Foot to Foot

Nice!

Overheard Backstage

Before the show:

"It's funny how all those kids out there are waiting for us to make them happy... and none of us want to."

Here He Comes Now

I'm not going to name names, but we all know which artist I'm talking about...

Next...

I mentioned how a week into the tour we already had an artist miss a show due to injury. Well, one week later we were another man down. Only this time it was the trumpet player and band leader. He was hospitalized for bleeding in the stomach. The saxophone player stepped in as interim band leader and, I dare say, did a great job. The band very much held it together, adapted the music well, and played a great show.

The only problem now is, as the French say, il n'y a jamais deux sans trois*...






* There's never two without three.

As Old As You Feel

You're only as old as you feel! Age is only a number! How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?

I've heard all these things before, and I'm sure you have as well. And I try to keep them in mind, I really do. But there are some days were I really do feel old. Okay, maybe not old. But definitely older. Or perhaps just not as young as my fellow artists.

While most of my counterparts on stage are in their early twenties, I'll be turning thirty in the fall. With my last company I was easily one of the youngest and with most of my colleagues there was an age difference of ten to twenty years. But I never really felt the difference. Here a mere six years feels like a full generation.

I know I'm a very different person now than when I was 23. And I certainly have different wants and needs. But holy crap, sometimes it feels like I'm in kindergarten. During one rehearsal before the premiere, one of the artists literally bent over, turned his butt to us, started smacking it and yelled out "I need attention!"

I don't know if he was serious or not, but you would think someone would have sense enough to know that if it was a joke, it was neither the time or the place.

As time goes by, I find myself spending more and more time with the workers, and less and less with the artists. Funny how it always tends to work out that way.

Smooth Move

It was the worst build up yet. We were in a field masquerading as a mud pit, it was pouring rain, there was snow on the ground, and it was freezing cold. This circus puts down sawdust when it's wet, and I think we may be responsible for some serious deforestation considering the amount that was put down on this build. For reasons that I do not understand, the build up took five hours instead of the hour and a half I hear it should take (we've never even come close to this).

When it was finally time to break for lunch, we were all pretty miserable. But that's when this circus showed us just how classy they are.

The circus director missed the beginning of the morning's build up. You know know why? He went to a local bakery and bought everyone beautiful and delicious pastries.

Delicious cake may not be the way to your heart, but it sure as hell is to mine. Well played, circus. Well played!

Blood, Sweat, and Tears?

More like mud, snow, and sawdust... Come on, Switzerland. Get it together!

Small Victories

As we made our way through yet another miserable build up, I looked over to the stage only to have my heart sink. Just looking at it I could see that it sloped dramatically downward toward the audience. Looking more closely I saw that before the slope really got going, there was first a small hill to get over. The stage as a whole was nothing short of wavy. I could feel the tears welling up inside. Another town, another fight against the floor. And this one looked to be a doozy.

When the build up was finally done I went to speak with one of the folks in charge. Not to complain about the floor, I know the guys who build it up are doing their best. It's not like I didn't notice the mud and the rain and the lumpy field we had to work with. What was really bothering me is that I felt dishonest. I was hired to do a job and so far, I've only been able to deliver a few times. And the more I struggle, the more I wonder if it's not so much the floor that is bad, but me. Needless to say, the idea of spending the next seven months like this makes me want to run screaming for the hills.

I was assured that they can see it's the floor that's the problem and that they too feel badly about the conditions. They also added that it's okay because I still give a a good performance, even if it's not at the level I would like it to be, and also, the public always reacts well, so they're happy.

Toward the end of this conversation, the director of the circus joined us and echoed those sentiments. What I didn't know is that after I left, he went to look at the floor. In a nutshell, he looked at it, shook his head, stated that it wasn't possible that the floor was in that state, and had the workers reinstall it.

On the one hand, I was very happy about this. On the other, I felt kind of bad. The workers have the longest days imaginable, and I'm sure that putting the floor up a second time was not the most welcomed assignment of the day. It was surely not my intention to have them do so.

And was it really worth it? I don't know. I tried the floor and I dare say it may even be worse than in Lenzburg. I had to cut at least three lines from my act and replace them with the simplest moves possible. Falling was embarrassing. But so is performing an act that I could have done in my first year of circus school...

Strike a Pose

Currently my favourite circus picture ever. Photo by Stanley Kubrick.

Shut Up

Ah, the floor. How many times have I talked about the floor? Enough for even me to be sick of it. But the truth is, I am at the complete mercy of the floor I have to perform on. And no matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to articulate just how important the quality of the floor is, the effect it has on what I do, and just how incredibly difficult my life becomes when the floor is out to get me.

After my first disastrous show in Lenzburg, one of my co-workers, a chap fresh out of circus school in his early twenties turned to me and said "That's live performance."

I wanted to smack him so badly.

No, dear boy, that is not live performance. Live performance is my trapeze being a little crooked but me doing my job anyway. Live performance is me messing up one of my tricks but making it look like I did it on purpose, or at the very least, smiling through it and getting the crowd on my side. Live performance is something going wrong back stage and everyone pulling together to make the show work regardless. That is live performance.

Having conditions which make it impossible to do your job is not live performance. Having what essentially amounts to unsafe conditions is not live performance. If I were to go up to him and say "Looks like your mat got lost during transport, you can do your act without it, right?" he would not smile and say "Sure! That's live performance!" He would say that he would not be doing his act until a new mat was found.

Live performance means things go wrong. But not even having a fighting chance before the lights even come up? I'm sorry, but that's just poor working conditions.

That Didn't Take Long...

It should come as no surprise that, in the circus, sometimes people get hurt. Bumps, burns, and bruises happen every day. Usually multiple times. Then, of course, there are the kinds of injuries that result in missing performances.

It only took eight shows for us to reach that point.

In the opening moments of the first act of the second half, our slackline/trickline walker sprained his ankle. He managed to complete his act and, interestingly, thought it was the best one he'd done so far! Unfortunately the high of doing a great number was short lived as he was unable to do his act for the next two shows. An MRI later revealed that he completely broke one of his ligaments. While he can still work, he'll have to wear this crazy brace for the next five weeks.

We've all been working insanely hard. Hopefully this is just an isolated incident and not a preview of things to come as fatigue continues to accumulate.

BEST. BED. EVER.

First Stop, Hell

After a smashing premiere, the circus packed up and continued on its merry way. Despite not having the faintest idea of what we were doing, the first build down actually went pretty smoothly. It only took us two and a half hours to get everything packed into the trucks. I think that's still an hour and a half longer than it should take, but still!

Sadly, this victory was short lived and did nothing more than fill us all with a false sense of hope as far as the build up was concerned. I'm told the build up should really only take an hour and a half. It took us four and a half hours.

Four and a half hours.

And the only reason we stopped after four and a half hours is because the kitchen is on a tight schedule and we had to get to lunch. The truth is, we were only mostly finished after four and a half hours. There were still little things to do like set up all the backstage and sweep up what seemed like eight tonnes of sawdust.

After inhaling my lunch I ran back to the tent because it was absolutely imperative that I test the floor before the show. That's right, we took a break for lunch an hour and a half before we were to start the first show of a two show day.

When I got to the tent, I discovered that the Chinese pole girls had left their eight million pound pole in the middle of the stage. Unable to move it myself, I tried to set it to the side, only by that time they had to clean the floor, so I still couldn't do wheel. At that point I was told to go put on my make-up and come back. When I did get back, the floor was still unavailable and now everyone was clamouring to do their pre-set.

Eventually I managed to try the floor and sweet merciful crap it was a disaster. It was super sloped from back to front, and also down to the right. In spirals, I was flung back up or driven down to the corner where I would have to end my spirals prematurely or risk falling off the stage or hitting the ring wall. As for straight lines... forget it. In one direction, any effort on my part meant slamming into the decor I was rolling so fast, and in the other direction I had to push with every ounce of strength I had, and even then, I barely had enough height/momentum to complete my figures.

I have never been so miserable on stage. Every second, behind a very plastic smile, I had to calculate how much speed I needed, how much I had to adjust, what was the floor doing, will I make it? And I fell, and struggled, and fell some more. All my technique was useless. It was like I had never done wheel before in my life. Each move had to purposely be done incorrectly in the hopes that it would cancel out the flaws of the floor. And the whole time my mind was screaming "That's wrong! You're doing it wrong! You're going to get hurt! NO!"

It is not fun to be on stage and second guess everything you are doing. It is not fun to be on stage and have to do so much mental math in order to execute your figures that your face freezes in a fake smile and your eyes glaze over. It is not fun to feel humiliated because you cannot even remotely do your job correctly, through no fault of your own, and have an entire audience bear witness.

And there was still a second show to do! But before that, we had a group rehearsal. And after that, I had some solo training time. It was about as disastrous as every other attempt at wheel I'd made that day, but at least I found a few ways to be safer.

From there, I inhaled my dinner once again, then had dish duty, and then had my first break of the day (I worked concessions during intermission and would do so again during the second show). One half hour to myself before I had to be back in the tent.

The second show was just as bad as the first.

Finally, the fifteen hour day came to an end. I was so tired, so worn, so broken, so miserable... If it had been that hard but I could have at least taken pleasure in my work and my performance, it would have been one thing. But the entire experience was just brutal on all levels with no silver lining in sight.

I got back to my caravan and cried. How? How on earth would I make it through the season? That night all I wanted to do was quit and go home. My only comfort came the next day when I spoke with some of the workers who assured me that after that day of hell, they too wanted to go home and wondered what they had gotten themselves into.

I can only hope things get better from here.

He's At It Again!

That Nik Wallenda and his high wire antics...

Awesome Juggling Commercial

Moving Beyond the Big Tent

This article, Moving Beyond the Big Tent, appeared in the New York Times back in March. It made the rounds on Facebook, but in case you missed it, it's worth the read, so I'll share it here now.

The article offers an interesting look on the evolution of circus as an art, and the difference between that evolution in Europe compared to North America, specifically the US. It also touches upon why so many artists from North America find themselves in Europe instead of creating art at home.

Nerves

I've mentioned before that I tend to struggle with nerves. I spend a lot of energy on this. Worrying, fretting, general malaise, you know. It can be pretty exhausting. I've gotten better over time, but it's still an issue.

However, I suspect that that soon may change. It was the third or fourth show, though with all the run throughs it was actually the seventh or eight that week. With the hours of rehearsals leading up to the premiere, as well as nightly run throughs, we had been busting out 14 hour days every day that week. Needless to say, I was pooped.

So as I prepared for my number and began the usual whipping of nerves into a frenzy, something inside me held up it's hand and said "enough". I barely had enough energy to make it through the show, there was simply none to be spared for my nerves and my ego. It was kind of surprising, but also a welcomed relief. Will the exhaustion of this tour be the thing that lets me finally break free of my fear? I guess we'll find out in 8 months and 250 shows time...

The Art of Asking

This is a really great talk given by musician Amanda Palmer. She touches on so many wonderful points that it's hard to pick out just one. If you're an artist, you should definitely watch this. And if you're not, you should still probably watch it.