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Freaks and Fire is a free-falling leap into the world of radical circus. Beyond the historical confines of Ringling Bros. and scorning the big-budget schemes of Cirque du Soleil, these tightly knit troupes focus on bringing audiences thrills spun around an ideological center. From the sick-out shockfests of the infamous Jim Rose Circus Sideshow to the anarchic burlesque of the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus to the obscure but elegant puppetry of the Cloudseeding Circus of the Performative Object, Freaks and Fire brings readers into the diverse and all-consuming world of circus as commentary, lifestyle and play.
The only book to chronicle the rise of the alternative circus, Freaks and Fire gives us much more than just the show as spectacle. By examining the role of the freak in society and the re-emergence of the tribe, it also gives us a snapshot of society itself, of the larger audience vaudevillians seeks to dazzle and challenge.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
J. Dee Hill is the former Southwest bureau chief of Adweek Magazine. She served for four years as a foreign correspondent in Prague, Czech Republic and was a contributing author to Time Out's first edition Guide to Prague. She has spoken at universities and at the Smithsonian Women's Museum in Dallas on advertising, society and culture. In addition to over 13 years journalism experience, Hill is a performing fire dancer whose love of alternative art forms motivated her to begin writing Freaks and Fire. J. Dee Hill lives in Dallas, TX.
ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER:
Commercial photographer Phil Hollenbeck is a portrait specialist whose work has appeared in such titles as Texas Monthly, D Magazine and American Way. He is co-creator and editor emeritus of Rough magazine, a publication of the Dallas Society of Visual Communications. Hollenbeck's creative work with Rough was recently highlighted by HOW, a national design journal. Hollenbeck, a resident of Dallas, TX, travels in his own art car, enjoys hand drumming and is the father of three adult children with five tattoos (at last count) between them.

Chapt. 7 - Circus Contraption
"Macabre Visions, Vaudeville and Aardvarks"
(excerpt)
A spotlight casts its greenish hue on the enigmatic figure of Dr. Calamari, a strange gentleman in a bowler hat astride a fantastical vehicle. Equal parts bicycle, wagon and Tim Burton-inspired nightmare, a creaking accordion accompanies his progress and the turning of the strange engine's wheels.
"Hello Acrophelia," he calls in a merry voice that sends a chill of suspicion through the audience. "I'm off to give the aardvarks their weekly dose of ketamine!" A syringe drops casually to the ground.
Little Acrophelia, a girl with enormous eyes recalling morose drawings of Victorian children, grabs the fallen syringe, accidentally impales herself and dies. Dr. Calamari discovers that his wagon conveniently converts to a coffin-shaped hearse.
The end.
The horrified audience can't help but laugh at this bit of black humor. A few acts later, Acrophelia returns as a life-size puppet, imploring her lover Dr. Calamari to take his own life and join her in the ground. Then the real Acrophelia rises from her coffin to perform an acrobalancing act with Dr. Calamari (or as they call it, "necrobalancing"): a series of slow gymnastic poses in which the partners balance and hold each other, often seeming to defy the laws of gravity. The two rouse the audience to cheering with their feats until Acrophelia once again falls, lifeless as a doll, into the sorrowful Calamari's arms.
It's this sort of dark vaudeville, drawn on the true experience and intimations of childhood, that reminds us of the nether side of circus -- why, for example, we thought clowns were pretty scary at one point in our early lives. Add to that prescient sense of terror a few more unseemly items: sock-holes covered by spangles and sequins, melancholy converted to wanderlust, madness and gin-soaked dreams and you have the fuel for the onstage phenomenon of Circus Contraption.
Circus Contraption began in 1998 as a collaboration between David Crellin, at that time the frontman for a band called Phineas Gage, and Lara Paxton: dancer, aerialist and visionary extraordinaire. David, whose band already had a pronounced circus theme, transformed himself into the bombastic circus barker Armitage Shanks. (The name is that of a well-known British plumbing fixture company. His friends in Europe tell him they think of him whenever they use the toilet.)
Lara had been learning the traditional aerialist skills of the rope and tissue (the name derives from the French word for "fabric") for several years following a varied career as both a stripper and midwife. Now aged 34, she wears her hair in four trademark pigtails while doing breathtaking splits and contortions suspended in midair. As artistic director, much of the circus' feel and flavor are inspired by her own fantasies, which she says are influenced by dream states and the writings of psychedelic social critic Terence McKenna.
"One morning I just woke up thinking about aardvarks," she says. "I had an overwhelming desire to make these masks. Sometimes I think the whole circus began as an excuse for me to make them." The aardvark masks became the hallmark of the first show, in which they appeared on the heads of ballerinas dancing en pointe. After that the bizarre mammal became something of a running joke for the group. A baby aardvark made its appearance in "All Fall Down," a show devoted to childhood games and nightmares based on the black plague-inspired poem "Ring Around the Rosy."
On a cold Seattle night in early spring, the ticket line for the latest show, "Gallimaufry: An Evening of Jiggery-Pokery," runs down a hallway and outside the converted naval base where the circus has its home. The cast members are joyous. At least one of them can recall a show in which only about four people came, all of them with complimentary tickets.
As the paying public enters tonight, they encounter a makeshift midway, complete with popcorn vendors, sideshow banners and a boundlessly energetic, one-armed juggler who tosses axes and jokes about the likely loss of another appendage.
Groupies are noticeable in the audience, as they mill along the midway. The circus has its own camp followers who come to the show in clown-white makeup and outlandish garb. Some of them take lessons from the circus once a week in gymnastics, aerial and clowning; others are just there to rub shoulders with their favorite performers. Despite the chill inside the naval base, one young man is wearing nothing but a red silk bathrobe open to the navel, accessorized by a brandy snifter full of beer, a cheroot and a finely drawn, sleazy moustache in black grease pencil. Another girl wears a leather bra and tap pants over a red fishnet bodystocking. Altogether they form a ghastly assembly of freaks who look as if they'd died, decomposed and been reanimated a few days later to fill out the cast of "Cabaret."
***
Another scene unfolds backstage, beginning with a hole in a sock. It is a miniscule hole, tiny, resting on the accordionist's ankle just a half inch above the edge of a well-worn black shoe. Its wearer, Harold Smaude (aka Greg Adair), is tragically saying, "It was nice, she left me for a tuba player," as he smears white pancake makeup over his face. He adds rouge to his lips and the tip of his nose while gazing into a profoundly filthy backstage mirror.
I am captivated by the appearance of the hole in his sock as he continues his story, mentally comparing it with his black suit, bow tie, $6 bowler hat and borrowed accordion; the shabby splendor of circus life. A musician by trade who formally studied everything from Eastern European gypsy music to flamenco, Greg traveled across the country hitchhiking and (he admits) drinking, until he met the circus. He liked the gypsy music and the gypsy lifestyle that accompanied the troupe, and quickly taught himself accordion.
Makeup finished, he places the bowler on his head, noting that one day he is going to buy himself a "real" hat. "We're all so poor," he says. "We paid ourselves $20 a week on our last tour, which barely supports my smoking habit, much less my drinking habit. I was living on drink tickets and cheap bottles of whiskey last summer." Many of the other cast members experience their own version of Greg's predicament, an eternal battle between paying rent and spending just a few more dollars on a spangled costume or a musical instrument.
For now Greg lives in the back of a converted van, occasionally sleeping on an ancient green couch in the backstage dressing room, where he can keep an eye on the group's gear.
"I'm kind of depressed," Greg confides. "Nice, healthy, rosy-cheeked girls can't stay with me; they don't like the way I treat myself. Anyway," he says, rousing himself from a melancholic slump, "I'm writing an opera right now. I couldn't possibly have a relationship, I'm so focused on my work."