It is a July afternoon at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus school in this small Gulf Coast town. The smell of animals and what they leave behind hangs in the 90-degree air, nudged about slightly by the stir of palmetto palms and scrub pines.
In a room splotched with colored taffeta and sequined everything, two Spanish-speaking women stitch the seams that will hold the big show together when it hits the road this winter.
From a prop room, the sound of hammering is a gunshot into the stillness of this permanent big top where tradition has always started with sweat and bruises on the Avenue Del Circo.
Above center ring, two women twist themselves around the skinny piping that is a suspended stage for their trapeze artistry. A photographer snaps frames for the 1992-93 press kit. The click of his camera breaks the quiet when the hammering stops.
This is the gritty business that comes before the greasepaint and smiles, the quiet side of the Greatest Show on Earth-a slow slumber.
It is broken suddenly by the blasting music of pop rappers Kris Kross urging the newest additions to this scene to ”show the suckers how it`s done!”
”Faster! Faster! Faster!” screams Yuri Klepatsky over the jam. ”Too slow! Faster, faster!”
The Russian tumbling coach stands at the center of a mat from which bodies throw themselves toward him through brightly colored whirling ropes, slapping impossibly fast against the surface.
Culture, language, street sense and discipline are wrapped into a tight tuck that uncoils gloriously from the unrestrained bodies of 12 Chicago boys who ran away from home to this place to join the circus.
These are members of Chicago`s Jesse White Tumblers. And this is circus as it has never been, part vision and part risk, riding the shoulders of 12-year-old Donald Sampson and 19-year-old Austin White and 10 teammates in between.
When Tim Holst, Ringling`s vice president of talent and production, started putting together the 123rd edition of the famous show, he traveled to Spain, to Sweden, to Norway. He wanted an act to complement the next tour`s theme: ”Kids From Around the World.”
”I thought, `Gee, we don`t have any Americans,` ” Holst said. ” `Where are they?` ”
They were practicing at Moody Bible College, where a cabdriver put Holst out last March, refusing to take him into the turf that puts the ”rough” in these tumblers.
”I`d heard of the Jesse White Tumblers,” said Holst, a 22-year circus veteran who grew up in Galesburg. ”I really did research on kids that I thought would work, but I didn`t look in my own back yard.”
A look showed Holst what Midwest sports fans have been seeing since 1959 when the Tumblers began making appearances at basketball halftime shows and special events.
What Holst saw most, he said, was spirit.
”When I showed them a circus video, they were like, `Yeah, I want to go,` ” Holst said. ”You can`t take that away from someone. They`re like sponges.”
So with the blessings of their parents, the selected tumblers left the North Side and the South Side to soak up Venice, Fla.-a world away-where they are preparing for a two-year commitment to circus life.
It is a trip that takes them away from their founder, State Rep. Jesse White (D-Chicago), who calls the Ringling experience ”a great opportunity”
for his proteges. Still, Illinois Senate candidate White says his ”family”
does better under his guidance.
”When you`re with a person for a long period of time, you get to know what they can and can`t do,” White says.
Originally 15 tumblers-selected from auditions-signed contracts with Ringling. Three decided they wanted to come back home.
”I told them before they left that once they signed a contract, I would not take them back until they fulfilled their obligations,” White says. ”Now they`re back asking me, `Mr. White, can I come back?` But I want to teach them responsibility.”
On the other end of the pipeline, Holst says he is ”very defensive about these kids. At first I was apprehensive over whether it could work because their environment was such that it may be tough to get out of it.”
Their new environment is shaped by days that begin with 2 1/2 hours of classroom studies (even in summer), led by Neil Cowan, a local middle-school teacher.
”You get images of inner-city kids trying to bully teachers around,”
Cowan said. ”But they`re not that way at all. As soon as I met them, I knew I wanted to do this.”
At noon the tumblers begin the first of two practice sessions led by Klepatsky and Slava Genetchslav, formerly of the Moscow Circus.
After a half-hour break from the first session, the final practice concludes at 4:30 p.m. Then it`s time for these inner-city youngsters to discover just how different the environment really is outside their circus grounds dormitory.
They have traded playground hoops and elevated train noise for occasional swims at the YMCA and the nighttime quiet of retirement central. True impressions aren`t always the kindest when honesty is untempered by youth.
”There`s too many old people here,” said Jerrile Young, 14. ”And they can`t drive. I`m used to Chicago, where you see little kids outside. Plus, we only see about one bus a day.”
Patrick Blanton, 12, said that wildlife has a different definition here than what he`s accustomed to on the South Side. ”There are raccoons and rabbits all over the place,” he said. ”And frogs. At night there`ll be about a thousand of them just out by the door and we can`t move without stepping on them.”
Back home, 16-year-old Greg Bogan said, the hours not tumbling would be spent ”hanging out” and playing basketball.
When it starts getting dark in his Chicago neighborhood, Bogan said,
”all the gangs start coming out. We stay away from that. That`s why we got into tumbling.”
Since arriving on May 13, the geographical and social changes are minor parts of the experiences facing these kids, who jumped and tumbled their way into this unusual situation.
Their first 47-week tour begins Dec. 29, when the tumblers will join the large circus family that includes 128 performers, living in stateroom train cars on the backside of cities across America. (Ringling Bros. won`t say how much the tumblers are paid, only that it is ”way above minimum wage.”)
”Their whole lives will change,” Holst said. ”They will be living with performers from China, Mongolia, Russia, Italy, Mexico. They`ll be exposed to a real cross section.
”A 12-year-old performing in Madison Square Garden for 18,000 people?
It`s a thrill. There`s no other way to slice it.”
It is the middle of this July afternoon. The air wears like a second skin. Twelve bodies bend over a circus arena floor rail, which doubles as a barre for these acrobatic dancers. Angry muscles disfigure smooth, boyish frames, showing that even the smallest of these bodies is pushed by its sport. The ropes are brought out for Austin White, Greg Bogan, Terrence Fluckes, Sampson, Terrell Grant, Blanton, Carlos Locke, Young, Terrence Reed, Michael Thigpen, Allen Grant and Cortez Cosey.
The slap of plastic-covered cables on the vinyl mat matches the downbeat of music that is the new calliope of this circus act. Locke enters the changing space between two ropes twirled at opposite motion by two other tumblers. He does a backflip and ends with a half-twist before landing, untouched by the ropes.
Next two tumblers enter, each with a smaller rope, jumping inside the two ropes that were already going. Now two larger boys are inside the ropes with smaller boys on their shoulders. And now, the smaller boys are tossing a basketball while riding the jumping boys` shoulders, as if every kid in America were somewhere doing the same thing.
Under the familiar banner of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, Austin White shakes off sweat and talks about what all this means to him-this opportunity, this challenge, this unlikely combination of circus tradition and inner-city attitude.
White said he hopes to make enough money over the next two years to go to college. He said he`s eager to see the country in circus fashion and he recognizes a learning opportunity.
”I`ve always wondered how they got all those clowns in those little cars,” White said. ”I guess now I get to find out.”
He said that being part of the Jesse White Tumblers for 10 years was a warmup for that moment four months from now when he leads this troupe into the spotlight.
”With the Tumblers, we were professionals,” White said. ”But here, we`re the greatest show on Earth.”
