The first two days of the Circus Harmony St. Louis/Escuela Nacional de Circo de Puerto Rico collaborative youth circus tour brought the group of 19 young performers to two very different places: the rural town of Adjuntas, in the mountains, and the center of the capital, San Juan. Before they began their tour, psychologist Leslynette Irizarry gave the group a tutorial in what to say and what not to say to people who have been through traumatic events like Hurricane Maria.
“Never say, ‘I know how you feel’,” Irizarry said. “Because they have been through a disaster. You don’t know.” Then, before they left, Irizarry asked the students why they were doing this tour. “Performance has a purpose, and what is the purpose for you?”
“Distraction,” “Hope,” “To make people happy,” the answers came back. And off they went.
On the way to Adjuntas, one of the Puerto Rican students pointed out hurricane damage. “It’s not beautiful, compared to what it was,” said Larissa Cortés, 17. “It’s like, mediocre. It used to be all green, and now it’s brown.”
In Adjuntas, for their first performance, the group held a short contortion workshop for the children of the town. They had them assemble themselves into a shaky human pyramid, then asked them to smile through their nervousness so their eager parents could snap pictures.
Then, with a shout of “Revolution for Harmony Circus, Puerrrrrto Rrrrrrico!” from coach Jafet Irizarry, the St. Louis Arches and Escuela de Circo Nacional kids tumbled out onstage. They elicited audible gasps of amazement from the children in the audience, who sat with faces full of wonder for the full show.
The show was held in Casa Pueblo, Adjuntas, which is a community center and environmental activist hub of the town, which made headlines in the 1980s for rejecting a proposed mining project on their land, despite financial incentives, and declaring it a protected forest reserve instead. The people of Casa Pueblo spearheaded that effort, and after the hurricane, they have worked on environmentally friendly solutions for the devastation, too.
“Around 30% of the town still doesn’t have lights,” said Rebeca Rodriguez, who works at Casa Pueblo. To fix that, the community organization has begun a campaign to distribute solar panels to the houses of those in need, as well as small solar-powered refrigerators that can be used to keep insulin or other necessary medications safe in the heat.
“The majority of them are people who are very isolated,” Rodriguez said. “For example, we brought a refrigerator to a gentleman whose home was 45 minutes from the main road. He didn’t have a vehicle. One of his neighbors told me that this was happening, to a very old person, almost ninety years old. His house is maybe a hundred years old, and the way it’s constructed the hurricane did not carry it off. But now he is having problems with filtration. He didn’t have a way to feed himself. So we talked, and we brought him a refrigerator, so now he can feed himself. It’s more easy for him now.”
54 residents now have solar panels and refrigerators provided by Casa Pueblo, Rodriguez said. “We are giving so that people learn to be well, and to keep helping others. We hope they can serve as a kind of oasis for their neighbors…if it happens again, the neighbors will already be united, and will be able to help each other.”
In addition to their environmental work, Casa Pueblo hosts community events like the circus, and runs a solar-powered cinema for the residents of Adjuntas. Having these sorts of events, Rodriguez said, has “Really been a blessing, for the town, to be able to relax, to have a tranquil mind, so you don’t have tension…you’re bringing something very beautiful for our children. Thank you for being here.”
On the next day, the circus moved on to a completely different location–El Bastión, a former prison, turned warehouse, turned circus arts center, in the center of the old quarter of San Juan. The fact that the warehouse ceilings were lower than the students were used to presented a challenge, but they were grateful to be indoors in the air-conditioning in the tropical heat. It was nothing like Adjuntas, where the students performed outdoors on a sunny patio under the mountains.
But one similarity between both places was that they were packed with people of all ages, who had come to see the circus. In each location, Puerto Rican circus coach Marilyn Cortés walked around town asking random strangers to come to the circus. More often than not, it worked.
“I like how it feels to give a surprise to another person, or to be spontaneous,” Cortés said. “I hope people come,” said St. Louis Arches coach Jessica Hentoff, “Because I’m not sure how they’re advertising it, and I think it’s going to be challenging for the kids because every day now, things will be a little bit different.”
The kids, too, hoped their second performance would be even better than their first–with the same well-executed flips, juggling, and unicycle tricks, and fewer instances of performers falling over or failing to complete their tricks.
“I’m more ready than I was yesterday,” said Puerto Rican student performer Larissa Cortés. “I think yesterday was more like a test run, to see how things would come out. Hopefully, this one is like, way better. By the end of the tour, I’m sure that we’re going to have this down to a T.”
Hentoff agreed, and said that by the time the tour ends in the towns most devastated by the hurricane, the students’ performance will be even better. “No matter what the situation itself, every performance it’ll get better, and tighter, and the kids will get more attuned to each other. They’ll get better at making decisions on the fly, literally, in the circus.”
