photos: nora schultz, and isometric studio.
Vivian, 14, says, “To me, it means helping people around me improve. And I get guidance in return.” Payton, another 12-year-old from Trenton, says she didn’t want to participate at first. “I thought it was all about clowning. But when I saw what the other kids were doing, I got interested,” she says. “They teach me things I never knew I could do. I get to work with younger kids, too, which I love.” Another originally reluctant participant provides one of the program’s success stories. Trenton resident Kordell Garland, 16, kept his head down at first. But in only a few months, he has become an enthusiastic mentor of other kids, while perfecting his own natural physical ability. He now attends a special drama program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts on Saturdays. “I get to meet new kids,” he says. “There’s lots of improvising. I’m learning to become a better dancer, and I’m getting better at acrobatic skills.” Tom Florek is a volunteer for Anchor House, the Trenton sanctuary for homeless and runaway teens. He has been bringing kids to the program once a week. Florek was doubtful, at first, that they would be interested. But a funny thing happened. “There were these kids in orange shirts working there, with little stations set up for all the different things they teach,” he recalls. “The girl I had with me kept saying, ‘Can we go?’ I usually don’t make the kids stay, but we hung around for the introduction. Eventually, this girl went and stood in front of the low trapeze. She looked at it. After a few minutes of it being explained to her, she tried it. I couldn’t believe it. Then she did the high trapeze. And then the tightrope. She told me she couldn’t wait to tell her friends about it. The same thing happened the following week. It’s amazing. I think it’s because it’s something different,
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that most people just don’t do. And it’s a way to show off. Being in a circus is all about that.” While there are several programs in Trenton that bring kids from surrounding towns to help out those less fortunate, Brookes doesn’t know of any others in Mercer County that pair these segments of the population as mentors. “We absolutely bring our teams together on equal footing,” she says. “That’s very important.” The famed circus company Cirque du Soleil uses circus arts as a tool for youth development. “So it’s not new,” Brookes says. “But it had been relatively ignored in America. There is now a network of 17 circus programs around the country.” Last summer, 13 members of the squad attended the American Youth Circus Festival in Portland, Maine, sharing their new skills with participants from some 200 schools teaching circus. Of course, it takes money to keep the program going. “We’re reaching out to get more foundations to contribute, and we’re trying to get funding from the county and the city,” Brookes says. “It’s all private at the moment, but over time we hope to connect to more sources. Our first big fundraising dinner will be in October.” The partners are hoping to make the Trenton initiative a model that could be followed in other New Jersey cities, and they hope to start additional programs in cities like Camden, Newark, and New Brunswick. “We know that for some, circus is utterly transformative,” says Brookes. “I was talking to a kid from another circus program in St. Louis, and I asked him how it had changed his life. He said, to me, ‘It didn’t change my life. It saved my life.’”
PRINCETON MAGAZINE spring 2016
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