The Dancing Clown

Terpsichore was a mere rumour in the Ringling Clown alley when I set up my bailiwick there. While the veteran clowns, except for Otto, had to participate in all the production numbers, they were given individually-themed costumes to strut around in and not required to learn any dance steps. Unlike we First of Mays, who were drilled unmercifully in box step, closed change, and heel turn until our bunions had bunions on them. Our production costumes were flashy chorus boy stuff, to match the showgirl’s wardrobe in each production number. There were five production numbers in which we had to exhibit some fancy footwork: Opening; Spanish Web; Spec: Manage; and Finale. While my contemporaries, such as  Chico, the Little Guy, Roofus T. Goofus, Holst; and Rubber Neck, submitted to the demands of the chorus line, and eventually grew competent, if not elegant, in their movements, I was stymied from the get-go.  

Dancing had made up no part of my Minnesota childhood. Not even square dancing. In First Grade when the other children were merrily frolicking in the classroom to the strains of “Skip to the Loo My Darling,” I would be in the nurse’s office -- having clumsily hurled myself into a steam radiator on the first note, splitting my lip open. I believe my mother may have danced when she was young -- her photos show a lithesome nymph with a fetching smile, ready to fox trot until the rosy dawn -- but dad was a leaden lump. He moved with all the grace, and speed, of a glacier -- unless someone yelled ‘beer kegs are here’ at a picnic. He was nordic phlegm personified. I must have inherited all his anti-dance genes. My Senior Prom night I stayed home to watch Dave Moore’s Bedtime Nooz. As much as I liked girls, I was not going to chance a midair collision with one while attempting the Funky Chicken.

I thank the gods of comedy that there were no dance courses at Clown College during my time there. I literally had to label my tennis shoes with a big ‘L’ and a big ‘R’ in order to remember which was which when the need arose. As my first season on the show progressed I gave less and less effort to my dancing. It was a lost cause, and besides I was getting the reputation as a ‘zany’ on the show. Now a zany at Ringling was different from just a clown. A clown was slightly cracked in the head, but a zany had left orbit and wandered the greater universe. Otto Griebling and Mark Anthony were considered zanies -- they had created their own little worlds, which they might or might not invite you into. I joined this unique band of delinquents after visiting Radio City Music Hall and taking a pratfall down the red velvet carpeted central stairway -- just because it looked like so much fun to roll down. My fellow clowns who were with me at the time soon spread the story throughout the show that “Torkildson is not right in the head -- he’s a zany.”

I would grab a bear costume as I passed a clown prop box and scream in agony as I made it maul me. I did a clown gag where I brought out a big book labeled “How to be Funny” and then proceeded to get instructions from it to wear a lampshade and pry open a can of peanut brittle with spring snakes inside. When the audience didn’t react as clamorously as I wanted, I accusingly held up an optometrist's eye chart in front of them, questioning their obviously faulty eyesight. For these reasons, and many more, I was allowed the zany’s leeway during production numbers.

When it was time to do a high kick like the Rockettes, I would pull out a jump rope and do a dozen or two skips instead. Or I would attach a cheap Halloween clown mask to the back of my head, and when clowns and showgirls linked arms and began the high step I would turn my back to the audience and just bend my legs at the knees. I carried an outsized pack of playing cards with me during Finale so that when we were supposed to be tracing complicated dance steps I could whip out the deck and ask a nonplussed showgirl to “Pick a card, any card”, and then spend the rest of the production number futilely trying to locate the card she had originally picked, scattering aces and kings around like autumn leaves. Occasionally I dragged out a folding chair and would sit in the middle of a dance number calmly reading the Cleveland Plain Dealer or the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

As long as I didn’t hurt anybody or put a complete stop to the production number, Performance Director Charlie Baumann turned a blind eye to my horseplay. He, too, respected the tradition of the Till Eulenspiegel, who was to be given more leeway than others because of his fey condition.

I also liked to carry a faux skunk with me into production numbers and toss it to startled members of the audience. It broke the monotony of Broadway tunes and voluptuous showgirls.

But alas, time marches on. And it has such a wicked short memory. When I returned to clown alley after my 2 year LDS mission in Thailand I found things had tightened up and battened down. The boss clown Steve LaPorte told me that since I had joined the show in mid-season he would detail one of the clowns to teach me the proper dance steps for all of the production numbers. I told Steve not to bother; I was not in the habit of following the dancing anyhow but to gum up the works with a few little clown gags here and there. He gave me a long hard stare and repeated that he would detail one of the clowns to teach me the proper dance steps. That’s when I knew there had been a paradigm shift in clown alley. Zanies were now persona non grata.

One of the new clowns who was naturally light on his feet, Herbie, did his best to show me how to arabesque and manage a pas de deux, but my two left feet sabotaged all his patient, kindly efforts. My pathetic attempts at dancing during the production numbers made me look like a department store mannequin on strings. I was completely miserable.

And then Charlie Baumann, still the fearsome and apoplectic Performance Director, happened to walk by me as we were coming offstage from Spec and whispered so only I could hear “Und vhat happened to my zany?” He remained poker faced as he said it and never made eye contact with me. But from that day on I began to loosen up and add a few monkeyshines to my dance routines. The showgirls were disgusted with me, LaPorte just glared and muttered under his breath, and the new clowns were mystified at how I got away with it. None of them dared try anything like it.

“Aren’t you worried that Baumann will beat the #%@** out of you?” one of them asked me.

I merely shrugged my shoulders silently and continued working on my latest clown alley invention -- a bagpipe made entirely out of whoopee cushions.