Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl

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.