The Circus Life

Wednesday, 01 February 2012 04:37

If asked to describe her life, Mirela Roza would say it’s something like “living in a film.”

Growing up, Roza followed her passion of dance, moving from the northeast of Brazil to the south of Brazil where “the dance industry is more developed.” She later moved to the second largest city in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro to further study her passion.

When talking to Roza, it is apparent that she would need something more than mediocre, but something to challenge her zeal and excitement for life. At 26, she found her adventure when she was asked to dance in the Ringling Brothers Circus.

“I don’t know if they chose a lot of Brazilian girls because they were pretty or because they were cheap,” but American money is better than reais [Brazilian currency], and it was nice to “make a lot of dollars,” she said laughing.

Traveling with the circus by train, Roza believes she experienced the American way of life “from a different perspective than most immigrants.”

“Oh there’s nothing like sleeping in the train,” she said as she closed her eyes. “It’s like the way it moves and the sound of the tracks, it’s just awesome.”

The Ringling Bros. train is about a mile long, “ridiculously long,” she said. “And each car is separated by troop, so dancers in one, clowns in the next and so on.” Holding close to 200 people in total.

The circus is a community, almost like a family. When the train stopped, the party began. “We set everything up on the outside of the train,” she said. They put together countless barbeques and special parties. A giant screen was set up on the outside of some of the cars and from it “a movie theatre” was created. The clowns even threw an annual Halloween party in their car that required paid admission.

“You never forget the smell of the train either,” she said. “It’s worse than a gym.” Roza described the scent in great detail saying, “It’s a special smell.” Something like the mixture of a million body odors, different foods, animals and the musty meat smell of the arena. If you can handle that, then you can handle anything, she said.

Space, however, is a quality valued immensely when traveling with the circus. “You don’t ask for a raise, you ask for more space,” Roza said. Most cars shared showers, washers and dryers, but with more space, one has their own shower, and “that’s what people mostly want.”

A school and nursery also travels with the show but there is no doctor aboard. “There was at least 25 kids” whose parents were a part of the show, said Roza, and just three years into her job at the circus, she brought a son in to the world. “Since I knew I would be in New York for his birth, I planned ahead and got a doctor there,” she said. However, being pregnant with little space and literally living amidst a circus, she had to keep reminding herself “there is always a worse situation than yours.”

When Roza’s son was born in 2005, she was forced to make different accommodations. She made a crib from a dresser drawer filled with blankets, “I basically created a barricade for him,” she said. “I had no option.”

Although there were struggles, Roza admits raising a child in the circus was a blessing. It was amazing being a woman and being able to work with your baby right there, she said.

However one year later, her family decided to leave the circus and move to Tucson where Roza enrolled at the University of Arizona School of Dance. “I think it’s very important to have an education as a parent,” she said. “It sets an example for my son.”

After she graduates, Mirela plans to jump on the circus train again, but this time behind the scenes, working backstage with production for Cirque du Soleil.

Written by Chelsey Barthel