All twenty-five of us are sitting in a circle on the floor of la palestre. A stranger who walked in now would know we’re acrobats.
Rather than sitting on their heels or with one leg crossed over the other the way regular kids sit, Genevieve and Anastasia are doing the splits, their hands casually resting on their thighs. The handsome clown has one leg bent in front of him, the other stretched out behind him, and is holding his back toes with one hand. His partner has planted his palms by his sides and is supporting his weight on his arms.
They aren’t performing—it’s just how they sit.
Watching them confirms that circus camp is the right place for me. All my life, and especially before I got into gymnastics in grade three, I’ve felt different from other kids. None of them liked climbing stuff the way I did. Even back in kindergarten, I was the only one who slept with my feet propped up against the wall at naptime.
Suzanne leads the orientation. She wants us to say our names, where we’re from and what our circus specialty is. The handsome clown is named Leo; his sidekick is Guillaume. They are from Belgium and have been training together as a pair for two years.
The first exercise, Suzanne explains, will help us get comfortable with each other. “I’ll call out a body part—for example, elbow—and you’re going to touch nine people’s elbows. Got that?” She looks around the group. “Elbow!”
I feel bad for Hana, who doesn’t seem to know what elbow means. I tap her elbow.
“Ahh.” She nods. “Pal-kkum-chi.”
Soon all of us are racing around the room, tapping elbows and getting tapped. Leo winks when his fingers graze my elbow. Did he wink at Genevieve too?
“Knee!” Suzanne calls out, then “Ankle!”
When I tap Cécile’s ankle, I notice her calves are rock hard. It must come from doing the tightrope.
I may not have learned everyone’s name yet, but after a few rounds of this exercise, I’ve touched everyone in the room. Suzanne was right—it’s a good way of getting comfortable with each other. Especially for people like us, who communicate better with our bodies than with words.
There’s a trapeze in la palestre, a tightrope, and tissu and ropes for climbing. In a large open closet, I spot rows and rows of colorful juggling pins. Suzanne has explained that although we’ll each be spending two hours every day working on our specialty, we’ll have a chance to learn the other specialties too. I’ve tried juggling before, but I’ve never managed to get the hang of it.
Through the huge floor-to-ceiling window at one end of the room, I see a tall lopsided maple tree outside. The tree is so close to the terrace it provides a shady corner. I can just make out a furry brown squirrel zipping up the tree trunk, then leaping onto one of the branches. The branch is so light the squirrel’s weight makes it rock. Another squirrel is dashing up the tree trunk now. This one stops short of the branch, as if he’s worried he’s not agile enough to make the leap his friend did. You can do it, little squirrel, I tell him in my head. Don’t let fear stop you.
“Have any of you ever heard the expression ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’?” Suzanne asks. None of us have, so Suzanne explains that it’s not healthy for people to work, work, work all the time. They need to play too. “What makes circus so wonderful,” Suzanne says, “is that your work is play. But you still need to work on it. That might sound confusing, but it’s what circus is all about—a magic mix of work and play.”
I nod when Suzanne says that. It’s exactly why I love circus. I’ve just never heard anyone put the feeling into words before.
Guillaume points one finger at the middle of Leo’s forehead. Leo falls backward to the floor, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like a dog’s. Everyone laughs.
Suzanne checks her watch. “You have half an hour to play,” she tells us. “Or work. Or both. Instructors will be on hand to supervise you.”
Because the rope is there, I climb it. Anastasia, Genevieve, Leo and Guillaume watch as I grab the rope, wrap one foot around the bottom, then block it with my other foot. I need to be careful not to chafe the skin between my big toe and the one next to it. But I can’t worry about that now. Besides, what’s a little pain if you want to be a circus performer?
Up I go. First hands, then feet. Hands, then feet. My palms are burning, but I keep hoisting myself up, up, up. Then up some more. The ceiling must be thirty feet high in la palestre, a good ten feet higher than at the gym where I train in North Vancouver, but I’m not nervous. Just happy and excited. I’m nothing like that squirrel I saw outside. In no time, I’m at the top. Oh, it feels good to be up here!
“Beautiful!” Leo calls out, and I hope he doesn’t mean just my climbing.
“My turn,” Genevieve says when I’ve slid down the rope and am back on the giant round safety mat. The tissu are red and yellow and green, and I have to admit they make Genevieve look elegant as she begins to climb. She knows it, too, because she pauses halfway up, letting her long, perfectly blow-dried hair fall behind her like a black fan.
Leo and Guillaume lean back to watch her.
Climbing tissu is so much more common than climbing a rope. I’m glad I do the less common thing. That’s the kind of circus performer I dream of being. An innovator, someone who works on the edge of what’s new. Not just a girl like Genevieve who does what so many female circus performers already do.
As she climbs, Genevieve wraps her feet in the tissu. Now she throws herself backward into space and hangs just from her feet. It’s a daring move. She lets her arms dangle, making her look like a human pendulum. Then she bends one knee, hooking it over the tissu. The second knee follows. She’s showing us her frog move.
Leo puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles. Guillaume makes ribbit ing sounds.
When I look up, I see Genevieve grinning down at me. When she opens her mouth to laugh, I know what she’s thinking. I’ll bet you can’t do this, can you?