The circus is in town

Jose Dominguez, 25, spent the two hottest days of the year this week putting up a giant castle-shaped circus tent across from auto row in Gilroy. He’ll spend the weekend riding a bicycle across a 50-foot-high tightrope..
Which is more difficult?
“Putting up the tent,” he says Wednesday. “It’s hot out here. Really hot.”
The workers also struggle with the soft dirt around the tent, making it harder to move and carry things.
He and a crew of eight, including his high wire and trapeze artist brother and cousin, spent two days erecting what its owner says is the only traveling castle circus tent in the country, 125 feet by 95 feet, with a height of 57 feet and seating capacity for 500 people on folding chairs.
They are part of Circo Osorio, a Mexican circus that has been around for 92 years and its U.S. offshoot, here for the past 17 years and owned by three Osorio brothers, who were also high wire artists before they went into management.
“You know how politicians say something is like a circus?” asks Frank Osorio, 52. “Well, we say the circus is organized chaos.”
The show will run at 6605 Chestnut, across from the car dealerships, from Thursday May 4 through Monday May 8. It costs $25 for an adult, but that includes two free tickets for children under 10.
The performers don’t have to put up the tent, but they do it for extra money.
Frank Osorio is a fourth generation trapeze artist, who was raised in San Antonio with a practice circus in his backyard. His father wanted he and his brothers to follow in his handsteps on the high wire, but he sent them to school and encouraged them to do whatever they wanted.
“As soon as we graduated, we told him we wanted to join the circus,” says Osorio.
He quit the trapeze in 1995, realizing it was too hard to manage and perform.
“People say to me that I must not have a fear of heights,” he says. “It’s totally the opposite. It’s all scary and you have to sacrifice a lot to do it. You have to have cat reflexes. That means you can’t stay up late at night, you can’t party, you have to practice constantly. It takes 10 years to master the job and even then you are still learning every day.”
Their show has no animals, but has plenty of clowns who aren’t politicians. This year’s featured acts include a troupe of acrobats from Kenya, a troupe that performs on a giant Russian swing and another that does their whole act upside down on the wire, standing on their heads the whole time, even shooting a bow and arrow that way.
Are they threatened by the fact that the most famous circus, Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey has gone out of business .
“No,” says Osorio.”They are a pillar of the industry but it doesn’t mean that’s the end of the business. I count 20 or 30 family circuses traveling the world. People will always love it. It’s an entertainment that everyone enjoys, no matter what language they speak. It’s an international language.”
Info Box: See the Osorio Circus Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Fri. and Sat at 5:30 and 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 3:30, 5:30 and 7:30 p.m., and Monday at 7:30 p.m.