Big top fun with human touch

By Joe Brown

Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Tiffany Brown

Ivan Jimenez Barajas, 3, is all decked out for his performance as “Papelito” the clown. Barajas is a fourth-generation clown.

There’s Cirque — and then there’s the circus.

La vida es un circo (Life is a circus)

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Cirque du Soleil has famously perfected and polished the ancient arts of the circus to a high gloss. And it has become almost invincible, in Las Vegas especially. But as impressive and sensational (and expensive) as the high-concept circus is, it’s also antiseptic and technologically removed. Something precious has been lost on the way to the top of the big-top trade.

The classic circus is a traveling variety show of acrobats and clowns and animals — and the unpredictable sights, sounds and smells that come with them — all suffused with a touch of seedy showbiz glamour and the possibility of danger.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you the Circo Atayde USA!

A spinoff of a famous century-old Mexico City circus, Atayde has been setting up its big tent in parking lots across Las Vegas this summer.

Vamos! Vamos! Vamos! Para todo la familia ... The siren call echoes in the evening air over the blacktop parking lot in front of the Rancho Indoor Swapmeet.

It’s one of the first late-summer evenings when it’s possible to comfortably linger outside. Parents hold toddlers by the hand as they walk toward the bright blue big top spangled with red, yellow and orange stars. They walk past a cluster of trucks and trailer homes that encircle the back of the capacious tent. Miniature front yards in front of each RV sport homey touches: folding chairs, welcome mats, doghouses, children’s tiny bikes.

It’s good that the evening air is pleasant, because the circus roisterers make the small crowd line up — and line up again — several times before letting everyone inside. Once inside the small “lobby” tent, there’s another line. And popcorn, of course, and cotton candy. While hucksters take the opportunity to try to push time shares on captive parents, vendors try to entice children with glowing plastic swords and wands.

Walking beneath the bleacher seats, three children excitedly precede their mother, then suddenly freeze in their tracks.

A few yards ahead, a figure lies sprawled on the floor.

“Maybe it’s a clown,” I suggest hopefully to the stricken-looking mom.

We apprehensively give the body wide berth as we make our way to our seats.

It’s not a clown. It’s a very sunburned drunk — un borracho — who has crawled under the tent flap and passed out.

After we take our seats, dozens of us watch fascinated, from between the planks of the bleachers, as the dark comedy continues. Two circus employees arrive, and after ascertaining that the fellow is alive, they literally roll him like a burrito, out under the tent flap and into the parking lot.

And the show hasn’t even begun.

The big top seats several hundred, but on this Thursday night, there are only about 50 in the crowd. That’s about as many as are involved in putting on the show, between performers — a mix of Mexicans, Cubans, Colombians and Americans — and backstage crew. So there’s more than ordinary pressure on tonight’s audience to make enough noise and show their appreciation.

The tent goes dark momentarily, then blazes with primary colors and blares with prerecorded circus music. A hobo clown with a suitcase tries to entertain the crowd until a mean ringmaster kicks him out. Befeathered “Jubilee”-style dancers strike showgirl poses. An aerialist swirls and twirls through the air, trailing painted butterfly wings.

And then there’s a series of acrobats. A man carefully constructs a tower of chairs atop a platform, and there’s real suspense as he slowly climbs it. Everyone holds his breath as he does a handstand at the top.

Hector the tightrope walker wobbles a bit on the line, about 40 feet above the floor. There’s no net below. “Cuidado!” shouts the ringmaster. Too late — Hector slips and falls, grabbing at the rope just in time. After a breather, he gets back out there and does it again.

There are no special effects, and part of the appeal of this real-people circus, with its humbler, human-scaled acts, is that the performers don’t make what they do look easy at all.

Something could go wrong.

A juggler sends a series of pins, rings and sombreros spinning, imploring the audience to clap the beat for him. Gripping the handles of the German wheel, which looks like the skeleton of a giant drum, a young man turns himself into a human gyroscope. There are boxing poodles, the only animal act in this circus, and a comical clown fight that culminates with fake slapping and fart jokes that need no translation, even if you don’t speak Spanish. You can hear kids cackling all around the ring.

This is the first time the Atayde Circus has visited Vegas, Atayde’s artistic director, Jorge Campa, says before showtime, trying to be heard over the grumble of an electrical generator and the poodles yipping in a nearby trailer. Campa, who also plays the grumpy ringmaster and creates all the costumes for the show, was born in the circus — he’s a fifth-generation circus performer whose dad owned a circus in Mexico City.

Before setting up in Vegas with its caravan of 17 motor homes, the circus trooped through California, stopping in Stockton and Bakersfield, Riverside and Victorville. After three weeks at the Rancho spot, it recently moved to a parking lot near the Silver Nugget for at least two more weeks, before packing up the tent and heading for Phoenix.

Like almost every other entertainment act in Las Vegas, the Atayde Circus is feeling the money crunch that is squeezing audiences at every economic level, Campa says. But whatever the state of the dollar, children will still need to be entertained, and he promises the circus will be back in town, same time next year.