The Circus Returns To L.A.

The Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus, the oldest existent circus in America, came to Los Angeles this week, and did not disappoint.

When you’ve been known as the Greatest Show On Earth since the 19th century, you have big shoes to fill, and not only the clown ones. So each year they pull out all the stops, and here on the floor of the Staples Center, often occupied by rock bands and basketball teams, comes a cast of thousands – clowns, of course, plus acrobats, dancers, tiger tamers, aerialists, unicycle riders, stilt-walkers, daredevils, human cannonballs, roustabouts and more, not to mention the cavalcade of wild beasts still part of the circus: the giant elephants, plus tigers, horses, dogs and one peculiar rabbit.

This year’s production is called “Built To Amaze!” and is built around the theme of a circus under construction: ladders, hard hats, big buckets of paint and giant paint brushes. 

“Visionary blueprints have been followed down to the last nut and bolt,” says the circus in regard to this production, “to build a super circus right in front of your very eyes! “

Each season, the circus presents a new Ringmaster – there have been clowns, magicians, acrobats, singers and dancers all in this role. This year the job went to Andre McCain, a celebrated horseman, animal trainer, cowboy, rodeo star and singer. He burst onto the scene – levitated by clowns and dancers far above the floor – to sing and dance in welcome, and throughout the show.

In the last couple decades, the circus has added a new level of excitement to the proceedings, and that is the hour-long pre-show, in which the audience is invited to come right down on the floor to meet and be photographed with the clowns, and to watch some daredevil and acrobatics up close. “Children of all ages” are invited to try on costumes, and to get close to the immense elephants, who make a quick cameo.

Highlights this year included The Danquir Troupe from Morocco and Russia, an astounding high wire act in which they not only walked across the wire, but tumbled, leapfrogged and leapt from shoulder to shoulder, all some 35 feet above the floor.

Human Cannonball Elliana Grace performed the traditional stunt that cannot be faked: being shot out of a real cannon. The youngest performer ever to do so, she is not only brave but beautiful, and pulled off her act with easy finesse.

The dancers who spin and run inside of a giant spinning steel vortex stretch the audience’s belief system and they seem to defy the physics of gravity, and always with big smiles.  The Energy Troupe, under the tutelage of the legendary Yulia Negrey, did soaring acrobatics – but on the floor itself – leaping as if with wires and trampolines, but all with the strength and grace of their own bodies.

Many other acts performed, including a dog and bunny comic act, a tiger act, an equestrian act and much more.  But the most spectacular points of the evening are at the front and end of the show, when the entire cast – including all the elephants, all the clowns, acrobats, everybody – come out in a giant spectacle of color and motion and music (always with a live big band), and at that moment the audience is truly composed of children of all ages, as everyone put their phones away and just took in the wonder of it all, the Greatest Show on Earth.