Gotta admit … I didn’t expect to love the circus.
When I thought of them I thought of … squirm-inducing “freak shows” where people gawked at women with facial hair or conjoined twins … or 19th century fraudsters passing off some construction of fish bones and papier mache as a mermaid.
I have this thing about carnivals, trained animal shows, or theme parks … when I go, all I see are cheap tricks, long lines, plastic waste, underpaid service employees, and overpriced souvenirs. I know … I’m a scrooge … but really, it’s very hard to enjoy myself when part of my brain is repeatedly screaming, “It’s a scam!”
So when Laura got two discounted tickets to Cirque du Soleil my expectations were … low. At least no one would be using whips and chairs to tame a lion or making elephants balance on a stool.
I remember finding our seats, and thinking, “Huh … the floor’s not sticky with spilled Coke.”
Then, I thought, “Oh damn. I hope there’s no clowns. I hate clowns. Especially when they try to get the audience to participate in some ridiculous physical comedy bit … or worse … pressure some volunteer to come up on stage for a mildly embarrassing bit role as their straight-man.”
And as I thought that, the lights went down, and I fell out of a plane.
At least … that’s what it felt like. It was so unexpected.
In one act, early on, a man trepidatiously turns a giant wind-up key in the middle of the stage and the whole tent comes alive. Performers dressed in colorful feathers come from nowhere. They turn and flip through hoops, perfectly evoking the hummingbirds. Through them, one woman dashes out onto the stage at a full sprint. She is not a hummingbird, but a butterfly whose wings unfurled to fill the tent … each one twenty feet wide. And a conveyor set into the stage moves beneath her so that no matter how fast she leaps and wheels, she seems to fly in place. A look of transcendent joy on her face.
My low expectations had been pulverized. This wasn’t a series of stunts. This was an entire dreamworld, a story with dozens of characters and a thousand details. No matter where I looked, I could not see them all. I would catch hidden bits of choreography and dance out of the corner of my eye, and by the time I turned back the set had completely transformed.
Sure, there were crazy stunts … things that really did defy belief, things that must have taken years of training just to attempt. And they were wonderful. But what really touched my heart was a story. I’d come expecting … diversion … but instead I found waves of inspiration, melancholy, joy, and an ache of nostalgia for a place I’d never been.
By intermission, I was trying to catch my breath and wiping tears from my eyes. When Laura asked me what I thought of the show, I was so stunned that I couldn’t answer.
[Long pause.]
Call me a scrooge all you want. But here’s the thing. I still think I had good reason to be skeptical.
The history of the circus is replete with con-men. Despite what you saw in The Greatest Showan, P.T. Barnum was a first-rate asshole. He shamelessly lied, exploited his performers, perpetrated hoaxes, and conned his audiences. He may never have literally said, “A sucker is born every minute,” but there’s no doubt he lived his life that way. Chicanery was the norm in circus, not the exception … all the way back to ancient Rome.
When I left that show … after the euphoria dissipated … I had to ask myself why I found it so moving while trips I’ve taken to Orlando theme parks … which tried to create the same kind of immersive wonderland left me feeling … kinda gross.
I’m still not sure exactly what the magic is. But I can tell you a few things that it’s not. Clearly, it’s not something inherent in circus or theme parks. It’s easy to judge art forms, like I judged the circus, based on stereotypes … comic books, graffiti, burlesque, soap operas … They may tend to be shallow or cheap or appeal to voyeurism or cruelty. But tendency is not destiny, and every genre has its moments of genius. Maybe even a theme park will someday surprise me the way the circus did.
It’s not tone, either. Art doesn’t have to “say something” serious. Sometimes it’s just fun.
It’s not scale, either. Something isn’t inherently bad because it’s popular or because there’s a big corporate infrastructure behind it. Cirque du Soleil, itself, is a billion dollar company with shows all over the world. Hollywood movies can cost hundreds of millions of dollars and involve thousands of people. Some of them are clearly trash that came out of an executive boardroom to generate ticket sales while others will echo in your heart for a lifetime.
Commerce does, I think, have some role to play. But it’s no the whole thing. It’s not as simple as art good, money bad. In our world, there is no way around it. If you want to dedicate yourself to art, then you’ve gotta sell it. And an audience that respects its artists ought to pay them generously for the essential work of uplifting human hearts.
The more I reflected, the more I realized that the boundary that I’d drawn between cynical entertainment and life-affirming art was not so clear.
The circus might be a business, but as I learned that day, it can be more. Even though we live in a world that elevates P. T. Barnums … Even though entertainment has always been exploited by cynics and con-men to separate people from their money … authentic art is everywhere. Even within the most rapacious entertainment companies, there are people making true and beautiful things.
What I saw that day under le chapiteau, were some of the finest artists in the world. These were people who loved circus, who had seen something in its tradition that I hadn’t seen. They had loved it so much that they had given it their lives. The things that they did took years of dedication and training. It also took a great deal of risk, not just the risks of falling from trapeze or aerial fabric … but of livelihood. Like many arts, the world of circus is highly competitive. Only a fraction of those who want to will ever make it their livelihood. But the only way to possibly get there is to sacrifice the years of your life when you’d go to college or building a dependable career. Financially, you are probably working without a net. And then you have to explain to your parents why, instead of going to college, you are spending every day in a gym practicing juggling bricks off a trampoline or launching a partner into the air with a see-saw. Circus is a path that would bring you far away from family and friends, sometimes for years. It is the type of thing that would make it hard to have a family or even a marriage. And yet people chose it. And I am indebted to them for it.
And it’s not just performers either. They are the visible tip of an iceberg. A whole community worked to write the story, block the theater, choreograph the dance, meticulously build each costume by hand, perfect the makeup, craft a thousand ingenious set pieces, compose the music and play it with grace. And keep the books. Tend to the injured. Sell the tickets. Turn off the light.
Perhaps the greatest act of the circus is not the feats of balance or agility. It is the synchrony … the perfected art of teamwork. In the circus, your life might literally depend on someone else being in the right position in the right place at the right instant. But behind every daredevil mid-air catch, there are hundreds of people all focused on telling one story in a way that will amaze and delight. To be part of something where so many work together for one common beautiful vision and see it become real. Well, that’s enough to make any child’s heart dream of running away and joining them.