It was a long dream…but the end was me introducing my youngest daughter, Nina, (I don’t have one) to my former circus teacher, Nina Krasavina, (who has passed on) and telling my old coach that I had named my daughter after her. I am quite sure this dream came from having Kim Anthony Jones- Kip spending the weekend passing on his unicycle basketball skills to my Circus Harmony students. I first met Kip 40 years ago in a gym in the Bronx where Nina and her husband, Gregory, were training the King Charles Unicycle Troupe to do a teeterboard act and I was training with them in partner acrobatics with my acro-juggling partner Karen E. Gersch.
Circus has always been about passing it on to the next generation. Circus has also always been about the connections between circus people and how you work with someone then move on to your next job and it is like a river that branches off but comes together again downstream. We are all connected.
You can read more about Nina and Gregory here, in a blog post written after Gregory’s passing: http://physicalcomedy.blogspot.com/…/remembering-gregory-fe….
Today, on Twitter, the Dalia Lama said: “Change in the world always begins with an individual who shares what he or she has learned and passes it on to others.” I am still passing on what I learned from Nina and Gregory. Kim Anthony Jones- Kip is working to pass on the legacy started by Jerry King in 1958 (read more about how he came to pass it on here in St. Louis here: conta.cc/2z6wcev .
Kip and his troupe can be seen next week in NYC when they present; “Back in the Bronx” with the King Charles Troupe! 40 years ago, in that gym in the Bronx, Kip and I could not have imagined that he would be coming to St. Louis to teach my students unicycle basketball or all that has happened to both of us in between, including Kip and the King Charles Troupe working on Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey with my actual daughter, Elliana Grace, when she was a human cannonball. This weekend, in St. Louis, Circus harmony’s new Bad Boys of Balance debuted their basketball unicycle act.
From Russia and the Bronx to St. Louis and beyond, with love and gratitude.
Jessica Hentoff Nov. 6, 2017