The National Circus Training School, Observatory, Cape Town

Well-placed, wedged between the highway and the suburb, the private sportsfields’ perennial activity and the municipal swimming pool’s empty oasis: tall white poles, masts without sails, wide green nets, the rigging of ships sunk under the grass. Hints of brown rust at each lamp post, on each hinge. The signs declare the circus school open - for shows and lessons, corporate fun days, endurance training, team building courses - but the weeds say otherwise (pass this way each day, they whisper, you will not see a circus soul) and it seems the gates have been closed since the centuries-old houses were built here, in the shadow of the Devil’s own peak. Perhaps old Adamastor looked down upon fellow Titans, crucified on these great beams, garotted by the high wires, struggling in the rope-traps, strangled; a torture arena for giants, this. Yet the signs insist these odd machines are for net jumping trapeze phoofy slide wire walking russian swing pole climbing obstacle course tyre racing etc. Unconventional, but somehow unheroic. There is little that is epic now: many stories, few myths; many idols, few temples; many rituals, few rites. Here at the circus school, ghosts occupy only the air and the ground - none dare swing, catch, trip, fall - so chains remain still, no rings creak, and posts do not sway in the wind. The signs say all are welcome. A passing street child asks, “Uncle, can any person play here?” I tell him I don’t know, but there is a fee (and indemnity) and the gate is locked so the answer must be no. No need, street child, urchin, for you have trained already in the circus arts: clowning, tumbling, balancing, surviving. Surviving. So - as, it seems, the school is closed today - teach us. For in the dull, unforgiving, precarious (terribly, terribly ordinary) challenge of the swings, trapezes, slides and obstacles that we all know, there lies a deep-felt need for circus training.

 

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