DATE: Monday, May 12, 1997                  TAG: 9705120042

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   88 lines

SHOWERING WITH ELEPHANTS, RUNNING AWAY WITH THE CIRCUS

The circus comes down today and leaves town tomorrow; and many happy circus-goers hope it comes back next spring.

Circus Flora is named for a 9-foot-tall elephant who seems to tower even higher when she fans forward huge triangular ears and looks at you down her long snout. It's as if a dark, lowering cloud has filled the sky.

Circus owner David Balding calls her mischievous, and she lives up to that billing in one of the cleverest circus skits ever devised.

Flora and a clown, poised at separate tables, ring hand bells for service - Flora with her snout, the clown by hand, faster and faster. A waiter races between them as Flora devours, one by one, an entire loaf of bread, a cantaloupe at a sweep, and a whole banana at a gulp.

The waiter, stumbling with a bowl, spills water on Flora, who pursues him across the ring and sprays water on him and a big chunk of the audience. The children, and I, yell with joy.

How fulfilling to relate, at show-and-tell, about being doused by an elephant in a circus!

Things go at an easy, relaxed pace with the people and the animals in Circus Flora.

Out on the back lot in the sun after one show, Flora's trainer, Sloan Damon, let her practice spraying bucketfuls of water.

``She didn't blow the water directly at the audience,'' he said. ``She didn't open up the end of her trunk. We just went over it three times out here, and she did it correctly.''

At times, he said, elephants will ignore you, playing dumb like a child, testing you. ``They get in a little world of their own. You have to keep their minds busy. You watch and learn what they like to do and build on that just as you teach a child to play and learn.''

Cruelty is not involved any more than it is in teaching children correctly, he said.

Damon had an angioplasty after suffering chest pains Monday. When he showed up Tuesday at the circus, he was sent to a hotel, but he returned to work Wednesday Better there with Flora, he said, than to be pining alone for his family, whom he hopes will be able to rejoin him this summer from New Hampshire.

``True loves are hard to find,'' he said. ``I have two, my family and the elephant.``

In the animal tent next door, assistant trainer Shannon Stewart said Flora's trumpeting had a note of anxiety when Damon was suffering.

``To me this circus is such a family-oriented business it doesn't seems like a job. You work and travel with the same people, and everyone takes care of everyone else.''

She had been working six years supervising security programs for the Scottsdale Center for the Arts and was studying in a community college in Phoenix to be a physical therapist.

About the time she decided to change her major to something involving animals, she learned of an opening as a groom with Circus Flora. An opportunity to run away with a circus comes only once in a lifetime, she said, ``so I decided to go ahead and do it.''

It surprised her friends and family, but after two years with the circus, 27-year-old Shannon is sure she made the right choice.

``I've learned so much since I've been with the circus. It's more than any college education could probably give me. Experiencing it hands-on is so much better.''

The circus with its animals is closely attuned to nature, she said. ``It's a good way to learn how to live in society without being so damaging.''

As she talked she was feeding hay to a huge Clydesdale horse, Jack, his reward after performing with a miniature horse, Mikey. Jack took mouthfuls of the hay, thrust each deep into water and shook it clean before he began to chew, a dainty trait that the massive horse developed on his own.

Caring for the animals is most important, Stewart said, ``making sure they are as happy and comfortable as possible even over your own needs most of the time.''

She has not forgone all attention to her own life, however. Shannon is engaged to a fellow circus member, Rick Propst.

Some of Circus Flora's charm stems from the intimacy the audience feels in being in a tent with only one ring, the format of European circuses. It also arouses in Americans memories of playing cirucus in the back yard.

There's no such thing as a bad seat. All bring the performers close up. When children watch an 8-year-old Wallenda walk the high wire or see tumblers of that age, the St. Louis Arches, they feel a reality, a vulnerability of performers that is not as evident in the three-ring spectaculars in coliseums.

One elephant, Flora, looming over you, becomes more vivid than 20 remote and far away. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

RICHARD L. DUNSTON/The Virginian-Pilot

Shannon Stewart, 27, ran away to join the circus two years ago. Now

she works with Jack the Clydesdale and other four-footed friends.

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