The circus has come a long way since Roman times, when up to 5,000 animals were killed in a single day in an arena. Roman emperors decreed more than half the days of the year public holidays, so that people could go to the circus and forget their discontents. Events included tying a bull and a bear together for a fight to the death or letting a dwarf square off against a woman. Gladiators, who were often criminals or prisoners of war, were pitted against starved beasts or each other.
Things are much tamer these days, and perhaps a little more skillful. The Cirque du Soleil (Circle of the Sun), with seven troupes around the world and $300 million in revenue last year, uses no animals at all – just highly trained acrobats, jugglers and trapeze artists. The things they do with their bodies boggle the mind.
A young girl stands on one hand on a post while swiveling her legs around into graceful slow splits. A team of men jumps through intersecting hoops, somehow without touching the rings or colliding with each other. A column of five female acrobats stand on each other’s shoulders, barely trembling.
When that fifth woman is standing up there on top of her four friends, she is probably not thinking of how the stage that is holding them up got delivered to New York City. Let’s hope she’s not.
Still, if Mike Rizer and his fellow 42 truckers had not brought the equipment, the show could not go on.
“Doing the circus is a break,” says Rizer, of Bad Axe, Mich. “It gives you a different routine. It pays well, the people are nice and it isn’t like I’m out there 12, 14 hours a day killing myself.” He has worked harder in other jobs pulling gas, produce, auto parts, milk and boats, he says. “We never load or unload, so it’s easier than other trucking jobs.”
When there are empty seats, Rizer gets to watch the show. The part that impresses him is the people popping out of the floor and dropping from the ceiling. “I defy you to figure out how they do it,” he says. “I couldn’t figure it out for a while. But I have the inside view, so I know how the stage and tent are built. There are crawl spaces under the floor.”
