Tzigan - a Circus Flora Adventure

Circus Flora

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. Once the big top is in place, you know that an evening of thrills, comedy and all-around family friendly entertainment awaits you within its pleasantly cool confines.

For twenty years now, St. Louis' own one-ring European-style circus has been bringing some of the best talent from around the world to Mound City and this year is no exception. The featured acts in Tzigan - a Circus Flora Adventure include trick riders from Russia, trained dogs from Chile, acrobats from Cuba, and our own youth circus troupe The St. Louis Arches. It's like a mini-United Nations but without the political posturing.

There is, as always, a little something for everyone of every age. The sensuous aerial adagio dance of Melinda Heywood and Circus Flora co-founder Alexandre Sacha Pavlata, for example, will entrance the adults (as will Heywood's belly dance number) while the antics of Nino the Clown (the multi-talented Giovanni Zoppe, a Flora regular for many years now) will keep the kids in hysterics. And everyone will love the cute and incredibly talented dogs of The Olate Family Canine Capers as they dance, skip rope, jump through hoops and even engage in complex tumbling routines with their masters.

The Flying Wallendas are back again with their heart-stopping high wire act, forming human pyramids high above the ring without a net. The equine stunts of Stanslav Lazarov's Osetian Riders provide earthbound thrills and offer a nice counterpoint to the more graceful performances of Katja Schumann's trained horses. The acrobatic trio Los Aregos dash up and down a pole in ways that seem to defy gravity and The St. Louis Arches demonstrate that you're never too young to leap, tumble and do back flips with ease.

Theatre Director Cecil MacKinnon provides the slender story line, as usual, in her persona of Yo-Yo the Narrator. This time it concerns the efforts of a Gypsy family to find a home and make contact with the mysterious Lady of the Mist. On opening night, at least, the poor quality of the amplified sound rendered large parts of it incomprehensible, but as circus is hardly a narrative art form this did nothing to diminish the entertainment value of the evening.

Tzigan - a Circus Flora Adventure will be providing excitement and laughs every night except Mondays through June 26th [2005] under the tent in Grand Center. Call Metrotix at 314-534-1111 for tickets, round up the whole clan, buy some popcorn and cotton candy and lose yourself in one of the oldest and most universal art forms around; because nothing says “summer” like the circus.

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