[ad_1]
The circus world lives its worst days but the Gasca Brothers, stranded in Bogotá almost two months ago by the confinement of the coronavirus, refuses to lower the curtain and trusts that sooner rather than later the public will return to give life to the show.
The engines of this quixote are Raúl and Martín Gasca, the fourth generation of brothers from a Mexican circus family who put their lives in a tent to bring joy to the world.
“The circus is going through the worst crisis in its history because the circus needs a public to live, it needs families to come, children to come, to buy a ticket. Nowadays that is impossible,” says the multifaceted Raúl to Efe. , while directing from the edge of the track a rehearsal that later turned into a virtual show.
The multi-faceted thing is justified by the 41-year-old Mexican because one day he can be a clown, a master of ceremonies or one of the seven motorcyclists -one of them female- who do high-speed pirouettes on the “death balloon”.
THE WAITING CIRCUS TENT
At the moment, the 120 people who dress under the blue tent of the Circa de los Hermanos Gasca share the same concern and that is to know when they will have live viewers again, since it is not just waiting for the quarantine to end, on May 25 , but to be authorized to perform functions.
Despite this uncertainty, the Circo Hermanos Gasca maintains the stands where the yellow seats wait for the people to return to take over the almost thousand available seats.
Raúl Gasca is concerned that the company’s savings are running out, but what really takes his sleep away is the “uncertainty of not knowing when we are going to reopen.”
“We hope with the help of God to open our doors as soon as possible and thus continue to do better the only thing we know how to do, which is a circus,” emphasizes Raúl, who concentrates his efforts on returning to the activity but with the presence of the public, although he has used virtuality to not lose validity.
Acceptance has been good on social media. In one of the first virtual presentations they achieved almost 800,000 views and more than 1.3 million comments.
“That shows us that the circus is alive, that people are still waiting for it and we want to return (…) but with an audience that is the other essential part of the circus,” he added.
SOLIDARITY WITH FULL HANDS
The coronavirus pandemic has awakened the solidarity of many people who help the less fortunate, and those of the Hermanos Gasca circus know that.
Foundations, ordinary people, businessmen and even small shopkeepers have given them “a lot of bread”, meat, eggs, says Martín Gasca, trapeze artist, acrobat and musician born 22 years ago in Mexico.
Martín especially remembers the day they were given 90 chickens and the other day they sent 60 lunches.
Despite this support from the people, they regret that the circus cannot make its presentations, which, in the case of Bogotá, were two from Monday to Saturday and three on Sundays, and not being able to travel, as they did before, to Central and South America.
“For now we are in Colombia because Venezuela is difficult,” he adds of another country they used to visit.
ALL THE WORLD IN ACTION
Despite the absence of public, the tent of the Gasca Brothers is not paralyzed.
“Here the acrobats prepare their numbers, they perfect them; those who walk the tightrope also look for other things to incorporate them into their numbers, the clowns also and so are all those who have a show,” says Dairibeth Castellanos, a Venezuelan who along with his father and two brothers they are part of “this Latin American family” in which there are also Peruvians, Chileans, Argentines and Colombians.
Juan Cebolla, who according to the function is a trapeze artist, clown or motorcyclist, expects better days for the circus world in which that of the Gasca Brothers has a special place due to the quality of its show and because it is one of the largest chains, with 15 tents, all under the command of family members.
However, Cebolla considers that it does not mean anything if the public cannot be present at the functions as it is the part that complements circus life.
“The circus can be performed in the light of the sun, the moon, in silence, without music, but there is something you cannot do and it is a circus without an audience,” he says convinced.
[ad_2]
