What: Vagabond Adventures
Where: The Big Top in Grand Center
When: June 2 - 26, 2011
One of the more welcome harbingers of summer in St. Louis is the appearance of Circus Flora’s air-conditioned tent on the parking lot just south of Powell Hall. It’s two and one-half hours of music, comedy, and great circus acts. No seat is more than 42 feet away from the ring, it’s fun for the whole family, and the prices are even reasonable. What’s not to like?
An added bonus for Vagabond Adventures, the company’s 25th anniversary show, is that the obligatory story line uniting all the great performers is simple and streamlined. Set on Chapman’s Floating Palace – a theatrical steamboat that presented music, comedy, and Shakespeare along the Mississippi from around 1836 until its destruction in a collision in 1847 – the narrative about spies and stolen boat plans is compact enough to tie everything together without (as has happened in the past) bogging the evening down with narrative details.
In fact, this is one of the tightest and most consistently entertaining Circus Flora shows I’ve seen. The pacing was brisk and, a couple of minor glitches aside, the acts were all impressive, sometimes thrilling, and always entertaining.
Two Circus Flora newcomers this year are animal acts: The Riding Donnerts, fifth-generation European animal trainers, and the charming and comical Olate Dogs from Chile. The Donnerts’ specialty is juggling everything from balls to flaming torches on horseback, but David Donnert also does a comic solo turn with a horse who repeatedly and hilariously undermines Mr. Donnert’s attempts to saddle and ride him. Comedy, on the other hand, is the mainstay of the Olate Dogs. The irresistibly adorable canines walk and dance on their hind legs, peddle scooters, jump hurdles, and run up and down slides with an apparent ease that suggests many hours of careful training.
Trained animals are, of course, at their most appealing and surprising when they appear to mimic human behavior. We upright anthropoids like nothing more than the sight of other critters imitating us. The Olates and the Donnerts have done a splendid job of that, with crowd-pleasing results.
We also love seeing our fellow humans do the seemingly impossible, and there’s plenty of that in this year’s circus. The Flying Wallendas totally enchanted the junior members of our party with their heart-stopping high wire act, forming human pyramids high above the ring without a net. The other flying family, the Pages, dazzled as usual with their flashy trapeze act. They do use a net, and a good thing, too, since Anthony Page fell into it twice after completing his trademark triple somersault.
Una Mimnagh returns after a six-year absence, this time supplementing her usual graceful aerial act with a rapid-fire tap dance routine using boots and a pair of modified bolas – a spectacular mix of sight and sound that the late Fred Astaire would probably have loved. And, as always, our homegrown youth performance troupe The St. Louis Arches drew huge applause with their high-energy tumbling and acrobatics.
Choreographed and coached by Circus Harmony artistic director Jessica Hentoff, the Arches have always, to my mind, been one of the high points of any Circus Flora over the ten years or so I’ve been attending. This year, the Arches have even given birth to an impressive duo act: the hand balancing routine of Sidney “Iking” Bateman and Terrance “T-Rex” Robinson.
Linking everything together is the reliable Cecil MacKinnon in her usual role as Yo-Yo the Narrator. Her routines with Giovanni Zoppé’s Nino the Clown, familiar as they are, never fail to delight everyone – especially the kids. I’m happy to say that Nino has a bit more stage time this year than has been the case recently. I haven’t been a kid since Dinosaurs Walked the Earth, but I count myself among his biggest fans.
Finally, let me extend a bit of appreciation to a group of performers who are heard rather than seen: the Circus Flora Band under the direction of Janine Del’Arte. Their performance of Miriam Cutler’s music does not directly draw attention to itself, but its importance in setting up big moments in individual acts and indicating applause points can’t be underestimated. Try imagining a circus with no music. You might as well have cotton candy with no sugar.
The real Floating Palace was, by all accounts, something of a rickety, candle-lit affair. Circus Flora’s modern incarnation is, by contrast, a solid and welcoming evening of wonder and fun for the whole family. Performances take place Tuesdays through Sundays through June 26 in the air-conditioned big top tent on the parking lot adjacent to Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center. For more information, call 314-289-4040, visit the web site at circusflora.org, become a fan on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter @circusflora.
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