Circus . . . like Christmas, it's usually at its most thrilling when viewed from the perspective of childhood, but with something in it for everyone. It's also an artistic genre that more or less neatly divides into two these days - circuses with animals and circuses without.
Traditional circuses, of course, have always used animals as part of their acts. As in Victorian times, when most audiences in rural areas who would never otherwise have a chance to see elephants, lion, tigers and other exotic creatures, queued up to see them, many traditional and long-established circuses still use animals.
But the audience has not remained the same. Animals in circuses are no longer an exotic novelty, and are often more an embarrassment than a thrill to watch. Whatever your own opinions on the animal issue, Florilegio, the traditional Italian circus, which will be touring Ireland from mid-January through to the end of April, is bound to find its menagerie exciting much discussion.
Florilegio finished its continental tour last month with a two-month stint in Brussels. A couple of miles beyond the city's beautiful Grand Place, the most literal chocolate-box square in the world where every second shop sells only chocolate and pralines, the Big Top lay under a film of snow on its last night but one of the 1999 season.
Florilegio's Big Top is really like a collapsible theatre, all red and gold interior with cherubs, silver stars painted on the underside of the tent, and a huge chandelier brooding over the sawdust-filled ring. Rows of tiny twinkling lights are strung between the swooping exterior lines, and old-fashioned caravans where the performers live create a village sense to the entrance. Atmosphere it has in rakes.
Audiences pressing through the row of railway-carriage type doors on their way in were diverted by the man in a throne dressed as a gladiator who had a very small lion cub scampering at his heels. The cute factor was definitely high. Some children had to be literally picked up and carried inside to take their seats.
Somewhere in our olfactory memories, everyone who has ever been to a circus remembers its distinctive smell. It's a smell of sawdust, dung, sweat, candyfloss, and other indefinable primal things - fear, excitement and anticipation. As soon as we sat down, the smell began to seep though the air, as integral a part of the experience as the drum rolls that punctuate every act.
The Italian family behind Florilegio are the Togni brothers, Livio, Corrado and Davio. Their father was a friend of Fellini, who loved the surreal juxtapositions of man, beast, and theatre that circus created. The night I was there, Livio acted as ringmaster, although they take turns.
Ringmaster at Florilegio doesn't mean a large man in a red coat and top-hat cracking a whip in between acts. Livio is pure Chaplinesque, a small man in toolarge clothes, providing continuity by clowning his way between the acts. He has the sense of timing that is essential to any clown's act - speed it up when the audience gets restless, slow it down when it's going well.
Scribbling notes in the solid dark as the circus progressed turned out to be a pointless task. When I tried to read these interesting imitations of arcane Egyptian hieroglyphics later, I couldn't uncode them. Hence circus impressions, Fellini-style.
The show opened with acrobats, a carriage doing laps of the ring, a gaggle of geese that may or may not have lasted the Christmas culling season, dancing girls, and waltzing white horses. Puff! They came, they went, all at a ferocious pace, and the audience loved it.
Thereafter, in no particular order, came the following. Water fights to appeal to the children in the audience and the children in the adults in the audience. Old-fashioned acrobatics by Argentine brothers in lime-green glittering outfits. The brothers missed a lift halfway through their act. One fell to the ground, clutching a thigh in agony. The music stopped. The man got up.
They tried again, and on the third attempt, to enormous applause, they got it right. It was one of the most moving sequences of the night, and a forceful reminder that circuses are always one-off performances of the moment, and that performers, no matter how skilful and experienced, can and do make mistakes on occasion.
There was a charming ad hoc act involving a type of musical chairs with four small children from the audience, which was utterly simple, and utterly hilarious. Four haughty-looking camels strutted out, sat down, and waited for a goat to emerge and jump over them.
Three very bored and pathetic-looking elephants shuffled out to wave legs and sit up on hindquarters and generally do pointless things that made this member of the audience at least feel most uncomfortable. Their act was neither art, entertainment, nor original. Political correctness doesn't even come into it, since I admit freely to loving the act which involved a man in kitschy leopard-skin leggings and a real leopard riding round and round the ring on the back of a rhino. I kept thinking how much my small nephew Liam would love this, and vowed to make sure he gets to see it when it comes to Galway.
Apart from the rhino, the best acts for me were the old-fashioned trapeze and wire work. Some 10 or 15 minutes of pure adrenalin were invoked when the high wire act set up home and action right over our heads - without a safety net. The stress level cranked up a notch or two when we recognised the Argentine brothers again; the same duo who had already fallen twice in their earlier floor act.
It cranked up several notches more when one of them stumbled and almost slipped off - not part of the act. Since the rest of the act involved one acrobat sitting on a chair in the middle of the wire, holding a long balancing pole and waiting for his brother to somersault over him, the ensuing effect was as potent as several large shots of tequila. I felt giddy for hours, and slightly voyeuristic, but there's no denying it was an amazing spectacle.
The best work I've ever seen in a circus, by miles, came near the end of the show from a Russian male acrobat working with two straps suspended from the ceiling, which were drawn up and lowered at intervals throughout his act. This fantastic acrobat was as preternaturally aerodynamic as a swallow - he performed a stunning flying sequence that turned up in my dreams afterwards. His act alone is worth the money.
There was also a great finale bit of group trapeze work, where the clown-cum-ringmaster turned up in a leotard and amazed us all by flying through the air with grace and skill, but I was still so blown away by the Russian Swallow that it was a bit wasted on me.
Anyway, the Florilegio Circus is coming to town very soon, so face up to all your PC principles, and go and see it for yourself.
Dates for Florilegio's Irish tour are:
Dublin January 14th to February 20th
Limerick February 23rd to March 5th
Cork March 7th to 26th
Galway March 28th to April 9th April
Waterford April 12th to 18th
Wexford April 21st to May 1st
Ticket between £6 and £16.50. For further information and booking, phone 1890 923188.
