Circus Chimera will be back in 2009! .
In the meantime, view highlights from
the 2006 show and the 2007 show
The San Francisco Chronicle called us "Cirque du Soleil on a family budget."
"Awesome!" reported The Salt Lake Tribune. "They know how to say it but have your children ever really dropped their jaws and gasped in disbelief? Have they seen the strength, agility, daring — and missed handholds and net drops — that real human beings are capable of performing?"
We hope to be back again in 2009 doing what we do best which is putting on fabulous shows to delight ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages. But most reluctantly, we have had to cancel our 2008 season.
We didn't want to cancel our 2008 season, but we had no choice.
See, a circus is a small traveling village. And most of the villagers are not the performers who delight you on stage but the workers who pitch the Big Top, cook the food, drive the trucks and sell the tickets.
Because a circus spends ten months of the year traveling on the road, it's very difficult to employ American citizens to do these tasks. Most American citizens are not willing to leave their families and friends for so long a period of time. So circuses and carnivals have come to depend in large part on legal immigrant labor to fill these essential jobs.
Every year 66,000 H-2B visas are designated for temporary workers in non-agricultural labor. They're not enough to fill the demand from the landscaping industry, the hospitality industry, food processors as well as the outside entertainment industry, so for the past three years, Congress was allowing businesses to get H-2B visas for some returning workers without counting them against that 66,000 cap. In In September 2007, after immigration overhaul legislation failed, that exemption expired. Despite the best attempts of small businesses all throughout America who depend upon those workers, it has not been renewed.
Grandstanding and political games are keeping Circus Chimera off the road in 2008.
Please take a few minutes to read over the informational website we've put together at http://www.slowburning.com/save_our_midways.
We've outlined some easy ways for you to contact your Congressional representatives to tell them you want the H-2B visa extension renewed as soon as possible.
Inaction on the H-2B visa returning worker extension threatens many businesses, of course, from golf courses to hotels. But circuses are not a 43 billion dollar industry – like, say, the landscaping industry. Circuses are small businesses undertaken primarily for love of the art. Circuses throughout America have already begun canceling their 2008 seasons. They may never recover.
Circuses and carnivals occupy a special niche in the human heart. A live circus is one of the most personal and compelling experiences available in a world where entertainment franchises threaten to turn our imaginations into strip malls. Traveling circuses and carnivals are woven into the fabric of the American experience.
f you can take twenty minutes to find out your Congressional representatives' contact information, communicate with them about this issue and then ask three friends to do likewise, you will play an important role in preserving a beloved American tradition.