Joining the Circus at School

by Sarah Elzas

Dancing stilts, unicycles, silly clowns, kazoo bands buzzing... Is this the circus? Almost.

Actually, it’s the Big Apple Circus Beyond the Ring Spring Show in the auditorium of East Harlem’s JHS 99. About 40 students from schools all over the City showed off the juggling, jumping, clowning and tumbling expertise they had been working on since the fall in afterschool sessions with professional jugglers, tumblers and clowns.

Frank Sellitto, the director of the show, has been teaching the program for 15 years. He says that it increases kids’ self esteem. “They realize they can learn things they thought they couldn’t do,” he says. Like juggling.

According to juggling instructor Sky King, teaching kids to juggle is not hard at all. “Juggling is one of those things that seems impossible,” she says. “But pretty much everybody does learn to juggle.” King has been juggling for seven years. “If they can’t do it right now, at least they understand what they are trying to do, and they can learn it eventually.”

Along with specific skills, students learn focus, concentration and, most important for when they are on stage, patience. Three students performed using Diabolo, a Chinese yo-yo. The technique is not easy. It involves throwing up the Diabolo–an object that looks like two cones joined at their tips–and trying to catch it on a string stretched between two sticks held in the performer’s hands. It does not always land as planned on the string–even the instructor on stage dropped his. But this did not phase any of the performers who picked them up and continued their routines.

“All of the performers are students like you,” Tim Anderson, the Ring Master for the show and a clown at the Big Apple Circus, told the crowd at the start of the show. And indeed, the show reflected the students. Kids on stilts danced Salsa, and acrobats flipped to hip-hop music as the audience sang along.

While flips and pyramids, five-ball juggling and unicycles made people gasp, the clown pieces made people laugh. “Mr. Muscle” lifted a barbell with comic strain, his stuffed muscles migrating from bicep to forearm. He rubbed his pack in pain as he walked off the stage, but before he could leave, a girl came out, picked up the barbell in one hand and yelled flirtatiously after him, “Mr. Muscle, I think you forgot something!”

Joining the circus, or even practicing twice a week after school, is not just about fun and games. The students have learned how to perform, and how to work together. Perhaps the most important lesson they have learned is how to move past mistakes and continue on with the show.

Beyond the Ring is open to anyone willing to make the commitment, free of charge. For more information visit www.gibapplecricus.org or call 212-268-2500.

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