Please click on the link below to support the family of the man who made great circus events possible, Lu Yi. “I don’t know where I would have found my voice had I not worked with Lu Yi and his students,” said Gypsy Snider. Lu Yi cultivated in his students …Read More »

When Cirque du Soleil offered me a contract 17 years ago, my wife said, “This will open doors we don’t even know exist.” She was right. The cache of that gig helped me get started in the strange new world of consulting, where being introduced as a “Cirque du Soleil …Read More »

Yesterday I sent a first draft manuscript to Thom Wall, the publisher for my new book. Of course, it is really the ninth or twentieth or thirtieth draft, depending on how you count. I’m excited. This is my first non-fiction book, the first time I’ve worked with a group to …Read More »

I took my family to see Corteo when it was in town. My sons got a visual and musical trip through their childhoods and I got to kvell about the folks I performed with who are still in the show. Fifteen years on they look and sound better than ever. …Read More »

The book I’m working on is a new kind of challenge – it’s non-fiction, a history of the thirty-year collaboration between Chinese acrobats from Nanjing and San Francisco circus performers. I’m working with a team of five, and we’re all part of the story we’re trying to capture. The interviews …Read More »

I’ve started working on a non-fiction book about the thirty year “circus affair” between Nanjing and the Bay Area. The focus is master acrobatic trainer Lu Yi, who has had a profound influence on circus in China, Australia, the U.S. and Canada, as well as the world of synchronized swimming …Read More »

It was 1972, I was walking past my school, Berkeley High, and music was blaring from Provo Park a block away. Provo was my park, where I spent hours balancing on a rope tied between two trees, learning new club routines, and practicing handstands and dive rolls. The other denizens …Read More »

In my teens and twenties, and well into my thirties, I was pretty sure I would never be a father. At lot of us who toured for a living felt this way and, since I didn’t have a father for most of my childhood, I also had no image of …Read More »