ALL THE “BIG TOP” THRILLS AS THE CIRCUS COMES TO TOWN
It’s the annual four-day multi-performance visit of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. “Over The Top” a wacky and whimsical circus spectacular plays the Orleans Arena through Sunday night and features one courageous man standing eye to eye against a pack of powerful Bengal tigers, a flying dog and Asian elephants that can stomp, hop and groove to the latest hip-hop music!
But that’s not all! Motorcycle madness includes one cyclist on a high wire and seven speeding riders in the Globe of Steel, plus Chinese acrobats with unbelievable aerial acts including a rare double-decker trapeze number that makes your heart stop pumping as you dare not breathe!
It’s as if P.T. Barnum has come back to life in the form of Chuck Wagner who returns for his second tour as Ringmaster. He says, “I’m thrilled once again to be entrusted with the big hat. I have the greatest job on earth, I get to be in the circus and at the circus at the same time. Clown-king Tom Dougherty is also back to pull kids out of the audience to help with his ring tasks. Two special attractions this visit are the eight members of the Torres family (five brothers and three cousins from Paraguay) who perform on high-speed motorbikes inside the 16-feet-steel sphere of death and the noted Cossack horsemen with daring acrobatic feats while riding on their galloping horses.
Highlight though always comes when one of the audience kids actually joins the circus. That’s every child’s fantasy to run away and join the circus and at the “Greatest Show on Earth” you are pulled from your premium seat to join the fun on the arena floor as the “Circus Celebrity of the Day!”