Dan and Betty Butler soared through the eighties on a flying trapeze. They worked big-shot jobs, drove expensive cars, lived in a million-dollar home in Atlanta, and raised three beautiful children. But drug and alcohol addiction caused Dan to lose his grip. His safety net—woven from two sessions at Hazelden and a commitment to sobriety and family—saved his life. With nothing to return to in Atlanta—the Butlers had filed bankruptcy and were living off food stamps—they decided to start a new life in Minnesota.“And that’s really why all of this is here,” says Dan, his gaze moving to the 21,000-square-foot, green and white permanent circus tent that’s home to Circus Juventas, the Highland Park–based nonprofit performing arts youth circus that he and Betty, both forty-seven, founded in 1994. The only one of its kind in the country, Circus Juventas started as a small community program at Hillcrest Recreation Center. Now, it involves 3,000 kids annually with its school programs, summer camps, and afterschool classes. The participants perform throughout the year, but the group’s most stunning production occurs every August. This month, Dyrnwych is Circus’s tenth August production, and, like all Circus shows, is an original Cirque du Soleil–like spectacle.
Dan first spied Betty in 1973, when they were teens. Fascinated by the flying trapeze and the high wire, he’d been hanging around Sarasota Sailor Circus in Sarasota, Florida, where Betty was a performer. Several months later, he joined the group. Participation was free, but the performers were responsible for almost everything—including rigging their own acts, painting the bleachers, spreading the sawdust, and setting up and repairing the tents. “We were there twenty or thirty hours a week,” says Betty. “We were there at a time when the best of the best of Ringling Bros. had retired from the circus and were coaching at Sailor.” Between the two of them, Betty and Dan performed in nearly every act.
After they married in 1980, the couple left the circus life behind and relocated to Atlanta to pursue jobs in real estate and international banking. They altered their perspectives on life following their move to Minnesota in 1991. “We were living life differently [here], volunteering in our church, caring about who we were—and raising our children that way,” says Dan. In 1994, the couple returned to Sailor to perform in a “has-been” show. The trip reconnected them with their passion for the circus.
Once back in Minnesota, they launched a youth circus program, Circus of the Star, as a way to give back to the community. “I wanted to donate one or two nights a week, like a hockey dad,” Dan says.
Quickly, however, Circus of the Star was off and flying. More than 100 students were participating in a growing number of annual shows. Another 400 kids awaited placement. And students, parents, and Norm Coleman, then St. Paul’s mayor, called and wrote letters of gratitude for the program. The Butlers’ life was a three-ring circus. While Dan worked full-time as a precious-metal broker, Betty raised their three children, and the two of them directed the program, the students, and the parent volunteers. Close to exhaustion, they nearly quit several times.
But instead of quitting, Betty says, they jumped in with both feet, focusing on raising money for a new facility. “But even before that, we had to figure out how to fundraise,” she says. By the time the building opened in the summer of 2001 (the organization was renamed at that time), the project had taken two years longer than expected.
Like the Children’s Theatre Company, Circus Juventas attracts kids from all over the metro. Some come from traditional, affluent families and attend private school, while others come from broken homes and find a family at Circus.
No one has to try out for an act, no one is cut from the team, and no one sits on the bench. “There’s an act or a discipline for any kid of any size or ability level,” says Dan. Shortly after birth, Quinn Graham suffered a stroke that rendered his left arm useless. On opening night of a show in May, in spite of his handicap and protective helmet, the eight-year-old peddled with his fellow unicyclists and smiled proudly at the applause. “Kids can do anything if you teach them and encourage them,” says Dan. “There’re a lot of challenging things here, and kids learn to overcome them. We’re not out to save the world. We just want to reach as many kids as we can.”
The coaching staff, led by Dan and Betty, comprises world-class circus performers from Mongolia, China (Sun Yan Hong toured with Cirque du Soleil), Chile, Bulgaria, and the United States. Among the Americans is Tim Carlson, who set a Guinness World Record by participating in an eight-person pyramid on the high wire with The Flying Wallendas. Throughout the year, the Butlers bring in renowned circus performers to teach. Tito Gaona, known as the “greatest flyer in the world,” taught flying trapeze workshops in May.
Circus Juventas stages three annual shows. In January, the advanced students perform an abbreviated version of the August show at the St. Paul Winter Carnival, and in May, beginning and intermediate students perform. The August production is the flashiest and stars the most advanced students. This month’s production, Dyrnwych, is based on a Scottish tale about a village, three hags, and a botched curse. Betty plans the shows, including adapting a story, creating choreography, selecting music, and designing the set, costumes, and makeup. More elaborate than last year’s life-sized pirate ship for Swash!, the set for Dyrnwych features a quaint hamlet complete with smoking chimneys and an enchanted forest populated by trolls, fairies, and gillydoos. Witches execute dramatic routines thirty feet in the air, and elves fly through the trees. Peter Ostroushko, a Twin Cities–based mandolin and fiddle player whose daughter, Anna, is a Circus performer, opens the show with a Celtic fiddle piece, and MPR’s Scottish-born Euan Kerr provides the narration.
The notion of family permeates Circus Juventas, with Dan and Betty playing father and mother. Many of the year-round students study and practice as much as twenty hours a week at the big top. They also help younger performers, whether it’s teaching them how to spot the bike team or applying makeup for a show.
Shannon Maguire, an eighteen-year-old St. Paul Central High School graduate, quit competitive gymnastics three years ago to allow more time for Circus. Her favorite act is the flying trapeze, and for Dyrnwych, she’s preparing a dozen acts. In a typical week, she practices and coaches nearly thirty-five hours at Circus. On the weekends that the building is rented by an organization for an event, she spends hours setting up for the event, performing, and cleaning up. For Swash!, Shannon sewed more than twenty pairs of leather pirate’s boots. “A lot of us senior performers coach,” says Shannon, “so we know all the little kids. During their performances, we cheer them on.”
Eighteen-year-old Travis Curren, also a Central grad, lives with his older brother and his brother’s girlfriend. Three years ago, Pat Schoonover, the sixty-six-year-old nun who teaches unicycle at Circus (and who’s the longtime nanny to the Butlers’ five children), encouraged his brothers to join. “I played football and basketball, and the circus wasn’t something I wanted to do,” Travis says. But, after seeing his brothers practice one day and talking to one of the employees, he eventually made Circus his only afterschool sport.
“I was uncertain at first, but I love this place now,” he says. “There’ve been plenty of times when I’ve come to Dan and Betty with personal problems and issues from my past, and they’ve helped me.” Travis says he used to have a short temper. In his time at Circus, he has learned patience and tolerance and has a better attitude toward life.
Travis performs numerous acts, but his favorite is catching on the high trapeze nearly thirty feet in the air. He also coaches and taught summer camp for the second time this summer. “I like helping and teaching kids,” he says. “I guess I have a good attitude or something like that, because they gave me more work.”
One afternoon at the circus tent, Dan stands on a catwalk thirty feet above the ground and watches Travis clean some of the floor mats. “I don’t know why I still get choked up about this stuff,” says Dan, his eyes welling. “He wasn’t happy to be here originally, but he’s doing great now.”
Parents of performers are encouraged to volunteer in the program. This past May’s nine performances featured nearly 500 kids, and more than 600 parent volunteers ushered, ticketed, helped with makeup, and worked concessions, lighting, and sound. “All the shows we do are major productions,” says Betty. “But they’re also family enterprises, where the parents are rigging, sewing costumes, assisting with safety lines, building sets, and spending time with their kids. And it’s not just parents, but aunts, uncles, and grandparents too.”
Shannon’s mother, Mary Maguire, heads the usher department, and her father, Terry, rigs. “Shannon’s an only child, so this is her extended family,” says Mary. “It’s an extended family for Terry and me too. We’ve got great friends among the parents. You put in long hours and it’s fun!”
With their own five children to raise, 3,000 circus performers to coach, an expanding nonprofit organization to run, and a thirty-one-year-old relationship to keep fresh, Dan and Betty undoubtedly have days when they feel like two acrobats in a balancing act. “We laugh that we’re like the Incredibles,” Betty says. “He’s Mr. Incredible, and I’m Elastigirl—”
“—because she can do everything and go in a hundred directions,” says Dan.
Circus Juventas is an apt name for an organization focused on the development of children and teens. Coincidence or not, it also fits this second chance at living that Dan and Betty have embraced. Optimistic, seemingly indefatigable, and extremely fit, the couple continues to jump back on the teeterboard.
"Last year, Clear Channel endorsed the August show with radio and billboard sponsorships. We’ve got these great new collaborations with the Flint Hills International Children’s Festival and Winter Carnival, but we’re not a destination yet,” says Betty. “The Children’s Theatre crossed over to that at some point—and we want to believe that we’re getting close to that point.”
Claire Joubert is arts and entertainment editor of Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.
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