Chapter 13: Zirkus Redefinierte
"You're supposed to be a Hell's Angel Beelzebub, but you look like a blue elf in a leather jacket."
Once Wolfgang became attached to an idea, he didn't easily let go. Instead he clung to it tenaciously slowly picking away at each obstacle until it became a reality. Whether it was his own or another's, once he committed, it was as good as done. During these times he showed an unbelievable amount of resourcefulness, sometimes appearing to conjure the things the circus needed out of thin air.
He hadn't forgotten his idea to have Kurt perform to AC/DC's Back in Black. Circus Gehlhaar looked like something out of the previous century to Wolfgang. Their music, which was provided by a live band, was the sort of corny organ music that you would expect to accompany a silent film. Their acts, while skillfully executed didn't break any rules or surprise anyone. To the circus' credit, the audiences didn't seem to mind. But Wolfgang minded, once he had gotten over the initial thrill of watching the circus, his circus perform, he realized it was actually quite boring.
Wolfgang started to daydream about changing the entire creative direction of the circus, to reinvent it, making it something that no one had ever seen nor heard before. It compelled him so much sometimes that he found it hard to sleep as played with ideas for them over and over in his head. But that wasn't enough. Wolfgang had ideas, but did he have trust? The answer was, unfortunately, "no". The performers trusted him to take care of their business and drive their equipment around, but to them he was strictly a painter when it came to creative influence. In other words, he had none.
Kurt, on the other hand, probably exercised the most creative control over the show. Though it was Papa who was responsible for choreographing the trapeze work and Sven did all the tumbling routines, Kurt always wrote his own part. Wolfgang guessed that the arrangement was born out of necessity since know one was exactly sure of what Kurt could do other than Kurt. (In fact it often appeared to Wolfgang that sometimes even Kurt didn't know what he could do until after he did it.)
It made Wolfgang wonder. If Sven and Papa pushed the circus's acrobats to their limits, then who would push Kurt to his? Perhaps it wasn't so much that Kurt needed a coach, since he was plenty skilled as it was, but that Nightcrawler needed a muse.
It seemed like the perfect plan. If Wolfgang wanted to truly influence the creative direction of Circus Gehlhaar he would start with Kurt and through Kurt gain the trust of everyone else. All he needed was to start with a good idea.
Papa was the most skeptical about performing to pre-recorded rock music. The younger Olssons were fairly enthusiastic. Kurt had already voiced his opinion that Wolfgang was insane, but also seemed interested in going along with it. He handed out tapes to the whole troupe and left it at that.
In the meantime Wolfgang worked to scrounge up an old PA system that could play the music loud enough. This of course led to electrical problems since it drew more power from their aging circuit board than all of their lights put together. Wolfgang replaced the board with a larger one and finally the big tent was wired for sound. It was exactly as he had imagined it, the seats practically rattled with the bass.
In the meantime, Papa and Sven thought if they were going to push the envelope with the music, they might as well do it with the routine too. Wolfgang had hoped this would happen and so one afternoon he sat in on a rehearsal to see what they had come up with.
Sven had the idea to combine floor tumbling with the trapeze via a very large trampoline. He'd come to Wolfgang with the plans a few weeks ago with a drawing of a very long narrow trampoline that would run under the trapeze rig. In addition, the trapeze rig would be lowered and the nets removed. So Wolfgang had gone out and contracted with a carpenter to make a frame for a large trampoline that could be installed and then taken apart again when they left each venue. A two weeks later, it was done.
Now, he was sitting watching the group playing around with their new contraption. With the lowered trapeze the trampoline enabled an acrobat to jump up high enough to grab onto either the arms of a catcher or the bar itself. The result was a frenzy of coordinated movement so fluid that it appeared to take place in water. With the music playing it was even more nuts. It was perfect, exactly what Wolfgang had hoped for.
"We haven't actually choreographed anything yet." Sven said sitting on the stands next to Wolfgang and watching the action, "We're still trying to figure it all out. But it's really fun."
It did look like they were having fun. Going from the trampoline to the trapeze seemed to hold unlimited possibilities. The favorite trick was making a long diagonal jump to catch an empty trapeze. The momentum from the jump enabled the acrobat to go right to a flying trick since there was no need to pump the trapeze for momentum. No one seemed too eager to go the other way though; once they were on the trapeze they didn't jump off. "The surface is too hard." Sven explained. "Even with the bounce they could break their ankles."
It was only a week until Wolfgang was invited back to see the preliminary choreography. They had a single prop, which Kurt was wearing. It had been Wolfgang's idea to have part of Kurt's costume include a leather biker jacket with "Hells Angel" on the back. It was too cumbersome to wear the entire time but it made for an excellent entrance.
They started the music and Wolfgang watched. It was really cool. There was a basic flow to it with the flyers coming from both directions to be caught by either Papa or Nils who were up on trapezes. From there, the flyer would either do another trick or be deposited on the platform to slide down a pole like a fireman and start again on the ground. It looked great. The only thing that Wolfgang really didn't like was Kurt's entrance.
"Is that all you're going to do?" Wolfgang asked him before they ran through it a second time.
Kurt looked puzzled. He wasn't used to people questioning his performance. "What do you mean?" he asked.
Wolfgang tried to explain. The routine began with Kurt running out on to the trampoline alone and then calling out his "gang" which was everybody else. They wanted to surprise the audience so in the beginning they acted like the trampoline was just a raised' floor. After a few introductory moves, Kurt suddenly bounced up to catch one of the hanging trapezes and that started the whole thing off. It wasn't really very dramatic though, plus Kurt didn't look very tough.
"It's just that there's no menace." Wolfgang told Kurt. "You're supposed to be a Hell's Angel Beelzebub, but you look like a blue elf in a leather jacket." Wolfgang put his arms at his side and imitated the smooth toe to heel run that all acrobats did on stage. Everyone laughed.
"I don't run like that." Kurt said.
"Yeah, you do." Lars whispered out of the side of his mouth. Kurt rolled his eyes.
"You've got to be more evil, more scary." Wolfgang prompted.
"More evil." Kurt repeated.
"Yeah, much more evil."
Kurt looked around the tent for a moment, thinking. He spotted the high wire platform, which stood above the trapeze rig and climbed up to it. "Okay." He yelled down so they could restart the music.
This time, instead of running out on the floor, he stalked out onto the high wire on all fours like a cat. From there he coiled up and leapt down to catch one of the support beams for the trapeze rig. He let go with his hands and allowed himself to swing forward so that he was hanging upside down by his feet and anchored by his tail. He let himself drop onto the trapeze below him where a second before Nils had been sitting. Nils had seen Kurt coming and swung down into a catching position so that Kurt could land on the bar and start it swinging. At Kurt's prompting Nils reached up and grabbed him by the wrists so that Kurt could dive off and Nils could use the swinging momentum of the trapeze to throw him into a tight forward somersault. Kurt let go of Nils and landed on the trampoline, bending his knees deeply to absorb the shock, but was popped up about eight feet in the air anyway. He did a twisted flip that Wolfgang vaguely remembered Sven calling a "full-in full out" and landed crouched low, glaring at Wolfgang and baring his teeth.
"Is that better?" He asked, straightening up and making what looked like a conscious effort not to look like a blue elf as he walked to the edge of the trampoline.
Wolfgang grinned and clapped. "Much better. Just be like that the whole time. You'll scare the children. It will be fantastic." He turned to Sven; "I thought you said they would break their ankles if they jumped off?"
Sven shrugged. "What do I know?" He said. After that no one worried about jumping down form the trapezes and the fireman's poles were removed.
Back in Black was a huge success with audiences. As Wolfgang predicted, Europeans loved American pop culture so they were clapping with the music within the first few bars. They had to make it the finale since the rest of the show seemed so tame in comparison.
Unfortunately for Kurt, Wolfgang's initial critique was not forgotten and despite his attempts to be as scary as possible, the number was known inside the circus as "the blue elf routine". Kurt took it rather well.
