Circus Memories-1995

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David Larible and Chris Allison This number was the lead-in to finale.

Clown Alley corp de ballet dancing "gracefully" in a routine just before finale.

I've identified, as best as possible, most of the clowns in the photo above. You can see my foot just below Piper.

This was a routine involving the entire clown alley and David Larible, the featured clown performer for that tour. It begins with a pas de deux performed by Larible and a lovely dancer whose name I can't recall now. Larible sees her dancing, is smitten, which leads us into the slapstick ballet routine. He pursues her and almost has her in his embrace when out of the shadows enters Chris Allison, in ballet drag, as a very unfeminine dancer who is smitten with Larible. Larible tries to make a run for it when the the clown corp de ballet enters foiling the escape. Larible is man handled by Allison then Larible lifts his gruesome dance partner up high sending her flying via a cable. There a few more seconds of "dancing" then the clowns simultaneously go into an arabesque and fall followed by a black out a second later.

This was a pretty good routine. I always looked forward to it. One weekend I even got to cover for Chris Allison playing his part for a few shows. That was both an exhilarating and nerve racking experience but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It was great.

Before our cue to go out onto the arena floor we'd be waiting behind the backstage curtain alongside Gunther's elephants that would enter shortly after our number ended and finale began. Sometimes we'd stand pretty close to the elephants and had to walk past them to go out for our number. Now in case you don't already know it elephants are very intelligent and curious animals. One evening one of the elephants, a young one if I recall correctly, had grown curious about the material of my tu tu. He reached out to a ruffled edge of my costume slowly. I thought all he wanted to do was to touch the material but instead he grab it and began coiling his trunk drawing me towards him. There was not much I could do about it. I tried to pull the tu tu away from his trunk but that was completely useless. I started to feel my feet come off the ground and that's when I really started to panic. I thought for sure I was about to become this elephant's pet to be loved to death a la Lennie Small.

That might very well have been my fate were it not for his handler. He was this little guy and he was standing there by his elephant watching the whole thing with the best poker face I'd ever seen in my life. Just as I was about to go "up up and away" he very nonchalantly tapped the elephant's trunk with his hand and calmly said '"No". I swear, up until that moment the guy never moved a muscle or batted an eye during the entire incident and sure enough the elephant released me from his playful grip of doom. It only took a few seconds from start to finish but it felt like it was in slow motion. In the movie "The Incredibles", supers shouldn't wear capes. In the circus, clowns shouldn't wear tu tus.