Circus Flora is a one-ring

circus A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicyclist ...

based in St. Louis,

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

, United States. It is a non-profit organization. Circus Flora has become a touring show yet it performs annually in St. Louis, usually at the beginning of the month of June. It combines the venue of a one-ring circus with the performance trappings of

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

. Performances include aerialists, equestrian artists, acrobats, and trained animals. Each performance is accompanied by a live band. Live musicians allow the mood to be tailored to the live events happening in the ring — down to every crash of the cymbal or beat of the snare drum. Circus Flora is styled after old Eastern-European circuses. For many years, Circus Flora has featured many and various members of the renowned

Flying Wallendas The Flying Wallendas is a circus act and group of daredevil stunt performers who perform highwire acts without a safety net. They were first known as ''The Great Wallendas'', but the current name was coined by the press in the 1940s and has st ...

family. The ''

St. Louis Post-Dispatch The ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' is a major regional newspaper based in St. Louis, Missouri, serving the St. Louis metropolitan area. It is the largest daily newspaper in the metropolitan area by circulation, surpassing the ''Belleville News-Dem ...

'' described the 2007 performance as, "an entertaining mixture of thoroughly professional performances and 'Let's put on a show in the old barn.'"

Early years

Circus Flora was first performed as a commissioned work for the 1986 Spoleto Festival USA, an annual celebration of the performing and visual arts in

Charleston, South Carolina Charleston is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, the county seat of Charleston County, and the principal city in the Charleston–North Charleston metropolitan area. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint o ...

. Based upon its favorable reception, it was then founded as a permanent organization by Ivor David Balding, Sheila and Sam Jewell and Alexandre Sacha Pavlata. Its intended mission is to both entertain and to educate. Circus Flora made

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

its home in 1987 with assistance from Vince Schoemehl, the mayor of St. Louis at that time, and Richard Gaddes, then president of Grand Center, St. Louis's creative and cultural district. Since then, the Circus Arts Foundation of Missouri (CAFM) has been the parent non-profit organization under which Circus Flora operates.

Namesake

Flora, the Elephant, is the namesake of Circus Flora. The circus was named after Flora, the orphaned baby African elephant Balding had rescued two years earlier when ivory poachers in Africa killed her mother. For 15 years, Flora the elephant was a star of the circus. In 2000, she retired from stage life, and is now a resident of the Elephant Sanctuary in

Hohenwald, Tennessee Hohenwald is a city in and the county seat of Lewis County, Tennessee. The population was 3,757 at the 2010 census. The name "Hohenwald" is a German word that means "High Forest". Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, died and ...

Geographic extent of performances

Circus Flora has performed in the following cities: St. Louis,

; The Kennedy Center in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

; The Spoleto Festival USA;

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; Nantucket Island, Massachusetts;

Cooperstown, New York Cooperstown is a village in and county seat of Otsego County, New York, United States. Most of the village lies within the town of Otsego, but some of the eastern part is in the town of Middlefield. Located at the foot of Otsego Lake in the C ...

;

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

;

Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...

;

Houston, Texas Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

;

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, and several other locations.

Education

Circus Flora has cultivated education in the Circus Arts since its inception. One significant collaboration of Circus Flora's is its working relationship with The St. Louis Arches, an acrobatic troupe sponsored by Circus Day Foundation.

References

{{Reflist Circuses