Stories from a circus performer

Hello Imgurians!

I've been in the circus industry since I was twelve, and started teaching at 16. I work in a tiny circus in a tiny town, that does 3 major things: teaching/animating big groups (usually school trips), giving private classes to people who want to practice specific disciplines and perform in shows (in our circus or elsewhere) .
The pictures are from my workplace because finding stock pictures of circus schools is a bitch to do.

Teachers can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. The tightrope we use for big groups is less than 2 feet high, and we sometimes ask the teachers of young groups to help the ones that are too scared to help us accompany them, either by holding the kid's hand or standing next to them so they feel reassured. I also do that, but we have 2 tightropes and some kids require more attention than others.
This lady flipped out and acted like you needed a Phd to do such a thing, and complained to all the other teachers.

Timmy was one weird kid. When the little girl showed me where he was, I indeed noticed a trail of blood in the corner of the gym, and at the end little Timmy happily playing with his diabolo while having the biggest nosebleed I've ever seen. He told me that he had too much fun and knew that he'd be seated while his nosebleed stopped, so he went in the corner so he could still play.

I see that more and more often and it makes me weep for humanity. What are you even doing with a cellphone in a circus school?! I usually bargain and let the teachers take pictures instead of having kids falling off trapezes while doing duckfaces.

That pissed me off big time. Our circus gym is quite small, and can hold a maximum of around 90 kids. When we have more than that, we rent the gym next to us and split the activities there. We ended up having to do so outside, in the heat of summer making the gym mats searing hot.

This was an awesome contract. I had to do stilt animation in a big orchard and entertain the waiting lines. Sometimes I'd go help people get some apples up high when all the ladders were taken. The owner gave me the permission to eat anything I could take. To top it off, i got a 5lb bag of apples when my contract was over. I think I did an overdose...

That was...an interesting encounter. I am a clown myself, so when this man came in to buy juggling stuff and told me it was his job too, I was delighted. Then he told me he was an ''adult'' clown, acting drunk and raunchy, and making genitalia balloons. He even taught me how to do them, and in return I gave him a flash juggling class.

That man was awesome and super sweet. Our student for private class are usually between 6 and 14 year old, so when he came in I thought he was going to register his son or granddaughter. Turns out he always wanted to learn to do backflips, and that he now had the time to do so since he was retired. I'm having a blast teaching him

I got asked to perform with other artists on new year's eve, and accepted before knowing the location. Basically, I did trapeze, aerial hoop and cube in a nightclub, 10 feet over the crowd. It was my first performance without a mat under me and I was scared to fall on the people. I did the countdown hanged upside down on my trapeze! It was the most awesome contract I did.

We do dinner-shows once a year at our circus as a fundraiser. A catering service prepared a buffet for the spectators, but forgot to prepare something to bring in the lodges. Most of us didn't eat since breakfast so we were starving and couldn't leave before the show. At the end, all the performers said ''fuck it'' and raided the place all together to eat among the spectators, all in our show costumes.

Double cat tax!

The big one is J'zargo, and next to him is his daughter, Arya.

I hope you enjoyed the anectodes of my job! I got plenty more if you want more of them.
Stay awesome!