Animals

Christine Zerbini: My name is Christine Zerbini, and I come from nine generations of circus family. And this year, I’ll be performing with horses in the Big Apple Circus. You have to have a great love for the animals. It takes a lot of respect and patience. And the most important thing is to have a very good relationship with the animals that you’re performing with. They have to know you as well as you know them; you have to know if they’re in a bad mood, a good mood, if they don’t feel good, if they feel too excited or nervous. So you have to really work well together.

Narrator: Horses perform several routines in Calder’s Circus. Find the act with a woman standing on a horse’s back. In this act, Calder stretched a rope across the circus ring, just high enough for the horse to gallop under. The horse circled the ring mechanically, with the woman standing on his back. By manipulating the rope and the wires attached to the woman’s figure, Calder made her jump the rope as the horse passed under it.

Christine Zerbini: It’s known as bareback riding. It is very fun; it’s very difficult because you have to have very good balance, and you have to feel what the horse is feeling also. If the horse decides to stop or move sideways, it can knock you off balance.