Trapeze artists soar through crisis
As millions of Americans retreat into seclusion under the COVID-19 closures, aerial artists Jeremy and Harmony Chute are sequestered in their own private circus. Each day, their backyard becomes an impromptu aerial act, with circus performers from around the country.
The couple lead a flying trapeze troupe for a Japanese circus, and run a school, Trapeze High, from their Escondido property. It’s an unusual life under normal circumstances, but amid the current crisis, it has become even more extraordinary. The family has opened their North County home to circus friends who have lost work during the recent closures, welcoming guests who bring their RVs, pets and dazzling aerial abilities.
“I really enjoy trapeze in general,” said Jeremy, 41. “We couldn’t be more fortunate to have the high level caliber of talent we have on the property now. So it’s like our own little flying trapeze show every day.”
The couple’s daughters Cami, 10, and Tatum, 8, and son Cade, 16, alternate home school assignments with trapeze practice each day. The girls are also self-appointed social directors of the group, planning activities such as art contests and gift exchanges for their guests.
On recent afternoon, the aerial artists gathered as usual to train on the trapeze rigging in the Chutes’ backyard, sporting workout clothes and tautly muscled arms and shoulders. A pair of trapezes hung 22 feet high over a rope net. A ladder ascended 20 feet to 25 feet to a narrow platform where the performers waited their turn. In each round, a “flyer” leaped from the first trapeze into the arms of the “catcher,” hanging upside down from the opposite bar.
Occasionally the flyers fell short, bouncing safely into the net below. On other attempts they made the catch, executing somersaults and even triples before clasping hands, to the applause of colleagues on the ground.
The performers count themselves lucky to be there. As independent contractors for traveling circuses, they live on intermittent income, and don’t generally qualify for unemployment when they’re out of work. With the circuses closed due to the pandemic, they’re now looking at months without jobs. Having a place to stay during the closures helps them to face life in the time of coronavirus. Perhaps most importantly, it assures their ability to keep training for the rigorous routines they will resume once business opens.
“For us, this is the absolutely ideal situation we could be in, in a notso-great situation,” said Tad Payne-Tobin, 31, who travels and performs with his girlfriend, Izzy Tatrowicz, and recently worked for Circus Vargas in California. “We’re out of work, but we have a place to train, to work out, and have a small group of friends to keep us from going crazy.”
Kristin Finley, Harmony’s long-time friend from Big Apple Circus in New York, had traveled to Southern California with her husband from her last circus job in Oregon. Although she has family in Los Angeles, she didn’t have a place to stay.
“My family was like, ‘We love you, but we’re old, so bye,’” she said.
Finley’s husband, Rolando Bells, is a fourthgeneration circus artist, born at a show that his father ran in Venezuala. Bells has worked in 40 countries, performing on the trapeze, the “Wheel of Death” and as a human cannonball, but doesn’t know when his next job will be. The Chutes’ property is a haven from that uncertainty.
“It feels like a peaceful relief,” he said. “You see the nature, the nice people. This kind of place makes me get over what’s happening.”
The group of performers work and train together at the Chutes’ home in the Escondido foothills, but maintain distance from the surrounding community, appointing someone to go grocery shopping for all of them every week or so. Some of the performers were staying on the site before the stay-athome orders took effect, and Harmony said she checked the health status of new arrivals. Performers also consistently wash their hands and clean the surfaces of any equipment they use, she said.
“It’s the best quarantine situation I could ever think of,” said aerial artist Izzy Tatrowicz, 29. “We have beautiful hiking right behind here, we can practice trapeze. We go out as little as possible.”
For circus performers, who live, work and travel in small, close-knit groups, adjusting to closure restrictions is not as difficult as it might be for some, Payne-Tobin said.
“I think it makes it different for us, and maybe easier in this situation,” he said.
Circus workers become adept at skills ranging from aerial acrobatics to truck driving, welding and costume design, so it’s also an easy call to share those skills with the community, Tatrowicz said.
“We’ve been making a bunch of masks to donate,” she said. “We make our own costumes, so we sew.”
Tatrowicz had made an online donation request for $50 to buy fabric, hoping for help with the project. As she was talking an alert popped up, notifying her that she had raised $410, enough to sew many more masks.
For the Chutes’ children, the extended community is a welcome respite from the tedium of school closures, and a chance to hone aerial skills they have been practicing since they were babies.
“I had my first fly when I was one-and-ahalf,” 10-year-old Cami said. “I just have a passion for it.”
Cami and her sister grew up amid Pop Circus in Japan, where their parents worked, surrounded by aerial artists. Harmony had been a gymnast as a child, earned a college degree in music, and found that circus performing, her childhood dream, was the perfect fit for her skills
“For me it’s just part of my life,” Harmony said. “I always wanted to do this when I was a kid.”
She performed at circuses throughout the U.S., but settled down briefly when Cami and Tatum were born. Soon, however, she was itching to fly again, and took a job with Pop Circus in Japan, her two baby daughters in tow. Her husband, Jeremy, a lifelong athlete, joined her a few months later, and quickly learned to perform as her catcher, following a simple principle: “Don’t drop your wife.”
The girls grew up against a backdrop of aerial acrobatics, and from an early age, Cami made it clear she wanted in.
“From day one, she said she wanted to perform,” said Harmony,
45. “She used to go to the director’s trailer when she was 3 years old and ask to be in the show.”
Cami began performing with her mom in Pop Circus at age 6, making her the youngest female trapeze artist in the world at that time, Harmony said. She decided to return to the states in 2018 after sustaining a shoulder injury, and made a deal with her mentor, the former owner of Trapeze High, to buy the school and property, and take over its operation. As part of that exchange, the former owner and his wife continue to live in a second home on the property.
With their trapeze school and circus act suspended during the pandemic, the Chutes have lost most of their income to the closures. Jeremy, who was drawn into the business by his wife’s love for aerial acrobatics, said it’s not the first time he has dealt with swift and unexpected change.
“It’s the absolute last thing I ever thought I would do,” he said of the circus life. “Now I love it, and I’m glad we set up our life to live simply, and we can do this.”