Friday, July 21, 2006

circus camp

Iris is enrolled in three weeks of "circus camp", and today I got the chance to see a show. This week's theme was "Creepie Crawlies", and the children pretended to be insects, staged a "Bug Olympics", and cavorted about.

Circus camp's greatness is its sense of humor. So many little kid activities are unbearably pompous (a certain ballet instructor comes to mind, although Lucy's current ballet teacher is endearingly down-to-earth). The parents get so emotionally invested in their child's alleged greatness, and there's a lot of pseudo-seriousness. At circus camp, there's none of that. There were actually some mindbogglingly accomplished children doing amazing stunts, but with humor: plenty of pratfalls, insect make-up, and funny background music. Some of the children are obviously hams, while one African-American girl seemed so shy while she performed seemingly superhuman feats of preternatural strength on the trapeze.

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