Just the other day, tickets for the next Cirque du Soleil show in Minneapolis went on sale. Cirque du Soleil has a lot to answer for in these parts. Five years ago, Charlie and Julie Zelle took their children, Charlotte and Nick, on a family trip to see the trampoline queens and contortionists at a Cirque show. It appears to have changed the course of Zelle family history.
“Nick was absolutely transformed,” Charlie said proudly.
“Afterwards he started hanging from bedsheets tied to the banister.”
Nick, now ten years old, is hard at work chasing his big-top dreams. He takes both private and group aerialist lessons, studying, among other things, hand-balancing and trapeze. His parents don’t lose sleep over his threats to run off with the circus one day; rather, they’re encouraging him. Charlie takes his son shopping for tight-fitting, glittery costumes. He recently rigged an eighteen-foot gymnastics structure in the backyard. In February the family even traveled to Montreal so Nick could audition for a part with Cirque du Soleil.
In the Twin Cities, there are enough brave parents like the Zelles to sustain two circus performance schools: St. Paul-based Circus Juventas and Minneapolis-based Xelias Aerial Arts School. Nick began his studies at Circus Juventas soon after his first encounter with Cirque du Soleil. Then, as his enthusiasm grew, he moved on to study with Xelias, regarded as the more “serious” circus school. (Juventas and Xelias offer classes for adults, too. It is said to be great exercise—fear undoubtedly burns a lot of calories.)
Lessons are a little pricey, but no more than sending a child to an average dance studio. At Xelias, a one-on-one lesson costs eighty dollars, whereas a more affordable group class costs fifteen dollars. It’s certainly less expensive than hockey, which many parents regard as the money pit of all sports. Nick, standing four feet tall and with round, daydreamy eyes, doesn’t want to play hockey because he can’t stomach the thought of falling on the ice.
The Xelias studio is in a small warehouse in Northeast Minneapolis. Inside, the floor is carpeted with mats and crash pads. Aerialist playthings hang from the ceiling like dense jungle undergrowth, giving the place a tangled feel. Students can climb as high as thirty feet, but generally hover at a comfortable ten. During a recent session, Nick performed an exhausting hour-long circuit workout that took him from trapeze to ropes to silks (huge diaphanous drapes suspended from the ceiling). Then, after pausing to give a visitor a wet-noodle handshake, he completed an acrobatic routine of round-offs, handsprings, and backward tucks. Soon he was supporting his own body weight on a high hoop and doing no-handed “dead man” dismounts. After his feet hit the floor, he raised his chin, stuck out his chest, and stretched his thin, white arms toward the sky with a little flourish. Then he glanced over to see if anyone had been looking.
“I’m torturing the children,” joked Meg Elias, a professional aerialist and founder of the school, who was drilling another student through sit-ups and pull-ups. (The would-be aerialist has plenty of earthbound exercises.) All along, the lithe and bendy young Nick bounced between apparatuses. He made a string of elegant poses on the high hoop, even touched his heel to his head while hanging upside-down from the thing. Then he gracefully climbed and wound himself in the silks. In between sets, he panted and sipped orange Gatorade.
Most of the training is directed toward a performance, the aerialist’s version of a recital. At one such event, two years ago, Nick performed thirty feet above the audience on an apparatus called the Spanish Web. It is a long, hanging rope with a high loop in which the aerialist can tie a hand or a foot. Nick’s little wrist was knotted in, and a seemingly wicked grown-up aerialist on the ground violently twirled the rope cowboy-style. Nick’s rigid body quickly picked up RPMs, like a ceiling fan turned to high. It was a sight that induced not just gasps, but actual knuckle-chewing. Charlie remembered, too: “Nick was spinning around and the whole audience went Ohhh! Everybody was thinking, What kind of parents would let their kid do that?”—Christy DeSmith
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