Took the wife and kidlet to the circus last night. Not one of those new-fangled circuses with animals, but an old fashioned “See Our Amazing Performers Perform Dazzling Feats of Skill!” type of circus. Kind of a low-rent Cirque du Soleil, I would imagine. Some of the performers were remarkable athletes, though, who must have a great deal of native ability–the stuff they were doing isn’t stuff you can just teach anyone. It made me wonder how you wind up in the circus. Through gymnastics? What exactly is the career path that leads to circus performer?
Well for me it was the fact that I grew up in a very large family ( 11 brothers ) and Mom and Dad could only afford a Volkswagon Bug!!!..lol just kidding, I could not control myself, must get more meds.
Well, I know they’re short of human cannonballs. They can’t find people of the right calibre and the ones they’ve got keep getting fired.
Lmfao
Aren’t a lot of circus people from circus families? Like the Flying Wallendas, etc. I’ve always assumed that was the case with the majority of circus people.
I talked to an aerial silk dancer about this very thing. She indeed started out as a gymnast and then enrolled in a circus school.
So it isn’t a case of juggling being the entry drug. Somehow, I had never thought about the possibility of circus schools. Are most of them in Florida?
Thanks. I’ve been looking for a good way to start a conversation with a aerial silk dancer. How’d that work out?
This is right - gymnastics is the typical starting point. From there, you can find a variety of circus schools, like this and this.
My 15 year old cousin is a circus performer. When she was younger she was into gymnastics, then the hyper-competitive side of it turned her off and she got into dancing and hand-balancing. I’m not sure if it was all done through one school but at the least they are very closely tied; a place that teaches kids gymnastics will often do dance, tumbling and other circus arts.
The place that she works with now has a former Cirque du Soleil member as the instructor and these kids are pretty astounding (I’ve seen some of their live shows featuring kids as young as about 6-8 and they do “real legit” routines, it’s not kid stuff). My cousin recently travelled to the East Coast to audition for a circus out there (she won a spot and so will be on the road with them for a few months soon).
It seems to me that one of the most common ways that kids get into circus performing is through gymnastics, that’s ho wmost of the people in my cousin’s circus did. I was a pretty devoted juggler when I was a teenager which is another path into it, you certainly meet similarly-minded people.
I think that something like gymnastics is a better entry point though. Modern performers seem much more multi-talented and so being in generally top physical condition and having that overall sense of rhythm and movement is a big advantage. As much as I enjoyed juggling it didn’t exactly build strength and conditioning.
I’ve seen the École National de Cirque (your second link) performance space in Montréal… quite impressive.
The Wenatchee Youth Circus was started by a high school teacher who was a former circus performer.
Fool Time Circus > Fools in School > Core Staff Bios is run by some ex-coworkers of mine- IIRC, he ran off to join a carnival as a young teen and bounced around learning everything he could.
He and his wife are natural athletes, compact and wiry, and great balance and skill. They just spent a year or so in china learning the rather outre bits of juggling obscuro.
Super sweet people as well.
A few years ago there was a TV show called Cirque du Soleil: The Fire Within, which was a sort of documentary following the newly-hired performers as they put a new Cirque production together and trained for their new acts. It’s on DVD to buy or rent, and might be enlightening. Like everyone above said, as I recall most of them started in gymnastics or dance of some sort.