candy costs four dollars, an 11-oz bottle of water costs $2.50 (more than a soda or apple juice).

The Big Apple parades the usual assortment of acts. There are horse tricks, clowns, acrobats and a band. This array has changed surprisingly little in two hundred years. In 1770, Philip Astley, a skilled equestrian who could ride balanced on his head, brought together in one ring "Chinese Shadows, Tumbling, Slack-Rope Vaulting, Egyptian Pyramids" and a clown named Burt. Flocks of Londoners paid a shilling to see the show, the first modern circus.

In a business filled with true showmen, Paul Binder, the ringmaster of The Big Apple, seems modest by comparison. He allows the skill of the performers to woo the audience. When he introduces the Flying Vasquez, he does not mention that Miguel was the first trapeze artist in history to complete a quadruple somersault, formerly thought impossible.

Each night Miguel will attempt the quad only once. The uninitiated observer sees only a blur of sequined tights, tucked, spinning, floating up there like a soap bubble before gravity resumes and the jumper's hands lock with the catcher. There he goes, now it's over.

Miguel has an 80.6 percent success rate with the quad. One night out of five the grip with brother Juan is not sure, fingers do not clutch wrists, and for one sickening instant Miguel drops toward the ground. The knot in your stomach rips apart, and you think that is has finally happened.

There are several sports in which the price of a ticket buys a knot in the stomach: car racing, bull-fighting, high-diving. No one wants it to happen, but everyone knows it might. And that is why we watch. You admire the skill and the grace, but you can't avoid the fact that you are paying to watch people risk their lives. He makes a living facing danger for your entertainment.

A few weeks ago I saw bullfight in Madrid. I didn't enjoy it very much. The killing of the bull did not disturb me, I just didn't see the point. The matador has all the advantages. But there are always those horns. After three bulls were killed that day, it finally happened to a matador. It didn't bother me.

Last Thursday we thought it had finally happened to Miguel. Juan missed the catch. This happens one night out of five, but we didn't know that then. Miguel landed safely in the net, and we cheered. Television has done great damage to the circus business. The old circus owners knew that familiarity breeds poor ticket sales. They kept their side-show freaks from entering town so residents could not stare for free. The feats of the acrobat or juggler on the glowing screen seem disconnected from reality. Anything is possible on television, and the difficult appears commonplace.

Television cannot convey the awkwardness and impossibility of an elephant standing on its head. After all, an elephant that climbs onto a small table, or an elephant holding a woman in its trunk, is still unmistakably an elephant. But an elephant that rolls forward, shoots its hind legs up, plants the head, and stays vertical looks like a pudgy younger brother showing off.

How did the trainer, William Woodcock, convince Peggy and Anna May to do this? How did he tell them to tumble forward? You can't just ask politely. This is not something elephants do in the wild. It is not easy to teach this move to a human, much less a mammal the size of a dumptruck. The other elephant tricks were expected, but the headstand seemed supernatural.

The son of the circus pioneer Philip Astley joined the family business. At age 10, John could dance a minuet on three horses and so impressed Marie Antoinette that she presented him with a gold medallion. Lord George Sander, who gave himself the title and was Great Britain's equivalent of P. T. Barnum, was also born into a circus family.

Gina Romanos, the teacher of the 13 children who travel with The Big Apple, has a classroom on wheels, a converted Winnebago named the "One-Ring School-house." Past the curtain with the sign, "Performers Only," there is no jungle of dressing rooms and props. Instead, a deserted back lot stands where the motor homes and 18-wheelers were parked.

Her Winnebago contains the distilled essence of an elementary school. There is Elmer's glue, board games, a teaching clock, a green blackboard with big white stamped letters, crayons, scissors, math books, everything except an aquarium.

"The children are thirsty to learn," she says. "They see their parents practicing all day, and they want something to practice. Most are one or two grade levels beyond their age. The older ones teach the younger ones."

The circus children live in an extended family of adults and are sometimes given bit parts in the show. Living on the road, exposed to big crowds and strange cities, they must grow up faster than most of us. On a patch of asphalt in front of the Winnebago, Romanos has sketched out hopscotch squares. "This," she says, "is their playground."