I saw "Totem" in San Francisco. It was pretty expensive, but it's pretty obvious a lot of money goes into the show. They had a huge hydraulic centipede as part of the stage set. It could extend out like a lengthening diving board, or curl up, and it could also wave up and down. They also had a huge jungle-gym type frame that they did parallel bar tricks on, and then lifted up above the stage for most of the show. Those people must practice about 48 hours a day in order to avoid killing anyone. The people who were dressed up as tree frogs, doing flips, were the ones who attached the lines to the jungle gym to raise it above the stage. I'm not used to performers who understand anything about stage sets, but I guess acrobats of necessity are different.
Another gimmick I really liked was that one performer's top hat was rigged so that the inside was full of LEDs, and he could hold it up to spotlight other performers. The theme of the show was some kind of Native American-type thing, and although I wouldn't consider tree frogs or moon men to be especially Native American, it was a pretty good show. There were up to four of the tree frogs on the same set of parallel bars at the same time. A pair of tree frogs also spun around on the same bar at the same time, which is definitely not something you see in the Olympics.
There was also a flying ring performance, with a beach theme. There were two guys, and the muscliest girl I have ever seen. It was exactly the sort of thing my mom would hate, because they swung out over the audience for part of the performance, and they weren't wearing any safety wires, and had no net. Sort of makes me wish I could do a chin-up.
I also really liked the hoop dancers. There was a man, and for the second performance, both a man and a woman, dressed up as Plains Indians, and they had hoops about 18 inches wide which they climbed in and out of very fast, all while dancing. The reviewer in the San Francisco Chronicle seemed really fond of the roller skate dance, but I wasn't as impressed with it, possibly because I had heard about it ahead of time.
I really liked the trapeze artists in yellow. There wasn't any swinging of the trapeze involved, but they were climbing all over each other, and the guy would hold the girl under the trapeze by one arm and one leg, and she would spin around, and the guy would hold her by a different limb each time. It was really something to see. They reminded me of otters.
There were also girls on six-foot-tall unicycles throwing bowls to each other, and catching them on their heads. One girl stayed still in the middle and the other girls drove in a circle around her, and she pitched a bowl to each of them while they moved, then as they drove behind her, she pitched a bowl backwards over her head to them, and they all caught them. For the finale, all the girls threw about 20 bowls to the girl in the middle, then a teapot, then the lid. It was awesome.
I also liked their unisex restrooms. They looked like they were about half-shipping-container size, and they were all either/or bathroom stalls, so there's not a huge line for the women's bathroom while the men have no problem getting into the bathroom quickly. It would probably be pretty convenient, too, for people who don't subscribe to traditional gender identities.
The circus tents themselves weren't rigged too differently from ships. They had turnbuckles and shrouds. There was a sign up that said the tents could only be used if the wind was less than 56 mph sustained, but it's usually not more than 25 knots at the Golden Gate, so they'll probably be fine. The tent stakes looked like extra large versions of duplex nails. They were driven right into the asphalt of the parking lot. I wonder what they used to drive them in. I was sort of surprised how many of the lines were touching the air conditioning units, which aren't exactly structural. They had four towers inside the tent, two of which had followspot operators in chairs on them, and one of which had a pedestrian bridge connecting to the central unit. Many of the performers entered and exited from this central unit, and some of them stayed up there for quite some time. I wonder if the show came by train, since it's not very far from the San Francisco Caltraiin station. All in all, worth going to.
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