Circus Smirkus Comes to Heritage Gardens in Sandwich

By: iO Staff, July 25, 2012

HARRY POWERS/CIRCUS SMIRKUS - A young trapeze artist performs in the Circus Smirkus Topsy Turvy Time Travel show, coming through Heritage Museum and Gardens July 30 to August 1.

Circus Smirkus, Vermont’s award-winning international youth circus, will stop at Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich as part of its 25th anniversary Big Top Tour.

The Topsy Turvy Time Travel show is full of exuberant talent and dazzling spectacle, with aerials, acrobatics, wire-walking, juggling, trapeze, clowning, live music, and an array of brilliant costumes. Children of all ages are invited to arc through the ages with acrobats, soar the centuries with aerialists, jump decades, with jugglers and discover preposterous, playful, pre-hysteric clowns.

About the Smirkus

Circus Smirkus is the only American youth circus to travel “under canvas”; that is, the only youth circus to put on a full-season tour under its own big top, a 750-seat, one-ring, European-style tent.

Twenty-nine circus stars, ages 11 to 18, bring youthful exuberance and polished skills from 10 states, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The touring company consists of 80 people, including the performers and coaches, counselors, costumers, tech crew, tent crew, circus chefs, and a live circus band. It takes eight hours to set up the big top, backstage and concession tents, and to prep and organize 200 costume pieces, 100 props, 70 spotlights, and a mile of electrical cable.

Troupers are selected for skill, character, and personality through an audition process that begins each fall and a show that is created over the winter months. Then, in three intense weeks in early June, the troupers arrive and the show is rehearsed at Smirkus headquarters in Greensboro, in Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom.

Then the circus hits the road for a seven-week tour, during which troupers learn the ropes of traditional circus life: hours of practice, full two-hour shows twice a day, and the demanding labor of loading the show in and out.

In addition to circus arts, the troupers learn about teamwork and community, and give back to the larger community through free performances at children’s hospitals and nursing homes.