Bravura: Circus Bella’s Dazzling Holiday Tent Spectacle

0:05 Well, good afternoon, Abigail. How are you doing? Doing well. Doing well. I'm here at the Circus Bell and Nerve Center at the flood building. Oh. Getting ready. Oh, you have an office in the flood building? I have an office in the flood building. Is that new? No, we've been here for about five years. Oh, I didn't know that. We have the smallest office, I think, in the flood building. Oh, okay. 10 by 20. Oh, that is small. Yeah, it's very small. It's the same size as the inside of a box. Truck i figured out one day appropriate yeah appropriate but, it's great we love the flood building we love the flood family and i like being in downtown san francisco so yeah, oh i didn't know it was named after a family it's that it's yeah it's still owned by the same family that built the building a long time ago okay by the family i thought it was named after some flood that happened yeah no, blood family wow well you learn something new every day, so tell me about your next show you have coming up oh my goodness we started, yesterday we are going to be presenting bravura which is going to be opening you can't you have to say it like that you have to say it with bravura.

1:24 Bravura bravura we are going to be opening this is our at the crossing at east cut this december so we open december 11th and it's our fourth annual winter holiday tent show we're very excited, Awesome. Yeah, we're very excited. Some new cast members and some regular cast members doing new things. So really fun. Yeah, mixing it up. Yeah, I think to me, the show Bravura talks about, you know, the kind of, skill and sparkle and not swagger is a little too much, but just sense of accomplishment of that circus heart.

2:10 Spring to the ring and and then of course the class so we have all of our performers demonstrating great acts of bravura and then the clowns will be also demonstrating what happens when the bravura has problems. When things don't go as planned so yeah i'm pretty excited and we're writing some new music for the show we have two members of our band writing music ian carrey who's written a few pieces before and katie steffen who's our keyboard player is also going to be writing a piece of music and then we will also be playing we're bringing some beautiful things from the rob reich archive, oh nice so yeah very cool, yeah now what is bravura is that a spanish word italian italian oh bravura yeah yeah italian i was thinking you know when i was coming up with the name.

3:03 I was, I, you know, I came up through opera. That was where my family was and, and, I was thinking about the word bravo and just kind of that moment when you're just kind of in the ring or on the stage and just opening your heart out to the audience. But bravo is opera and it seems a little too masculine. I think bravura has a little more two dimension to it in a word. Yeah. Well, it ends in the A too, which is more. Gentler. Yeah, gentler. Exactly. I love the name. So last year I went, it was a lot of fun.

3:45 I remember I'd just gotten a concussion a couple of hours before I got there, but I didn't know I had one until later. So that's fine. Sparkles. You got to see three performers at once. Yeah. What are some of the acts that you have? So this year, we're going to be bringing in from Las Vegas, Adam Kugler, who does cigar box juggling. So he stacks up these boxes very high. He's a juggler. He just recently came off of the Mad Apple show in Las Vegas, which is a New York themed Cirque du Soleil show. And then we're also building a doubles trapeze act so chloe summers wallier who was in the show as a hula hooper over the winter or the summer plus another amazing aerialist doug stewart are working on this brand new, world premiere doubles trapeze act that we'll be, closing the show with we're very excited oh neat really great yeah they're two tall strong humans throwing each other around. We love it.

4:54 Tony Cannon is going to be doing, His strongman act, which we've never done in the tent before. So he bends pans on his leg and frying pans on his legs and breaks apples in half and juggles bowling balls and all sorts of exciting things. Oh, my God. Because why not? And let's see, Ori Quesada, he just came back from Germany. He's been working in Germany since the summer with his Rolla-Bolla and Bulls Act. And but it was fun we just did a small game with him over the weekend it's fun to see somebody who's gone off and worked in other companies and now coming back home to work with us.

5:38 Yeah any contortionists i'm sorry of course we have elise oh great who we love and she's got a i'm not going to spoil it but she's she has a new trick that she's going to finish her act with we're very good, all right well don't a little bit dangerous a little bit dangerous dangerous oh we love dangerous so very exciting um and then jamie and jamie coventry and natasha calusa are coming back as our clowns, this summer or from this winter they're coming back as our clowns and they're fantastic oh yeah. Who's the hula hooper this time is it the same it's the super duper oh she's great she's fantastic that just completely blows my mind every time i see i know she's amazing i can't even do one i i can barely hula hoop i can dark secret i can do most things a little bit but hula hooping is not my not something that's, particularly particularly i just don't get it yeah my wife go out in the backyard and it looks like she's falling asleep while she's doing it, yeah like it's so effortless and i can't even do one circle i can kind of go for a few minutes but or a few seconds but it just all falls down, yeah i was in a play once, where i was playing like a middle-aged guy who was supposed to try to hula hoop and he couldn't do it so actually it worked out really well really well yeah, luckily i did not yeah so and then i'll be doing i'll be ring mastering the show oh good fun yeah.

7:11 And the music is so great oh five band is the best and i think one of the best, circus bands there aren't that many circus bands in the country anymore and yeah and i feel like also our band has been playing together for so long they're so good at watching what's happening and we're actually i'm also one of the other things i'm excited about this year is, we are going to bring one of the band members actually into the ring for one of these that were flowy who's also doing the doubles trapeze act is also going to do some bottle walking so she walks across wine bottles oh my gosh, why not and we're actually making it as a duet with our violinist so we're kind of i'm trying to find a cup this is the first time one of our band members is actually going into the ring and oh neat that's a great idea yeah i'm really excited about it.

8:02 So yeah, we're creating, you know, some of the same circus ball, like favorites you've seen, but we're doing a little bit more mixing and matching and creating some new, new ideas and practicing new, new things, new tricks, new skills, new ideas. Oh there's my dog you hear that no oh good she's barking like crazy i have a kind of mic that doesn't pick up stuff in the distance so that's good, didn't you have like a really young lady last time a girl oh yeah mia mia we did and mia went off to college, oh okay college she looked too young for college okay she just went she just graduated and then over the summer we did have some, we had a duo juggling act they were in high school and they'll come back next summer but okay and the other thing that we are doing is often if you come early for the show we'll have local youth, performing doing opening acts in the ring just because it's fun to get give, new people get their chops get scared performing all the things, how about the guy who like balances on the little board that goes back and forth that's or he'll he'll be there, he's been working i know it's amazing oh my god i have no idea, and then he balances that stuff on his head at the same time i think you know he's got a dent in his head permanently from doing that holding bowls for so long.

9:32 We're all bonkers we're all everyone it's like just ridiculous ridiculous it just looks impossible I just don't, I mean, even, even the people who are helping, like when it's not their act and they're throwing stuff to them outside of the ring and they always catch it and throw it back and perfectly is like, I don't know. Yeah, this is what we do. If you, if you couldn't do the circus, what would you do? Have. You ever thought about that? I don't know. You know, I think most people we actually have around is when if, most of us have a kind of a job, like when you're on an airplane and you don't feel like talking to the person, when someone asks you what you do, you're like, oh, I don't really want to get into this right now.

10:25 And actually, I thought I was like, well, you know, I could be a bank teller. It's either the circus or banking i was like well i could get dressed i have a cute outfit every day and be kind of my life would be much simpler but i really don't know i feel like i've been doing this for so long and i've been in and before circus it was i was kind of in the cabaret, like new vaudeville scene i don't really know what else i'm 47 and i've been doing this, for 27 years i don't know what else i could do okay that's that thing i really don't know yeah bank teller, so you used to do vaudeville stuff i had a i had a troupe called kitty kitty bang bang and we were kind of in the new burlesque movement and we, had this can can and this little dance trio and we worked all the time and we did a show called the vava boom room, there's a bunch there were a couple shows that we were regular we were kind of had that was that was my gig was working in the vava bloom room it was fantastic great great and then at that time i was getting my trapeze act together, so i would do the two shows at the plush room and then i put my trapeze costume on i put a jacket on and i'd head off to north beach to work.

11:44 And broadway the plush room i miss the plush room, i know the great place oh it was such a wonderful place yeah i worked there every weekend for years wow, and so that was i think i you know i might have seen that yeah if you if you the vava boom room and then there was another show called dirty little secret and i was in those you know that was kind of, formative and rob our our former band leader was the music director in those shows too so okay wow the history yeah so i think i feel like there's this i kind of have this, interest in, and i think my work is.

12:28 It's like somewhere between cabaret and circus and somewhere it is, there is kind of a, nostalgic isn't quite, I mean, I think it's a classic looking aesthetic, but I also feel like, you know, we still do have cell phones and we're part of the current world. And so it's not like, I always say, it's not dusty. It's still, we're like, oh, we're still living in this current world, but just bringing this beautiful, classic style, you know, it's like my version of what I think traditional circus is only kind of imagined for 2026, which is a really weird time, you know, and I'm always interested, you know.

13:13 Making sure that our company is diverse and pushing gender, you know, in our doubles trap. Exact flowy the female is going to be the base for a lot of it, and i'm just kind of interested in like making sure that we're creating current pictures what is the base what does that mean the person who's who's port like throwing the other person around okay yeah the one who's always swinging back and forth yeah no there's the person that's just holding the per like flipping the other person around holding yeah holds the other person oh and yeah it's usually like a really strong guy right a really strong guy so they're going to be mixing and matching those traditional positions a lot which i love okay, yeah i love the the little vaudevillian sort of, uh streams in there that you put yeah i mean i also think you know like i feel like my personal.

14:04 Biggest influences are the muppet show and mgm musicals and if you think about that and you see the show, you're like, oh, yeah, that makes kind of sense. For sure, yeah. You didn't happen to see the play O'Mary, did you? Oh, I did. I thought it was great. I know. Didn't you love the sort of Vigilian humor in it? Oh, it was so funny, and that last... Her routine at the end yeah i mean and the whole the way it all just it's so smart and so quick and the way it all builds up to the her final routine at the end it was yeah the cabaret yeah yeah, i have yeah i was as soon as i bought tickets as soon as it went on sale i didn't you know i wasn't going to spend 300 so i was happy you know that theater is small so it's fine to be far away i bought the nosebleed seats off of stub hub yeah yeah it was great i yeah i wish i could see it again i and i look i'll go i if it comes around or next time in new york i'll see it again i would love to see other people do that role and how it changes and, i think there have been quite a few people doing it yeah i thought it was excellent i had it was one it was also it took me you know i go to the opera a lot and that's goes slow, wonderful and then you're like oh my goodness this is going so fast i need to move my cells faster to like process what's going on yeah you really have to pay attention.

15:24 Yeah that was great i saw marriage of figaro last night too at the opera excellent, oh which opera is it san francisco opera oh, nice it's so it's long but i i also was enjoying you know the the humor and the peace holds up you know that's that's old oh i know that's old and it's still what i was so, once again i think we all woke up in a pretty good mood this morning because a little comfort in humanity but i also feel like what i enjoyed watching about the marriage of figaro is that you know there's these jokes are jokes and humans are humans and things that were funny hundreds of years ago are still funny today and i right i i kind of.

16:09 The difficult and i think this is also what the clowns and i are trying to figure out we were because we were working in the afternoon yesterday afternoon is you know humor, and the simplicity of humor and you know and the difficulty of the simplicity of humor yeah well there's a type of humor i think like with vaudeville or or what you do or even in that play oh mary like even if you know what's coming. It's for some reason it's you still crack up even if you have a even if you're certain you know what's coming next um, i thought i thought in oh mary her timing too is just so good oh yeah absolutely uh yeah yeah it's a big part of it, in all performance i think timing especially all comedy timing is yeah timing is almost everything so yeah, no when when is what are the dates right so we open december 11th, tomorrow and then we will run through january 3rd and we're at the crossing at the east cut and we'll be at 211 beale street okay beautiful.

17:21 A little mini circus tent it's a great tent i love it it's so fun i think going to i mean it is i also and it's not that small i don't want people to think it's a tiny it's not that small but it seats like two or three hundred people right, 350 yeah so it's not that small but it is on the small size of certain tents yeah and then it's but it's it's just beautiful you just you just walk in it's gorgeous and the, yeah the space it's it's magic you know i think we create what's special about the circus is even in the summer we create a little village wherever we go and we build the whole thing up and then, then it goes away so we'll be there through december or through january 3rd, and you can buy tickets at circusbella.org circusbella.org.

18:09 And all the seats are really good. All the seats are, there's not a bad seat in the house. It's so, you're so close. There's only six rows and it's completely in the round. Yeah. Yeah. It's really neat. It's definitely worth your time and it's a lot of fun for everyone. Yeah. There's not a bad seat. Family oriented. Or if you don't have a big, go by yourself. It's still a blast. You're going to, yeah. It's a really nice neighborhood there. Yeah. I think it's also, it's easily accessible by public transportation. How it's hopping. You know, I've been over there with, this will be our fourth year in that neighborhood. And now there's more restaurants and more, there's just, it's hopping down. This is the new, you know, down the center of San Francisco has moved a few blocks down. Yes.

18:54 Yes. Yeah. That's interesting. Great. Well, thanks so much for being on. I love it. Yeah. Circusbella.org, right? Circusbella.org. Yeah. okay take care thank you.