Blow Down!

This appeared in my Facebook feed a while back. From what I understand the blow down occurred around the beginning of September to the Russian State Circus while they were in Osnabrück, Germany.

I, thank goodness, have never witnessed a tent blow down. I can't believe how fast it went down... A blown down can be the end of a circus. Here's hoping that no one was harmed and that the folks at the Russian State Circus get back on their feet quickly.

New Records!

Is there anything more satisfying that breaking a record? That all depends on the record, I suppose.

We've been  breaking all kinds of records in the past few days, mostly of the heat related variety. Although I also broke my German wheel shoe lace record, the previous record being six uses before the damn thing broke. The new record being the very first use. Yippee!

But back to the heat records...

For a long time, the hottest the tent had been for a performance was 33°C. We broke that with 34°C only to break that record the following day with 35°C. The hot hot heat has also created a new record for consecutive performances in a tent above 30°C. We're at five in a row and counting! Even the night shows offered no relief. The temperature only dropped to 31°C.

Needless to say, we're all pretty miserable at the moment. Bring on the mountains! Bring on the fall!

Weather Forecast

Approximate temperature inside of a circus tent in the middle of summer?

A million billion degrees.

Ugh.

It'll Do

It's no secret that it's getting harder and harder for circuses to find places to set up their Big Tops. Either the lots available aren't big enough, or the ones that were have since been developed. But sometimes, the Circus Gods smile down upon you and instead of some rocky patch of flood prone earth, you end up somewhere beautiful, like here:

Our tent was so close to the lake, that I could see it from the tent entrance backstage. It was mere metres away!

We were told that in the next town, we'd be even closer to the lake. Closer? How could you possibly be closer than a few steps away?

Like so, apparently...

The town we're in right now makes three in a row for lakeside property. Soon, we head into the mountains.

Sometimes circus life is pretty tough, but clearly, now is not one of those times.

Great, Just Great

It was a beautiful, sunny day. So naturally, the tent flooded.

Wait, what?

It would appear that the lot we're currently occupying is not only covered in elephant poop, but also has incredibly poor drainage. It would seem that every so often the ground just can't take it anymore and regurgitates whatever water it managed to absorb.

The best part is that it wasn't the area around the tent that flooded, not the area around the caravans or any of the trucks. Nope. Just the inside of the tent, right around the backstage and performance area. A week later and it is still soaking wet backstage. There are puddles right next to the extension of the stage. Sure, they put down more sawdust, more carpets, even the plastic tiles they use in particularly muddy places. But it's made no difference. It is a million degrees and sunny and we have a soaking wet steam bath inside the tent. It ain't pretty.

I try not to think about what build down is going to be like. Normally the bottom layer is tarps, then sawdust (if needed) and then carpets. We take away the carpets and then shift all the sawdust onto one tarp for easy clean up. But this place saw sawdust go directly on the ground, then tarps, then more sawdust, then carpets, then flooding, so more sawdust, new carpets and then tiles and lord knows what else... It's going to be a mess. Let's just hope nothing else goes wrong in the remaining week on this site!

Yellow and Red

My brother once asked me if all circus tents are yellow and red. Apparently he's not the only one under that impression...

source: Unknown

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.

Fly Away With Me

Making Hearts Dream

I'm a collector of images and the other day I hit a veritable gold mine of stunning circus photography. These are the kinds of photos that make you dream of running away and joining the circus.

German photographer Thomas Totz manages to capture the hearts and souls of the circuses he photographs and brings beauty and dignity to a world that is not always met with respect.

I've included some of my favourite photos below.

To see the full collection, go here.

To visit Mr. Totz's website, go here.

Going Up!

Very cool video of Circus Monti's Big Top going up.

A View of Circus Island

 Good lord... you can see the hot pink triangle!

And I can see my caravan!

Circus Island

The wait for shows to start continues here on Circus Island. If you're thinking I call it Circus Island because I am stranded here alone like a castaway, you would be wrong. Well, you would be right, but only metaphorically. I call this Circus Island because it is quite literally and island covered in circuses. Not my most inspired naming, I know, but it gets the job done.

You may recall the Tent City photo I posted a while back. That photo was taken on this island.

Now here's the fun part. The island is located way the hell out of Paris, but quite close to where the Eiffel Tower is. If you take the tram here, you can see it in the distance for most of the journey. At night, you see it's beacon circle quite clearly.

So I figured that if you can see it from the tram, and you can see its beacon from the circus grounds, then the view from on top of the tent must be simply stellar.

When I climbed up onto the tent, this is what I saw:

Oh, come on! If it weren't for that one building... way to drop the ball, Paris. Way to drop the ball...

There is one spot of the tent that does offer a better view, but it's also a rather precarious place to sit. I did manage to get a picture, though.

However disappointing the view of the Eiffel tower might be, the view of Circus Island from the top of the tent more than makes up for it.

Belly of the Beast

No matter how frustrating things have gotten over the past few years, there's no denying that the tent going up is a beautiful thing...

Photo by Dominique Secher

Tent City

 
Population: me

The Grass is Always Greener...

...until the circus comes to town, that is. Our tent was set up on a soccer field. When we arrived, it looked like this inside:

When we left, it did not. I neglected to take the after photo. But quite frankly, it was such a sad sight, that was probably for the best.

Sorry about your soccer field, Ilkirch!

Oops…

I Won!

I won! I actually won! True, it’s a symbolic victory, but a win is a win and there’s still a prize! So… I win!

You see, the state of the stage at the moment can only be described as pathetic. It should be black, but it’s currently more of a whitish grey. Except for the parts that have been scrubbed raw and show bare wood. Aesthetically, it’s disheartening. But considering that the underside of the canvas is filthy and covered footprints, and there are paper petals littering the ground before the bleachers, you really can’t hope for the argument of attractiveness to count for very much.

Because we use so much paint throughout the show, the stage gets a good scrubbing every night and in the year and a half since it was last painted, it has been polished to a smooth and slippery finish. What’s worrisome about the stage in this state (for me more than anyone else, with the exception of A, though to a lesser degree) is that it becomes very unpredictable. As a result, there is one figure in my act that becomes dangerous for me, the musicians, and even the public.

It’s called a High Speed Spiral and involves pushing off the floor during a regular spiral. By pushing off the floor, I pick up a lot of speed very quickly and the circle becomes very big and is maintained at a pretty sharp angle. When the floor has good bite, no worries. When it’s slippery like it is now, the wheel can slide out from under itself at any moment and with no warning whatsoever. Because I’m going so fast, I can easily slide three meters. And depending where I am on stage when that happens, I can take out the musicians, or fall off the stage into the public.

I slid once (right before the stage was last painted) and it scared the Directors enough that they acted. I’d been warning them of the danger of sliding for ages (the worry then had been paint or water on stage) but they never took me seriously until they saw it happen. Fortunately, nothing serious happened that time.

But back to the story at hand.

Recently I’ve noticed that the stage slides in some places and not others. But most worrisome is the feeling that, during the High Speed Spiral, I’m actually fighting against the wheel to keep it in control. I’ve felt that it wants to slide out from under me, and it’s a scary feeling to try and maintain control over a huge object that is bigger and heavier than you are, and also traveling at high speed at a precarious angle.

So I spoke with the head technician to see if he would speak to the technical director about repainting the stage. We both laughed and agreed that the answer would probably be no. These days, the company doesn’t seem to want to invest another dime in this show. Let alone a hundred bucks on floor paint. That can wait for the new show.

Seeing as the title of this post announced victory, you’ve probably guessed that the answer was, in fact, yes. The floor will be painted in a week. But I can’t help but think that the thing that tipped the scale in the favour of immediate action was the extended extensions of the show in this city. Normally, the weekend is only two days long, but for the next set of prolongations (we’re already in the first set), we’ll only be doing three shows a week. That leaves just enough time for sanding, painting, and drying. Were it not for those few extra days, there’s no way they would have agreed to paint the stage. It would have been too much of a pain to set everything up for something as trivial as a paint job.

But in the end, none of that matters! In just one more week of shows, I’ll have a newly painted floor to scuff up! Hooray!

Um… Thanks?

I was walking around the back of the tent to use the artists’ entrance before the show when this well dressed lady (who had no business being there, I might add) stops me and says with an approving nod: “Il a de la geule, votre chapiteau.”

Loosely translated, that means something along the lines of “Yer tent’s got chops.”

Good to know.

ARCHICIRC

The other day, while looking for a very specific photo from my show using Google images, I somehow ended up on a website entirely about circus tents. It's full of photos and schematics from a wide variety of big tops and cirques en dur or permanent circus spaces. The photos are gorgeous and offer a really unique look into spaces that you otherwise would likely never have a chance to see! They also have a Facebook page with many other photos of circus spaces around the world!

If you have an interest in circus, and if you've found this blog I suspect you do, you should definitely check ARCHICIRC out!

For their website, go here, and for their Facebook page, go here.

Dragon Volant - Ecole nationale des arts du cirque de Rosny-sous-Bois

Hot Hot Heat

We are back beneath the big top and the big yellow tent has been joined by a second yellow giant: the sun.

Holy mother of hot... I had forgotten what it's like to perform sous chapiteau come summer time. And while it may only be the beginning of May, summer is definitely here. The past few days have seen temperatures in the high twenties. I'm from Canada. To me, 30C is unbearable. So the high twenties is about as much as I can take.

Inside the tent however, is another story. There isn't even a hint of shade near the tent (or any of the caravans for that matter) so come show time it feels like you've walked into an oven. And don't even think about training during the day.

The juggler has sweat dripping off his face during his act and you can literally wring out his costume after the show. I'd forgotten just how hard it is to do wheel when it gets this hot. No matter what I do, some part of me ends up sticking to the wheel. I either get stuck or thrown off balance as a result. I've been covering myself with talc before my act, but apparently not enough. Every time I go on, my wheel finds some new, unpowdered, bit of skin to adhere to.

But I suspect that the audience has it worst of all. The temperature at the top of the bleachers during the day can easily climb into to the 50C range. It cools down by showtime, but it's still hot up there. And you know that body heat of the thousand or so people seated in the stands isn't helping.

Today is overcast and I must admit, I'm kind of relieved by the drop in temperature. Don't tell my cast-mates, but I kind of hope this keeps up!