For many high school and college-aged Greenbelters, Circus Camp is a fond memory. Between juggling, balancing and being taught how to embrace a performer-mindset, those who went to circus camp have retained, or at least remember once having, some unique skills that peers from other towns didn’t necessarily have the opportunity to attain.
This is why some parents were disappointed to see the camp go away for several years. This year, however, there’s a new clown in town and Circus Camp is back with some of the old, as well as a bit of something new. On Friday, July 26, circus campers performed their third of four summer shows under the direction of Mike Funt, a career clown who moved to Greenbelt in the spring after his wife landed a job with Goddard Space Flight Center.
Highlights of the show included a human castle, circling unicycle pairs, raspberry-blowing stiltwalkers, mass juggling groups and clown acts that drew laughs from the audience. A parent later commented to Performing Arts Coordinator Chris Cherry that she was happy to see an evolution and changes in the show at the end of each session. Funt considers those tricks and talents and many others in his curriculum merely as a vessel for the real purpose of Circus Camp; to him it’s a way of teaching life skills.
Funt tries to never forget the words of an old Australian mentor: “Teaching kids circus, it teaches them individuality and creativity, it teaches them to take risks healthily and safely, it teaches them about teamwork, it teaches them about being aspirational, wanting to be better and do bigger things, it teaches them about hard work and perseverance and grit, and it teaches them to play and have fun.”
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