Plot Synopsis

The Big Apple Circus tours the country -- and the world -- with 150 performers and crew members to present 350 shows each year. Follow them from the beginning in Walden, New York as they practice and develop their new program for their upcoming tour. Then join the circus as it travels to Virginia, New York's Lincoln Center for the Winter holidays, the Monte Carlo Circus Festival, and then a jaunt up the Eastern coast from Georgia to New Jersey and then Massachussets. As this caravan travels, it forms a unique and tight-knit community with its own lingo, rules and family legacies. Among the 150 adults who make up the company, there are the expected clowns, tightrope walkers, trapeze artists and animal trainers, as well as carpenters, electricians, concessionaires (known in circus lingo as "butchers"), musicians, ushers, cooks, teachers and even clergy. Performers come from all over the world to travel with Big Apple Circus -- the Nanjing Duo from China, the Flying Neves from Brazil, the Rodion Troupe from Russia, Olivier Taquin from Belgium and Sultan Kumisbayev from Kazakhstan.