No Strings Attached

Posted By Kathleen David on March 25, 2012

In which Caroline and I get about a close as you can to the circus without running away to join it.

Peter got an e-mail a while back about tickets to the circus that were a credit card exclusive. The theme this time around was Dragons which is probably Caroline favorite mythical creature. So we went ahead and got the tickets for the show in March.

When we saw the advertising on TV, Caroline kept saying that she wanted to see it and we made non-committal noises about that we would check into it.

Yesterday we went to see the show and had a magical and amazing time.

Now I am going to make one of my rare requests on my blog. I don’t want to debate about the animals in the circus. This is the first time I think I have been to Ringling Brothers since my parents took me when I was probably about 5 or 6. I got to share that experience with my daughter and it was wonderful.

The preshow was a mad house but Caroline did get a number of the performers and clowns autographs in her program book. She even got to tell one of the Shaolin warriors that she was taking Kung Fu. We saw an elephant paint a picture. And as they were clearing everything out, I got a shot of Caroline just outside the center ring.

We started with a big production number about what we were going to see and then saw amazing feats of horsemanship. They had things going on around so that the set changes weren’t too obvious. This included people over head on a motorcycle on a wire that had two young ladies doing aerial acrobatics over our heads. Caroline winced as two young ladies where doing an aerial act that had them hanging by their hair.

The big cats were brought out and Caroline was enchanted by them. The male lion seem to be looking right at her. Caroline speculated that he was looking at her as friend or possibly lunch. I remember seeing Gunther Gebel-Williams as the big cat tamer when I was a kid. Alexander Lacey had the same kind of moves and the same kind of patter. He even had the lion give him a kiss.

Then Caroline and I were invited to go onstage to watch the last two acts of that part of the show. We sat as part of the ring closest to the entrance for the performers. Caroline was vibrating with excitement. We got to see the Shaolin Warriors perform and the Soaring Scalas with the Russian bar up close and personal. We were surrounded by friendly clowns and invited to join in the percussion. Caroline was beaming and had a lot of fun.

Intermission seemed short but we were watching them set up for the trapezes artists. While the performers were soaring back and forth, I got to watch the ground crew get things into place and out of the way of the tricks.

We then had the domestic animal act in three rings. Ring 1 was cats, 2 was dogs, and 3 was ponies, lamas, goats and a sheep I think. This was a case of not knowing where to look first. All were doing fabulous tricks. It was entertaining and overwhelming.

They followed that up with some serious tumbling and launching of acrobats into the air. And the Shaolin warriors showed off various forms of Kung Fu.

Then we had the elephants. And I saw things that I remembered the elephants doing when I was a kid. For a split second I was a child again and the past and present collided with my daughter clutching my arm and bouncing in delight.

They got to the end and we saw the Dragon, which was pretty doggone cool. They sang their last song and the circus concluded.

Caroline was very happy.

I am grateful that I got to share this experience with Caroline.

The Male lion eyeing Caroline.
(For the Visually Impaired: This is the head of a male lion with a big mane around his face. The color is sort of pink because that was the color of the lighting.)

This is how close we were to the action.
(For the Visually Impaired: This is a picture of Caroline and me sitting on benches on the floor of the circus. On the left side of the photo you can see half of a performer wearing a blue and purple outfit. I am seated on the bench to the left of Caroline. She has her feet on a drum (she was drumming with her feet per the clown’s instruction). I am looking at Caroline and she is looking at me and smiling. To our right are a couple of other patrons)

This is one of my favorite photos that I took. This is when they went to blacklight when there were 7 motorcycles and cyclists in the sphere going around pretty fast.
(For the Visually Impaired. This is a picture of a large spherical cage in which motorcyclists roll around at a high rate of speed and use centrifugal force to defy gravity. At this point they are going so fast, they are just orange blurs in the sphere.)

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