‘The greatest thing the circus taught me is to be open-minded about people’

While growing up, Janice Thatcher never even dreamed of traveling, let alone running away with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. From a low-income family near Imperial Beach, she was painfully shy and was a certified “wallflower” in high school. Now a circus veteran at 25, Thatcher has danced before celebrities, attended parties thrown by millionaires and visited most of the 48 states, as well as Japan and the Caribbean. She recently returned home to San Diego , where she is studying early childhood education at Southwestern College and working the lunch shift at the Tudor Too sandwich shop downtown. Lisa Reynolds interviewed her, and David McNew photographed her.

Isaw the advertisement in the paper for auditions with the circus. “We need dancers. Do you want to travel?” I just couldn’t believe it. A lot of things were happening in my life. I was working at a bookstore. I was going to the community college taking dancing, not sure what my major was, not sure what I was going to do with my life. Wanting desperately to travel. And this was my ticket out.

So I went down to the Sports Arena, auditioned and they told me they would keep my name on file and let me know if an opening came up. Nothing ever happened. So, when the circus came around the next year, I tried out again. They told me again they would keep my name on file. But I kept letting them know I was interested and was just real persistent.

They finally called me and asked me to tour with them in 1985. It was an emphatic “Yes!” So then I had to quit my job, finish school early, say goodby to family and friends, and get together everything I needed for a year in a couple of suitcases. I left two weeks later. I was a very naive 21. It was my first plane flight, my first time away from home. And I’m going away to the circus!

As a dancer, you’re there to add the color and the glitz and the glamour and to help fill out the production number--to make it seem like WOW! You dance four numbers; the opening, the finale, the spectacular before intermission, and the elephant number. This year the girls are riding elephants. I never got the opportunity to ride the elephants, but I did climb web, which is a rope that you climb up, which is very difficult. But, after you got up there and put your hand and your foot in the rope and you do the tricks, you feel so pretty. It’s really a lot of fun.

There are only 12 to 16 dancers in the circus. It is pretty elite when you stop to think about it. Circus dancing is not the most technical and is not the most difficult dancing in the world. It’s not Broadway. But the hard part is being consistent, doing it 13 times a week and making it look like it’s the first time you’ve done it. And that’s difficult at times when you just got your mail and there’s some bad news from home in the letter that you just read in the dressing room, and you have to go out and put on this purple-and-orange sequin costume and look like you’re having a ball.

It was like I was driven to join the circus, and I believe it was what the Lord wanted for me. I’ve changed a lot. I think about the kind of person I was when I first went; I was a very introverted person, I was very shy, and I can’t believe I did it, in retrospect.

One time, I was in a telephone booth in Baltimore calling my sister and they were lining up the elephants for the elephant number, and I’m sitting there talking and not paying any attention, and I feel the telephone booth moving. I thought, what’s going on here. It was the elephant’s trunk nudging the booth. Where else would this happen?

The greatest thing the circus taught me is to be open-minded about people; because you’re cutting meat for the tigers doesn’t mean you’re any different than someone doing an aerial act. I don’t know if you’ve heard the quote by Mark Twain, “Travel is fatal to bigotry and prejudice,” and it’s so true. He also said, “Broad wholesome views of the world cannot be obtained by living in a little corner of the world your whole life.” I’ve found people who tend to be narrow-minded are the ones who never venture out.