Transcription of Peter Nielsen for the show Under the Big Top #194
Lisa: Growing up in Maine, I had the opportunity to go to what is considered to be a more traditional circus at the Cumberland County Civic Center which is now not called the Cumberland County Civic Center. What was going on that was beyond a more traditional circus, I didn’t really know much about. Now, there’s a lock going on which the circus here in Maine.
Today we have Peter Nielsen who is the president of the Circus Conservatory of America, who’s going to talk to us about the circus and his approach to the circus which is really very exciting so thanks for coming in.
Peter: Thanks for having me.
Lisa: Now Peter, your background, you have 25 years of organizational leadership background. You produced theater, music, performance poetry, dance and visual arts events and festivals throughout New England for more than 2 decades. I mean, you’ve done a lot of things and been in a lot of places doing them. Tell me why the circus?
Peter: The circus I discovered mostly through my son. My son is now 20 years old and he’s studying in Montreal to become a professional circus performer but when he was born, we were living in Vermont and we were on the trail for the summer tour of Circus Smirkus which is headquartered in Vermont and towards around New England, it does 70 shows and 7 weeks every July and August.
They would finish up their summer tour in August on Montpelier where we’re living. We had these little kids, Isabel and Noah and we would take them to the circus and when they would come home, they would just start doing even when they were just 2, they would do summersaults and just try to mimic what they had seen.
They would do it all the way until the next year when the circus would come back. They were really big Smirkus fans. As my son, my daughter got really into dance and went off in that direction but my son was just really into all kinds of movement that was extreme movement. He would take his tricycle down the hill at 100 miles an hour and just find all kinds of ways to be dangerous.
He had incredible sense of balance which a friend of mine who was a stilt walker recognized. This friend of mine builds Noah a pair of stilts when he was 8 and they were big, tall stilts. Noah got right on them and talked to my friend who basically said you don’t really have to learn how to walk on them, that comes easy. You have to learn how to fall.
Noah at 8 years old, just takes me outside and says all right, I got to start falling. He just had this fearlessness and sense of balance and determination. All of that became characteristics that led him into the circus. We let him to go to Circus Smirkus camp and he auditioned for the Big Top Tour. He got to it eventually and he toured for 4 years doing those 70 shows in 7 weeks with Circus Smirkus.
That exposed me to this whole culture, this youth culture of what contemporary circus that blew my mind open and maybe realized that there was an opportunity here for more of that.
Lisa: When I mentioned my experience with the circus, my experience really was big elephants and animals. There was acrobatics but it didn’t seem like it’s what you’re talking about. You’re talking about more than a Cirque du Soleil kind of circus.
Peter: I think the distinction and where the shift happened was the kind of circus that most of us grew up with here in the United States was essentially a form of American expansionism, capitalism circus. What that means is that the circus is ancient and has been around and has been a part of almost every society in the history of humanity.
In the United States, it took the form of … It had a lot to do with the expansion of the railroads and the circuses travelling by train from community to community and bringing things that people hadn’t seen before to the frontier like tigers, and lions, and bears and elephants. Also just acting out the Americanism of what was happening.
You ended up with a circus that was driven by this railroad lifestyle and the kinds of people who would live on the railroad and never settled down and things like that. That merged with vaudevillian comedy and what we ended up within the late 20th century was the Ringling Brothers show which was the corporatization of all that earlier frontier rodeos and things like that.
It has a very strong place in American history but a lot of things that happened at the end of the 20th century was exposed to globalization. There were other influences happening in other parts of the world that began to work their way into North America specifically after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russian Soviet Union, let it nationalized the ballet and it nationalized the circus among many other things that we nationalized at that time.
The ballet and the circus both were driven by the same approach of bringing the state‘s influence and military style coaching and discipline to these 2 art forms because the intention was to show how the perfection of the individual would be demonstrated as the triumph of the state really what happened.
They bring all these Russian circus coaches emerge as a disciplined, very highly trained, very capable circus coaches and over the course of the rest of the 20th century, they start moving their way into Western Europe, between the wars getting in evolved in cabaret shows in Paris, meeting up with these French artists and putting together these very artistic circus shows that were also very, very, very high level of athleticism.
That became the basis of contemporary circus. In the 1960s in North America, there was a renaissance of the performing arts and there was also a movement in Quebec for Quebec separatism from Canada. There was a nationalist fervor of having a French cultural identity. Things from France were imported, cultural things were imported to Quebec to create this Quebec identity and circus was one of them.
Over the course of the ‘70s, circus was flourishing. In 1981, the National Circus School of Montreal was formed in Montreal. It is the National Circus School of Montreal, not the National Circus School of Canada. It is also ENC, Ecole Nationale de Cirque. It exists today as the most highly respected circus training school in the world.
Across the street, is an institution formed 3 years later, Cirque du Soleil and its international headquarters are across the street from ENC. They also share a campus with the Toho Theater which is the world’s most purpose-built theater for circus. All this emerged because when this European style circus became part of a French identity of Quebec, the government invested in it because the Canadian government and the Montreal City government and the Quebec Government all wanted to make sure that they maintained this identity that the Quebecers wanted.
They couldn’t create it and they invested in it and institutionalized it, built the school, gave Cirque du Soleil a million dollar grant for its first tour and therein lies the birth of a multibillion dollar industry that is still headquartered in Montreal. Over the next 25 years it moved in across the United States, toured around the United States, eventually settled and built many theaters and shows in Las Vegas.
I think Cirque du Soleil does what I’ve been told about 85% of its revenue in the United States. What happened then in the last 20 years since that all happened is that all kinds of kids across America got exposed to this new style circus. It’s a circus that doesn’t have elephants and tigers and bears anymore. It doesn’t really travel with tents that move from town to town by the railroad.
It’s this European style circus that emphasizes the highest levels of human achievement whether it’s in movement or endearing or in risk taking or in magic or in theater. The whole point of circuses, what can a human being achieve and what is that experience like.
How do you make that into art and entertainment and performance? That’s just a big shift from the white phase, goofy clowns with big shoes running around sweeping up elephant mess. That’s how contemporary circus shifted with American circuses.
Lisa: My understanding is that your son is actually one of the best in the world at a specific way of throwing things in the air. I don’t want to call it juggling. I’m not sure that’s what it’s actually called but, tell me about this.
Peter: He would call himself a juggler when he’s using just street language. He studies object manipulation at Ecole Nationale de Cirque. The specific prop that he focuses on primarily is the Diablo. The Diablo looks like an hourglass of sorts. It’s essentially a sphere, cut in half with the poles connected with the small axle. It’s made out of some kind of rubber, vinyl or something.
It’s the contemporary version of the Chinese yoyo. What he does is he has these and he can use one or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5, however he chooses to have in his act. Most people just use one, unless they’re into this advanced performance. He has 2 sticks in his hand that are connected by a string that’s about 5 or 6 feet long. That axle of the Diablo travels on his string.
He performs that how he’s become so talented out of it is by bringing his own style to it. He studied a little bit of modern dance and ballet. He’s just got the moves really. He adapted his own personal aesthetic to the use of this prop and created a very unique performance style with it. He’s also mastered all the tricks and all these ways you can operate the prop.
It’s like in a lot of contemporary circus, it’s those 2 things combined. You have aesthetic that you develop that unique and personal. Then you have this training of how to actually technically master it. When you can bring those things together into an original performance using an ancient prop, then you’re creating something new.
Lisa: I’m really enjoying hearing about this because my son who’s 21, he was very active. He was very daring, he would have been the kid on the tricycle but unlike you I did not have a friend who was a stilt walker. My son did more traditional route which was baseball, soccer, basketball.
There was something really great about that and something he learned a lot from being on all those teams, he got very good. He no longer does it and there wasn’t … He was a pitcher. That was about as personal as it got. There really wasn’t much of an aesthetic, at least not at that level. To hear that your son is actually pursuing something, that felt so resonant with him. That makes me happy that we offer that to kids these days.
Peter: I can tell you a little bit of a story about a specific moment in Noah’s evolution as a human being. Noah did a lot of that other stuff too. he was a good lacrosse player, a good park skier and did a lot of skateboarding, mounting biking, pretty much anything.
He was in to the traditional things when he went to Circus Smirkus camp, there was … and he was about 12 at the time, 11 or 12. There was this coach there who was about 7 or 8 years older than Noah. He was probably 19. He had been through Circus Smirkus. He basically was looking for something for Noah to do. He gave Noah this Diablo and said try this.
He came back a couple of hours later and Noah had been working on it for 2 hours. Noah, tells me this story, I hear this story once in a while. His coach, his name is Erica Bates. Eric said to Noah, “Wow, you’re really good at that. You should stick with it.”
As Noah said he could have been doing anything at that moment but being a 12-year-old boy and a 19-year-old young man, comes up to you and says, “You’re pretty good at that, you should stick with it.” Noah is like, “That’s why I’m still doing it today because somebody recognized that and told me to not stop.”
That’s a big piece of what when we talk about our kids and how they discover what it is they’re going to do, that mentor that you discover whether it’s a very opportunistic time or perhaps a very vulnerable time is discovering that mentor and having them … You see something in them that makes you respect them. Then they see something in you that encourages you, that’s where it all fires up.
Lisa: That piece is really important to you and important to the work that you’ve been doing with bringing the circus here to Portland. There’s going to be a youth circus element going on at Thompson’s Point this summer what you’re really interested in is more of the coaching element and really creating high level instruction. Is that right?
Peter: Yeah, and I think to connect those 2 points, I think that what we see is seeing these mentorship happening all the way up the ladder of development. We have very young kids who are coming in for … We actually have 5 to 7-year-old programs but also have a 7 to 12-year-old and then we get in to our high school kids. We have these paths that kids can give progressing up through different levels of beginner, intermediate to advanced.
Then we began this year our college club. That was kids who were involved in going to college in this area or at least be in college age. They were invited to come Friday nights and all work together with kids their own age. On Sundays, we have open gym for them.
This group of 19 to 25-year-olds starts working on circus with our coaches. A lot of our coaches are 35 and 40. They’ve toured with Cirque du Soleil and they’ve already had these careers. We have a continuum from 5 to 45 of people helping people just younger than them move up.
What we have going on this summer with these coaches that we have in place now is that we developed a lot of kids in our college club to not only learn a lot of the techniques and acrobatics and different styles of performing circus tricks, et cetera, circus activities. We’ve now asked them to come in and they’re shadowing our coaches in teaching the younger kids.
This summer we have about 8 college age students who are going to be coaching our summer camps. They are going to be mentored by our 35 to 40-year-old performing artists that are visiting us. Together we’re going to create a whole community here on Thompson Point that involved a lot of circus camps and a lot of circus.
Then in the evening a lot of adult circus classes. Our goal over the course of the summer is to pull out those people from those different groups who really want to perform and will be creating and staging performances. We have everything lined up from kids shows by the kids and for other kids to circus nightclub that we intend to build and really power forward within the fall on Thompson Point.
Lisa: When I was growing up, there were the music and drama and art people. Then there were the athletes. Then there were some of us that did music and drama and art and we’re also athletes. There wasn’t that middle ground. What you’re describing right now is that middle ground. You’re describing that true integration of art, aesthetic, physical, kinesthetic. I mean, it’s really pretty amazing to hear what you’re describing.
Peter: Yeah, you hit the nail in the head. That’s the value that I saw in circus. That was the culture that it really attracted me to this because as my son got more involved and as he hit that age of 17, 18 and having all his friends come to the house and stay for a while, they were from all over because they were travelling with Circus Smirkus, et cetera.
I got to see this community, this culture of teenage kids who were super athletes, just they could have made any varsity team they wanted to but what they were in to was this art form. I began to watch this and say this is just unusual to find really artistic, aesthetic kids who are really can talk to you for a long time about a painting or about a book that they read or something but are also just incredibly gifted at using their bodies.
That was interesting but then I started observing what the rest of that culture, what the other attributes included and I found really intelligent kids like off the charts intelligence. Also a real do it yourself culture that was willing to take in anything. All these kids would build their own equipment, build their own props and got into designing their own costumes. It was just do-it-yourselfers.
Then they also had this determination. They were in control of their own destinies. They were just like not just extreme sports kids but extreme humans. That I found really captivating as a culture that I realize was coming from this combination of having this very physical world and being in control of their physical world, having good relationships with their bodies and good control over what they did with it.
That motivated them also to be very nutrition conscious, wellness conscious but then they were also very visionary. I saw that the combination of these 2 parts was just really the integration of the whole mind, body, spirit connection and that what I was witnessing was that when you have that whole triumvirate of your being in balance, then you get this surplus positive creativity.
That’s where I see circus are and what the opportunity that circus brings to anybody. It’s when you can be socially engaged with other people collaborating on something and really feeling that sense of spirit that that will bring. You’re physically working your body and training it to do well with what you’re doing with your movement and your strength.
Then you’re also using your brain and your mind to really look at how to achieve what you’re trying to achieve. It’s been measured that there’s actually cognitive development that happens with focus on juggling and things like that. It’s a really cool culture when you can bring those worlds together.
The other beautiful thing is that it really brings community together as a result because in some of the shows we do, we get people showing up just because they’re in to see the hand to hand act, the partner acrobatics act and to see what people can do. It’s a physical culture. They go from that to a hockey game or to even a boxing match or something.
Then you have other people who see it as a form of dance and a form of art. They take it back and they look at the European paintings that have circus sites. To bring all that together is really part of how we hope to develop the community around the school that we’re building around the conservatory. I think that we have a little strong affinity with that and the vision for Thompson Point in Portland in general.
The way that development is shaping up is to bring the best the both those worlds as well. A very artistic community and a very athletic community and to take that step back, yet, another step, that’s what Maine is. That’s why Maine is the perfect place for this because a lot of people are attracted to Maine for the outdoor recreation opportunities.
Climbing Mt. Katahdin or canoeing the Allagash or something. Yet they also participate in the creative economy and enjoy this quality of life that, that creative economy offers. That’s one of the reasons we came here to do this is that because circus does bring in both of those worlds into 1.
Lisa: For people who are interested, you are doing a first Friday that’s coming up in June?
Peter: Yeah, first Friday, we’ll be in the Congress Square Park, next to the Eastland Westin or Westin Eastland, whatever it is and across the museum. We’ll be in there and we’ll have all kinds of people that are part of our circus community both our professional performing artist and some of the younger students will all be performing together and demonstrating what it is that we do.
They get to show off a little bit and show you what their skills are and show you what the acts that they’ve developed over. It depends on how long they’ve been involved with it but it’ll be a good show.
Lisa: How can people find out about the Circus Conservatory of America? Do you have a website?
Peter: We do, it’s circusconservatory.org. There’s all kinds of information in there about our summer camps and our adult programs and the performances we have coming up. If you’re local too Portland, you can just swing in to Thompson’s Point and you’ll find our building right there. We’re in there a lot and we don’t mind people coming in, checking out what we have going on.
Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Peter Nielsen who is the president of the Circus Conservatory of America and I’m really excited about what you’re doing. I really appreciate that you’ve had this type of vision and you brought it to Maine. I’m glad that you have a friend who is a stilt walker.
Peter: Excellent. Thank you very much.
Lisa: You have been listening to Love Maine Radio, Show Number 194, Under the Big Top, Our guests have included Chris Thompson and Peter Nielsen. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Main Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes.
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