CLOWNING AROUND AT THE BIG APPLE CIRCUS
- The New York Sun
- Amanda Gordon
- 12 Nov 2007
If he could join the Big Apple Circus, 27-year-old financial analyst John Paduano would be the wildly popular clown Grandma. "I'm old and crotchety in my own way," he said at the circus's 30th anniversary gala Friday.
"I'd like to be the person putting together the acts and arranging them," the chairman of a boutique investment firm, Charles Brock, also a past president of the Harvard Alumni Association, said.
The co-anchor of the "Today" show, Meredith Vieira, who actually joined the circus for a day, making rounds as a clown doctor, was back in costume at the event. Big Apple Circus runs a national network of 90 clown doctors who bring cheer to 200,000 children in 19 pediatric hospitals.
During the pre-show festivities, where cotton candy, popcorn, and hot dogs were aplenty, it was easy to dream about being a trapeze or tightrope artist. However, it wasn't so easy once the show began. Each act had the audience in awe — and baffled as to how a human being could actually do that. Acrobatic brothers Giovanni and Nikolai Huesca did flips off one another; Yelena Larkina used every part of her body to put several hula hoops in motion; Irina Markova jumped rope with a dog, and Kris Kremo juggled hats and boxes. In the finale, dressed in costumes inspired by Marc Chagall's paintings, members of Russia's Kovgar Troupe flew into the air, then landed perfectly.