the world of the circus these people
under the blast of a spotlight transform
themselves and in short they become
demigods and once the lights cut are
condemned of parasites and I am going to
introduce you to these worlds blood and
sweat and secrets good evening
well before I was offered a job as a
dancer in a Mexican circus Don Umberto
who was the boss
he was the empresario told me about his
life about the hunger and the hardship
of his childhood in the circus in the
1930s he told me about the time he’d met
Elizabeth Taylor and the amazing sexual
chemistry that he’d had with her about
how he’d flirted with her right
underneath Richard Burton’s nose he told
me how the Pope himself had complimented
him on his miraculous ability to defy
death twice nightly and then he told me
about how recently his niece had been
eaten by one of his Tigers and that his
brother had lost most of his fingers
trying to price head decapitated head
out from the cat’s jaws and then he told
me that he was one performer short and
it was then that he asked me that one
crucial life-changing question and it
was whether I still wanted the job
so I am going to take you to the circus
in Mexico these art forms these social
phenomenons are as ancient as human
civilization itself because our archives
and our museums are bursting with
records and reminders of Egyptian
acrobats or Mexican aerialists these
people all exist within the same social
paradox these people live in trailers
they live in favelas they live in slums
but yet under the blast of a spotlight
they transform themselves they perform
these acts of incredible grace and
strength and illusion and in short they
become demigods and it is because of
this phenomenon that these same people
whence the lights cut are condemned as
parasites prostitutes and pariahs
because through this act of
transformation
they are enacting an insurrectional
threat to society and I know that part
of my own interest in these whales was
purely voyeuristic I wanted to know what
the lives of these people were like
after the lights cut and after they
scrubbed off their painted blushes and
I’m going to introduce you to their
lives but before I do that I must tell
you why I joined the circus in the first
place because when I was young I wanted
to be a trapeze artist but when we are
little we are wiser than we will ever be
as adults because we believe that
anything is possible and I was lucky
enough to do exactly what I was expected
to do as most people do up to a point
because after I got my university degree
I graduated into the recession and over
eight months all I accumulated was a
stack of rejection letters so after a
while I realized
actually it was a sign that my only
option was to cut my losses and to do
what I’d always wanted to do and to join
the circus
so I made a beeline for Mexico City
because Mexico is rumored to host more
circuses than any other country in the
world over 200 is said to pitch in the
capital city alone now once I entered
the world of the circus I learned how to
survive in this world I learn how to
french kiss tigers i learned how to
unravel my fishnets without laddering
them i learned how to dodge bullets and
i learned how to look nonchalant after
flushing a quantity of cocaine down a
public lavatory but one of the most
important things that I learned was how
to belong in this world the girls that I
encountered were competitive and bitchy
and ultimately they became my best
friends and what surprised me about the
time that I spent in the circus was how
many empty hours there were to fill and
many of these empty hours were spent
debating in all seriousness where the
various men in the circus ranked on a
scale of one to ten but many of these
same empty hours would often be filled
with less innocent pursuits
because it makes sense that if these
guys are walking tightropes in the ring
if they’re dicing with death every night
then these same adrenaline junkies will
be getting their kicks backstage through
similar means so let me tell you about
this this photograph because this is
Perla and this guy is parlours best
friend’s boyfriend as I said people dice
with death in their social life and it
seemed rare for a week to go by without
a colossal scandal that would shake the
world of the circus and I had to find
myself a boyfriend because otherwise the
girls were consider me a liability like
Paola here and the guy from the circus
would consider me a target
so I started going out with this guy SEF
who is a seventh-generation circus
performer he had grown up sleeping with
three Tigers in his bed he could speak
five languages he could speak English
Spanish French German Italian six
languages and Russian and yet he
couldn’t read or write because he’d
never gone to school he spent a few
years when he was little living in a
brothel after he’d been abandoned there
but when he was old enough to train as a
trapeze artist he was taken back into
the circus and he went on to become one
of the best performance that the trapeze
world has ever had he’s the only person
to complete the quadruple somersault on
the trapeze one of the only people and
he had lived nine life he had a skull
full of metal plate he had been shot
he’d been a crack addict since he was 13
and an alcoholic since he was 10
although my relationship with Seth
didn’t last my relationship with the
circus has over the years I’ve gone back
and I’ve gone back three times this girl
in the middle here her name is Cynthia
and like me she came from an academic
middle-class family she didn’t decide
that she wanted to be a dancer in the
circus until she completed her PhD in
philosophy this guy here is called Marco
and he also wasn’t born into the world
of the circus but when he was very
little he told his parents that he
wanted to grow up to be a performer and
that he also wanted to grow up to become
a girl at the age of 18 he was already
flashing records as a hula-hoop artist
and although he was still performing as
Marco in the ring he was taking sex
change hormones and like to be called
Justine backstage but into
like Cynthia and like Marco and like
myself aside the world of the circus is
dominated by just a handful of families
intimately connected with each other
being born into the circus entitles you
to become part of this vast
international community and to make your
home in any troupe anywhere in the world
but there are also other things which
distinguish life as a child in the
circus now I have a baby in his he’s
just over 1 year old but by the time he
was just about learning to sit up my
friend’s baby who is born a few days
before him was already performing in the
ring on the back of a horse but children
like Ann Hill here or like Fatima the
electricians daughter have childhood
Sidda distinct from children like this
little girl in the audience because
instead of being brought up to be told
to watch out them to be careful they are
brought up being taught that their
livelihood depends on their ability to
take risks and to be brave and to
believe that anything if possible and in
short to believe in magic this gal here
is called Chanel she had already
performed in more countries than she
could count on her fingers and she was
training as a contortionist I got to see
this little girl Nicole who’s 6
performed for the first time in the ring
and become a star of the show she was
doing an act which her mother had done
when she was a little girl she was
performing on the aerial hoop and I saw
this little boy messing around under the
awnings of the big tent and I thought he
was just having fun until I saw the
expression on his face when he entered
the ring for the first time so the
seriousness of his
and I realized that he hadn’t been
messing around he’d been preparing in
deadly earnest for one of the most life
transforming moments of his career now
there is another one of those unspoken
unwritten rules which has felt very
deeply by circus Empress arias and it is
that at every new town that they
performed in they invite the children
from the local orphanage to come and see
the show for free not as a form of
entertainment but as a lesson in just
how far a handful of sequence and
imagination and creativity and a
spotlight can take you from the
difficult nature of your everyday life
these guys here in this photo are
riggers and their jobs were hand
blisteringly hard they were responsible
for throwing up and for taking down the
big tops overnight and they would often
be left exhausted and sick with dirt
before their jobs were halfway done but
they took this work for very little
money because circus offered them
something much much more than employment
it offered them a sense of belonging it
offered them a sense of identity it gave
them a family now as well as learning to
fit in with the people in the circus I
had to learn how to fit in with the
animals because these people’s
livelihoods didn’t just depend upon
their relationships with their creatures
their lives did as well let me introduce
you to Dumbo for example now when I
first joined the circus Dumbo was an
elderly elephant but she’d actually been
a 12th birthday present to Umberto
Sanjeev Joe after he’d broken his back
on the trapeze but as I said by the time
I joined the circus
Dumbo was elderly and she had dreadful
PMS she used to get her
rendus hormonal moods and of course she
used to become a liability when she got
angry there was only one guy in the
circus who could cope with her his name
was – Zorro and he’d been a member of
the Mara Salvatrucha for those of you
who don’t know I’m after the civil war
in El Salvador the country broke out
into explosive gang violence and to
become a member of the Mara Salvatrucha
gang you have to murder someone now –
Zorro had murdered four people he had
four tiers tattooed on his face one for
each of the people who he’d killed and
possibly because of his past he didn’t
seem to be able to communicate with
people very well but he did have these
extraordinary unique relationships with
the animals and so he was a go-to guy
when Dumbo got Moody
and he used to go and he used to lie
next to her in the straw and he used to
roll a spliff and he used to sing her
lullabies and whether it was a marijuana
or whether it was the sound of his voice
he used to do the trick I told you that
this is a world which deals with
appearances and disappearances and the
first time that I went back to the
circus in Mexico to maintain my
relationship with that world I
discovered that many of the people who I
know who I had known had disappeared so
Seth the boyfriend that I had had been
murdered and – Zorro that guy who’d sung
lullabies to the elephant was in jail
the elephant herself had died her brain
aneurysm although people in the circus
said that she died of a broken heart
because she’d been a week in retirement
and thought that no one wanted to see
her act anymore
and what I realized at that point was
that the lives of these people are
brought bloody and brutal and often
they’re all too short but yet these are
the same people you can make an Act
which lasts for just five minutes under
the spotlight 12 and slip through the
imagination of their audience for nights
to come and I started this talk tonight
thinking about why the circus and the
carnivalesque and magic and masquerade
are forms which are as ancient as human
civilization itself and I realize that
it’s through making these apps which
penetrate and permeate the human
imagination that these people become
immortal or at least they become
unforgettable and they force us they
challenge us to think just how different
our own life could be if we worked on
the basis that they do that anything is
possible for our own selves and that we
are only limited by our imaginations now
thank you that’s that’s the end of my
presentation
you
you
under the blast of a spotlight transform
themselves and in short they become
demigods and once the lights cut are
condemned of parasites and I am going to
introduce you to these worlds blood and
sweat and secrets good evening
well before I was offered a job as a
dancer in a Mexican circus Don Umberto
who was the boss
he was the empresario told me about his
life about the hunger and the hardship
of his childhood in the circus in the
1930s he told me about the time he’d met
Elizabeth Taylor and the amazing sexual
chemistry that he’d had with her about
how he’d flirted with her right
underneath Richard Burton’s nose he told
me how the Pope himself had complimented
him on his miraculous ability to defy
death twice nightly and then he told me
about how recently his niece had been
eaten by one of his Tigers and that his
brother had lost most of his fingers
trying to price head decapitated head
out from the cat’s jaws and then he told
me that he was one performer short and
it was then that he asked me that one
crucial life-changing question and it
was whether I still wanted the job
so I am going to take you to the circus
in Mexico these art forms these social
phenomenons are as ancient as human
civilization itself because our archives
and our museums are bursting with
records and reminders of Egyptian
acrobats or Mexican aerialists these
people all exist within the same social
paradox these people live in trailers
they live in favelas they live in slums
but yet under the blast of a spotlight
they transform themselves they perform
these acts of incredible grace and
strength and illusion and in short they
become demigods and it is because of
this phenomenon that these same people
whence the lights cut are condemned as
parasites prostitutes and pariahs
because through this act of
transformation
they are enacting an insurrectional
threat to society and I know that part
of my own interest in these whales was
purely voyeuristic I wanted to know what
the lives of these people were like
after the lights cut and after they
scrubbed off their painted blushes and
I’m going to introduce you to their
lives but before I do that I must tell
you why I joined the circus in the first
place because when I was young I wanted
to be a trapeze artist but when we are
little we are wiser than we will ever be
as adults because we believe that
anything is possible and I was lucky
enough to do exactly what I was expected
to do as most people do up to a point
because after I got my university degree
I graduated into the recession and over
eight months all I accumulated was a
stack of rejection letters so after a
while I realized
actually it was a sign that my only
option was to cut my losses and to do
what I’d always wanted to do and to join
the circus
so I made a beeline for Mexico City
because Mexico is rumored to host more
circuses than any other country in the
world over 200 is said to pitch in the
capital city alone now once I entered
the world of the circus I learned how to
survive in this world I learn how to
french kiss tigers i learned how to
unravel my fishnets without laddering
them i learned how to dodge bullets and
i learned how to look nonchalant after
flushing a quantity of cocaine down a
public lavatory but one of the most
important things that I learned was how
to belong in this world the girls that I
encountered were competitive and bitchy
and ultimately they became my best
friends and what surprised me about the
time that I spent in the circus was how
many empty hours there were to fill and
many of these empty hours were spent
debating in all seriousness where the
various men in the circus ranked on a
scale of one to ten but many of these
same empty hours would often be filled
with less innocent pursuits
because it makes sense that if these
guys are walking tightropes in the ring
if they’re dicing with death every night
then these same adrenaline junkies will
be getting their kicks backstage through
similar means so let me tell you about
this this photograph because this is
Perla and this guy is parlours best
friend’s boyfriend as I said people dice
with death in their social life and it
seemed rare for a week to go by without
a colossal scandal that would shake the
world of the circus and I had to find
myself a boyfriend because otherwise the
girls were consider me a liability like
Paola here and the guy from the circus
would consider me a target
so I started going out with this guy SEF
who is a seventh-generation circus
performer he had grown up sleeping with
three Tigers in his bed he could speak
five languages he could speak English
Spanish French German Italian six
languages and Russian and yet he
couldn’t read or write because he’d
never gone to school he spent a few
years when he was little living in a
brothel after he’d been abandoned there
but when he was old enough to train as a
trapeze artist he was taken back into
the circus and he went on to become one
of the best performance that the trapeze
world has ever had he’s the only person
to complete the quadruple somersault on
the trapeze one of the only people and
he had lived nine life he had a skull
full of metal plate he had been shot
he’d been a crack addict since he was 13
and an alcoholic since he was 10
although my relationship with Seth
didn’t last my relationship with the
circus has over the years I’ve gone back
and I’ve gone back three times this girl
in the middle here her name is Cynthia
and like me she came from an academic
middle-class family she didn’t decide
that she wanted to be a dancer in the
circus until she completed her PhD in
philosophy this guy here is called Marco
and he also wasn’t born into the world
of the circus but when he was very
little he told his parents that he
wanted to grow up to be a performer and
that he also wanted to grow up to become
a girl at the age of 18 he was already
flashing records as a hula-hoop artist
and although he was still performing as
Marco in the ring he was taking sex
change hormones and like to be called
Justine backstage but into
like Cynthia and like Marco and like
myself aside the world of the circus is
dominated by just a handful of families
intimately connected with each other
being born into the circus entitles you
to become part of this vast
international community and to make your
home in any troupe anywhere in the world
but there are also other things which
distinguish life as a child in the
circus now I have a baby in his he’s
just over 1 year old but by the time he
was just about learning to sit up my
friend’s baby who is born a few days
before him was already performing in the
ring on the back of a horse but children
like Ann Hill here or like Fatima the
electricians daughter have childhood
Sidda distinct from children like this
little girl in the audience because
instead of being brought up to be told
to watch out them to be careful they are
brought up being taught that their
livelihood depends on their ability to
take risks and to be brave and to
believe that anything if possible and in
short to believe in magic this gal here
is called Chanel she had already
performed in more countries than she
could count on her fingers and she was
training as a contortionist I got to see
this little girl Nicole who’s 6
performed for the first time in the ring
and become a star of the show she was
doing an act which her mother had done
when she was a little girl she was
performing on the aerial hoop and I saw
this little boy messing around under the
awnings of the big tent and I thought he
was just having fun until I saw the
expression on his face when he entered
the ring for the first time so the
seriousness of his
and I realized that he hadn’t been
messing around he’d been preparing in
deadly earnest for one of the most life
transforming moments of his career now
there is another one of those unspoken
unwritten rules which has felt very
deeply by circus Empress arias and it is
that at every new town that they
performed in they invite the children
from the local orphanage to come and see
the show for free not as a form of
entertainment but as a lesson in just
how far a handful of sequence and
imagination and creativity and a
spotlight can take you from the
difficult nature of your everyday life
these guys here in this photo are
riggers and their jobs were hand
blisteringly hard they were responsible
for throwing up and for taking down the
big tops overnight and they would often
be left exhausted and sick with dirt
before their jobs were halfway done but
they took this work for very little
money because circus offered them
something much much more than employment
it offered them a sense of belonging it
offered them a sense of identity it gave
them a family now as well as learning to
fit in with the people in the circus I
had to learn how to fit in with the
animals because these people’s
livelihoods didn’t just depend upon
their relationships with their creatures
their lives did as well let me introduce
you to Dumbo for example now when I
first joined the circus Dumbo was an
elderly elephant but she’d actually been
a 12th birthday present to Umberto
Sanjeev Joe after he’d broken his back
on the trapeze but as I said by the time
I joined the circus
Dumbo was elderly and she had dreadful
PMS she used to get her
rendus hormonal moods and of course she
used to become a liability when she got
angry there was only one guy in the
circus who could cope with her his name
was – Zorro and he’d been a member of
the Mara Salvatrucha for those of you
who don’t know I’m after the civil war
in El Salvador the country broke out
into explosive gang violence and to
become a member of the Mara Salvatrucha
gang you have to murder someone now –
Zorro had murdered four people he had
four tiers tattooed on his face one for
each of the people who he’d killed and
possibly because of his past he didn’t
seem to be able to communicate with
people very well but he did have these
extraordinary unique relationships with
the animals and so he was a go-to guy
when Dumbo got Moody
and he used to go and he used to lie
next to her in the straw and he used to
roll a spliff and he used to sing her
lullabies and whether it was a marijuana
or whether it was the sound of his voice
he used to do the trick I told you that
this is a world which deals with
appearances and disappearances and the
first time that I went back to the
circus in Mexico to maintain my
relationship with that world I
discovered that many of the people who I
know who I had known had disappeared so
Seth the boyfriend that I had had been
murdered and – Zorro that guy who’d sung
lullabies to the elephant was in jail
the elephant herself had died her brain
aneurysm although people in the circus
said that she died of a broken heart
because she’d been a week in retirement
and thought that no one wanted to see
her act anymore
and what I realized at that point was
that the lives of these people are
brought bloody and brutal and often
they’re all too short but yet these are
the same people you can make an Act
which lasts for just five minutes under
the spotlight 12 and slip through the
imagination of their audience for nights
to come and I started this talk tonight
thinking about why the circus and the
carnivalesque and magic and masquerade
are forms which are as ancient as human
civilization itself and I realize that
it’s through making these apps which
penetrate and permeate the human
imagination that these people become
immortal or at least they become
unforgettable and they force us they
challenge us to think just how different
our own life could be if we worked on
the basis that they do that anything is
possible for our own selves and that we
are only limited by our imaginations now
thank you that’s that’s the end of my
presentation
you
you
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