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Join the circus!

Are you looking for an outlet for your flexibility, balance, sense of adventure and love of travel? Don’t laugh, but a career in the circus might be in your future!

Acrobatics and the flying trapeze are just two skills you can learn at schools like the San Francisco School of Circus Arts. For now, that school offers beginning and advanced courses, but they plan to open a professional circus-training program, says school director Dominique Jando. Across the country, you can find circus workshops and specialty classes to take, too. If it’s circus history or show information you’re looking for, check out www.circusweb.com.

To succeed in the circus arts, you’ll need patience and discipline and resistance to pain! You’ll also need to develop your strength and flexibility.

Are all the circuses you’re familiar with the traveling three-ring kind? That’s probably because “the U.S. is, for the most part, in the backwaters of the circus world,” Jando says. If you’re looking for more variety, check out these modern circuses: the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain in Paris, Cirque du Soleil, the Big Apple Circus, Circus Flora and Teatro ZinZanni.

A career in the circus isn’t such a far-fetched idea. “Consider a ballet student, for instance,” Jando says. “What can he or she expect to do if he or she has no interest in ballet productions or recitals?”

The answer might just be using their skills to perform under the big tent!

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