Indiana Pintado & Franchesca Cavallini
Franchesca Cavallini
Woodbury, NJ. 50 miles. Grass. Rain.
Southern New Jersey playing our last northern dates before the jump into Virginia late next week. The Cole Bros Circus played this same lot in August.
In late September a circus is a thing chasing the last waning days of summer. In four weeks the first tented shows will end their seasons. In the yard behind the bigtop the circus changes with the seasons until in autumn it goes home again. The wife of a clown has left for Reno to await the birth of their child. A wire walker has returned to Oklahoma, and then Brazil.
A summer circus is gypsy circus, with wind and weather and a wild beauty to it. . Winter circus is a world apart, a grand and lavish production in heated quarters, tamed and fettered and predictably lovely. From the Grail story comes the tale of the Fisher King whose kingdom withers with wounds earned protecting the sacred and the secret. But the story of the Fisher King is older than that, rooted in the change of seasons and the folkloric premise that things born in spring will pass with the autumn – to be made again when winter’s icy hold is slacked. Like the Fisher King circus lives for the promise of spring, and in the autumn we are at our best, our most exciting and glamorous; soon enough we sleep again. Dreaming, planning for the season to come.
