CHICAGO — Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi didn’t have to run away to join the circus. She was born into it.
Her parents, themselves circus performers, reared their troupe of children under big tops. Hernandez-DiStasi began performing when she was 7, and when she flew through the air with the greatest of ease, it was one of her brothers who caught her or her dad who spotted her.
All she had ever known was the circus, so in the early 1990s, she left to find out what else was out there.
Now, Hernandez-DiStasi is the artistic director and a co-founder of the Actors Gymnasium, one of the handful of gyms in the Chicago area that train students in the circus arts.
There are still people that come to the gyms because they want to run away and join the circus, but the meaning of that dream has changed. The most iconic circus in America, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, will end its 146-year run in May. But the fascination with the death-defying acts remains, though in different forms, and dozens of smaller circuses perform throughout the country.
Circus arts have been infused into acts away from the big top. Hernandez-DiStasi is a living example. Performers in varying disciplines have reason to learn the skills, and fitness enthusiasts are interested enough to try the tricks.
As a result, the half dozen or so circus gyms in the Chicago area have crafted their business models to suit.
“My generation was circus from birth to death practically. People didn’t leave the circus,” said Hernandez-DiStasi, who performed with Ringling Bros. “Because circus has changed, people don’t have that option anymore… You have to diversify.”
That’s true for the students she teaches and for the gym itself, Hernandez-DiStasi said. Though circus arts is the Actors Gymnasium’s most popular class, it also teaches contortion, clowning and gymnastics, for example.
As theater students from DePaul University unwind from fabric suspended from the ceiling after an aerial class in one room, small children stand in a circle and eagerly watch an instructor next door. The gym also trains actors from a city theater in the circus arts.
Instead of perfecting one skill, Hernandez-DiStasi teaches her students how to work their bodies to learn anything.
“It’s like everything else,” she said. “If you’re a dancer and all you can do is dance, then your options are going to be a lot smaller.”
Aloft Circus Arts in Chicago also focuses on teaching strong fundamentals in its full-time professional training program, said Shayna Swanson, artistic director, owner and founder of the circus gym. Everyone in the program learns to tumble, juggle and do acrobatics.
Most of the gym’s students attend classes for fun, but in 2013, it launched a full-time training program for those who want to go pro. It started out as a nine-month course, but the instructors soon realized that wasn’t cutting it, Swanson said. The class that started in 2016 will graduate after two years of training. Tuition is $9,500 per year.
Many of the full-time students aspire to join small circus companies or start their own, Swanson said, so that’s what the gym trains them for. In addition to the fundamental skills, students graduate from the two-year program with a specialty.
“Most of the shows are looking for somebody who can take part in everything but then have their one shining moment,” she said.
Sydney Billings, 17, majors in aerial fabrics in Aloft’s full-time program, training to do tricks on a silk attached to the ceiling, like ballet in the air, she said. Though her aspirations after graduation aren’t specific, Billings knows she wants to work with a smaller company.
