Buy your ticket: cheap seats or front row. Wait in line. Find a chair. Wait and wait. The circus starts. Watch as a line of women of various ages parade into the tent, in various mismatched costumes doing an endless display of low-tech acrobatics to a soundtrack of pounding disco and Bollywood music (and the occasional Celine Dion-Titanic tribute). The crowd watches, but barely. Two clowns tell bad jokes in monotone – this is what they do everyday, three times a day. The crowd watches, but barely. The women are done their tricks and walk out the back of the tent – into smaller tents where their daughters and sons are waiting. Their make-up and their clothes are piled up. Their beds are made and their mothers, who are too old to perform, are guarding their other lives – the lives outside the big tent. The crowd whispers about the performers in the big tent and the performers whisper about the crowd behind the curtain. Back in to ride bicycles with no hands, spin from shady ropes by their teeth, jump through hula-hoops and spin plates on sticks. Welcome to the Big Top. click to see more pictures.