Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, children of all ages …

My 81-year-old father can remember a time when the circus was the only show that could bring strange and thrilling acts to town. High-wire acts and sideshow oddities shared three rings with exotic performers from faraway lands during that one week when the circus pitched its tent.

    Today, the exotic is brought to us every day on cable television. The X-Games on ESPN show daring acrobatic stunts. A thousand different talk shows, with sideshow barkers as hosts, parade unusual acts of their own. And there's no corner of the Earth that the Discovery Channel can't show us.

    Though we can, with the click of a remote control, easily see this modern spectacle in our homes, we still want to see the live performance of a traveling circus. The clowns and acrobats still share the spotlight with animal acts. It is the original form of sensational entertainment.

    This past week at the Orlando Arena, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus made its second stop of this year's tour. The day before opening night, various live acts went before the cameras to film television commercials to be used later as the circus travels around the country.

    In an otherwise empty arena, one era - the Gabonaise Acrobatic Troupe - worked with another - the film crew.

    The 22 dancers and musicians from West Africa perform tribal dance and music in native costumes. They were part of the Circus of the Equator and follow a Ringling Brothers tradition of featuring ethnic performance groups from distant nations. They work with flaming torches and build human pyramids to dizzying heights. Their language is French.

    The modern film crew featured camera operators, sound technicians, directors, coordinators and grips. They work with blazing spotlights and raise a boom camera to the catwalks. Their language is ``tech talk.''

    Just before the cameras rolled, smoke machines put a haze in the chilly air to help define the spotlight beams. A translator relayed the director's instructions to the dancers. Drums started a hypnotic beat, and cameras began to roll.

    The circus performers ran their act without pause. The film crew, running several cameras at once, followed the action and recorded the images. Working in tandem using the common language of entertainment, they created a performance. When the Gabonaise dancers finished, the film crew applauded.

A version of this story appeared in the Orlando Sentinel in January 1998

NOTE: Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows was founded in 1884 and was acquired by Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1907. The combined productions, called “The Greatest Show of Earth,” shut down in 2017 because of shrinking attendance and expanded operating costs. A new version of the circus was launched in 2023 featuring a variety of performers, but no animal acts.