Little Big Top
(Page 2 of 4)
May/June 1996
Marilyn Snell, Utne Reader
A mad scientist, more like it. During a recent Cardoso Flea Circus performance at San Francisco's Exploratorium, a museum of science, art, and human perception, Cardoso wears weird goggles and a belly-baring silver miniskirt and go-go boots and brandishes a whip--which she uses more than once on those 4-year-olds who get too close to the talent.
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Her well-stocked acts are an amalgam of delicately wrought miniature swing sets, trapezes, and safety nets plus twittery costumed entertainers. The performers include Harry Fleadini, the world's smallest escape artist (who is so good at escaping you rarely see him); strongbugs Samson and Delilah lifting cotton balls hundreds of times their size; acrobats Teeny and Tiny walking a tightrope; and jugglers Pepita and Pepón, who shove around luminescent balls while they're dangling from a wire.
All the names in Cardoso's extravaganza go with the costume or the act and not with the individual flea, since one or more of the stars bites the dust each week. (Cardoso acquires her talent from a mysterious laboratory, which agreed to supply her only if she would buy in bulk--500 fleas a week at 10 cents each--and promise not to divulge the exact location of the lab.) Yes, life in the circus is murder; at times it's downright disturbing to watch. There is something faintly grotesque about Cardoso's sideshow, but there's also something refreshingly honest in her act--something primal, raw, and unedited.
When Teeny keeps falling off the trapeze and has to be repositioned repeatedly, for example, Cardoso shrugs and tells her audience, 'You see, it's real! If the fleas were machines everything would be sanitized and running smoothly.' She then fishes Teeny out of the safety net and sets him up for his sixth attempt. This time he crosses the highwire successfully. The crowd of 15 (which is picked by lottery, since each performance attracts hundreds of fans and the performance space is, by necessity, intimate) oohs and ahhs and then lets out a collective hoot of approval.
But at the Cardoso Flea Circus, just as with Maria Fernanda Cardoso herself, nothing is as it appears. During her last set of performances, the impresario takes every opportunity to play with reality and mess with her admirers--especially during the question and answer periods midshow.
Question from the audience at the 1:00 show: 'What do the fleas eat?'