Circus! Curcus!

We took JE to the Circus last night, it was pretty good, and the seats Liz bought were awesome, just 3 rows from ringside. The Circus (or at least Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, whose show we saw) appear to be giving their shows a theme and tying everything in together; this time around it was the Circus of Dreams, where all of your dreams can come true.

A "family" was randomly picked out of the audience, and they just happened to be sitting in the very front row, right in front of us in fact. Dad, Mom, older daughter, Jan, and younger brother, Dan, all ran into the center ring and were asked what their "dream Circus job" was. As soon as Dad opened his mouth it was obvious they were plants. "Well that's easy," said Dad, "I want to be the Ring Master so everyone has to do what I say." And with that a bright red, sequined Ring Master's jacket was lowered from the ceiling and "Dad" slid it on. "Oh yeah! This is great," he said, as he ran off backstage. Mom said she wanted to be a trapeze aerialist and a ring was lowered from the ceiling. Mom climbed in, showing too much familiarity with the ring than would be expected in a non-Circus Mom, and the ring was hoisted away up into the ceiling. Jan said she wanted to be a Circus Dancer. She received a multi-colored wraparound skirt like that worn by the other Circus Dancers, and when she put it on and stepped in with the Dancers she was indistinguishable.

Then Dan spoke up saying he was just a little kid, what could he do? Quite a lot, really. Dan, like Dad, Mom, & Jan, was a ringer. He was actually one of the youngest actors in the Chinese Theatre group which gave three performances throughout the evening. As well as the very athletic Chinese acrobats we were treated to several performances by the Clowns. The Cossack Horse Riders also gave several excellent shows, and were later described by Liz as "yummy". She then had to explain to our 6-year old son with the big ears what "yummy" meant :D

Madame Shamshiva gave two performances which involved a lot of tricks with dogs, cats, and doves, but midway through her second performance I started to develop a dislike for her. The trained animals were very good, I just got bad vibes from her. Maybe it was the way one of the dogs cowered from her and rolled onto his back, which is what he was meant to do, the rolling on the back that is, not the cowering. Maybe it was that she seemed to take all of the credit for the animals, and accepted all the accolades when they performed a difficult trick, rather than directing your applause to the animal who actually performed the trick. Yes, she may have trained them, but to me she gave off a vibe of "I taught him that. Aren't I clever?"

The real highlight of the show was the Globe of Death, or something like that. Three motorbikes (the enduro variety, not street bikes) rode up the ramp and inside the Globe, positioned themselves, then began riding around the inside of the Globe until they were actually riding sideways, then they began riding higher and darting in among each other, crisscrossing in an awesome display of skill (& trust) where one wrong move would have been catastrophic. Then another bike joined them and their dance with death resumed. Then two more bikes rode in and it was just a blur of machinery inside the Globes as everyone rode seemingly at random between everyone else, but in what was obviously a brilliantly choreographed dance. I guess you'd start that with two bikes, but it's not something that could be practiced at slow speeds, because at times the bikes were doing complete loops, riding upside-down across the roof of the Globe, and there's no way you can slowly ride a bike upside down. I forget if there were eventually 6 or 7 bikes inside zipping around and missing each other by inches, but as the riders set a new World Record for 5 bikes inside the Globe of Death way back in 2003, I suspect it was probably 7.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable evening.