Circus Kazoo is a different tribe of athletes

GRAYSLAKE – A pair of athletes – Brianna Promenzio and Seamus Green – stand back-to-back in the German wheel, arms and legs braced against the metal rings of the large metal hoop.

Slowly, they begin to rock it, riding their momentum back and forth until Green exploded up, pushing himself to the top of the wheel while Promenzio dropped to her stomach, flush with the bottom rung.

They stopped, returned to their feet and delved into deep conversation about the next portion of their routine while “High School Musical” blared through the studio.

These are just two of Jennifer Richard’s circus athletes at Circus Kazoo, her Grayslake athletic center. Both are members of the U.S. National Team for German Wheel and are practicing their first team routine for an upcoming competition. Richard is the female world champion, having just returned from the 2018 World Championship in Switzerland. She will defend her title in New York in 2020 at the next world championship.

At Circus Kazoo, students can learn to master any – or all – of the circus arts: German wheel, stilts, juggling, tight rope, acrobats, to name a few. While Circus Kazoo has been operational since 2003, Richard opened her Grayslake facility in 2015.

While completing her teaching degree at Illinois State University, Richard performed in the university’s Gamma Phi Circus – the oldest collegiate circus in the United States – and the circus called to her even after she graduated and began teaching in a classroom.

“I was teaching in a classroom for a while and I was like, what else could I teach that was more motivational for me,” she said, keeping one eye on the athletes practicing their newest skills before her.

She paused to call out, “Glue those toes together!”

“And I just did some soul-searching and I realized that circus arts could fill both the what I’m passionate about and the craft that I find valuable, which is education and teaching,” she said.

The family that has since formed at Circus Kazoo is a “tribe,” and each member of that tribe is both teacher and student. More advanced students will help novice athletes master preliminary skills before turning to learn from those whose skills supersede their own.

Keeping them on the ground, Richard said with a laugh, is one of the biggest challenges she faces.

“They’re circus kids. These are kids who love to defy gravity,” she said.

To that end, Circus Kazoo creates a safe environment for athletes to explore new ways to express themselves through movement while challenging and pushing themselves physically.

“Because they’re risk-takers, we give them safe risks,” she said. “It’s a great environment.”

Eleven-year-old Lainey Donisch of Grayslake saw Richard and her German wheel at a special performance at her school and told her mother that night she wanted to try it.

“It’s been really neat,” her mother, Sarah, said, watching her daughter rock back and forth on her wheel. “The first day she was here, she went upside down – the very first day – which was amazing. And now she does it more independently and she’s grown a lot from the first day, learning one trick to knowing several now.”

Lainey finished her skill – a cartwheel on her wheel – and ran breathlessly up to her mother. Since her first lesson on the wheel, Lainey has added other skills to her repertoire, including juggling, unicycle and stilts. She said she might join Richard, Promenzio and Green in the competitive world of German wheel one day.

“It relieves a lot of my stress,” she said between gulps of water. “It’s really fun and inspiring.”

Part of Richard’s mission is simply to inform the public about the circus.

“I look at this as more of a contemporary storytelling,” she said. “It’s just a different vibe of circus. It’s not just your ‘ta-da!’ feeling. Let’s add a character, let’s add a meaning. What are you trying to say with these skills your body is going through? It’s more than just, ‘Look, I can do this.’ With meaning, it deepens and enriches the experience.”

At Circus Kazoo – and circus arts in general – she said, there is a place for everyone. Performers with a flair for the dramatic can become ringmasters; more ambitious participants can go into competitive circus athletics. Those with an affinity for teamwork are drawn to acrobatics.

The classes at Circus Kazoo are not geared only toward children. Richard offers classes for adults of all skill levels as well.

“It’s like stone soup,” she said. “We throw it all in the pot and we have a circus. If we were all the same, it would be boring and we wouldn’t have all this variety. It’s a rainbow. We need all the colors.”