The Ringmaster
AS AN ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, "BINDER REVOLUTIONIZED the circus, infusing performances with compassion,” according to ABC News, which once named him Person of the Week. In his new memoir, Never Quote the Weather to a Sea Lion: And Other Uncommon Tales from the Founder of the Big Apple Circus, Binder takes readers back through 35 years with the show he created.
After graduating with a degree in history from Dartmouth and an M.B.A. in marketing from Columbia, Binder developed an eye for talent as a coordinator for the Merv Griffin Show and associate producer for Jeopardy. He moved into the spotlight in the early 1970s as he learned juggling with the San Francisco Mime Troupe and met Michael Christensen. The pair traveled through Europe in the mid-1970s, juggling on street corners before performing in their first one-ring circus in Paris. “What I felt when I entered that ring was nothing less than pure joy—not just a powerful sense of satisfaction and pleasure, but something far more powerful and deeply primal: true, elemental, ritual celebration,” writes Binder. “The audience around us was not only watching but also sharing; their energy drove us and fed ours.” The pair decided to bring the intimate, one-ring concept to America, and in 1977 they raised the first Big Apple Circus tent in lower Manhattan. In his book Binder shares an intimate glimpse into the lives of circus artists, their animal partners and roustabouts who keep everything running smoothly. He recalls that first tent in Battery Park, retrieving a horse-drawn gypsy wagon stranded on New York City’s Kosciuszko Bridge, and working around the sea lions’ refusal to leave their trailer on rainy days because they feared unfurled umbrellas.
Binder stepped out of the ring in 2009 but continues to serve as a senior advisor to Big Apple. In June he returned to Hanover to introduce Big Apple acts on the Green during reunions. “Circus is a means of ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” Binder writes. “And the message is: We are amazing as human beings. We can achieve what we set out to achieve.”
Never Quote the Weather to a Sea Lion AUTHORHOUSE 216 pp. $26
