Flip Circus comes to Broadway Commons in Hicksville

Be forewarned: If you go to Flip Circus when it comes to Hicksville beginning Friday, you could wind up marrying a clown.

During the show, Bubi the clown chooses a woman from the audience and tries to make her his bride.

Of course, it’s just for the laughs. Gleyston "Bubi" Guiner, 42, is already wed. His wife, Priscilla Tangara, 37, performs the new Cloud Swing Aerialist act doing acrobatics on a U-shaped rope hanging in the air. She will sit on the rope, swing on the rope, and do acrobatics during which she will catch herself on the rope with her leg.

The couple are just two of the performers who will entertain audiences under the red and white big top at Broadway Commons. Other acts include trapeze artists, jugglers and daredevils. The circus performers all travel together from show location to location — Guiner and Tangara, for instance, live in a trailer that moves with the show.

BEHIND THE SCENES

The two help each other behind the scenes during their respective acts — Tangara is the one who will dress the chosen bride in a wedding dress backstage and hand her a floral bouquet prop. She also hands Guiner his cowboy hat when he dresses like a cowboy and his suitcase when he mimes going away in the finale.

And when Tangara is in the air, Guiner controls the safety belt line that will catch her if she misses her footing to prevent her from falling all the way to the ground, which has happened during a show.

Tangara and Guiner both grew up in circus families. Tangara’s parents did acrobatics on horses; Guiner’s parents mastered trapeze acts and tumbling. “I think I was born in the right life,” Tangara says. She says she has loved working with her family and now with her husband.

Tangara was happy to follow in her parent’s footsteps with acrobatic and aerial acts. But Guiner wanted something different.

BORN A CLOWN

He wanted to be a clown since he was a child. “My dad was strict and he wanted me to do acrobatics,” Guiner says. “He wanted me to do more tumbling and acrobatic stuff before becoming a clown.”

But Guiner didn’t see it as “becoming” a clown, as his father did. “There’s a saying in the circus — you’re not made to be a clown, you’re born to be a clown. It came naturally to me,” he says.

Guiner chose his clown name and created his own stage personality. His wardrobe entails a red coat, clown shoes, red nose. His spiked black hair sticks up on both sides of his head as though he stuck his fingers in an electrical outlet. He doesn’t speak but communicates through exaggerated, cartoonish facial expressions and hand gestures such as pointing to his head and spinning his finger to indicate he thinks something is crazy.

Tangara and Guiner met while performing separately for another circus and married in 2005 in their home country of Brazil. They speak Portuguese; a fellow performer, Alexa Vazquez, who does a hoop act, helped to facilitate this interview.

Tangara says she is the eighth generation of her family to perform in the circus. Tangara and Guiner don’t have children — yet, Tangara says. “50-50. Sometimes we want them, sometimes no,” she says. So, it remains to be seen whether yet another generation will be carrying on the circus tradition.

By Beth Whitehouse

beth.whitehouse@newsday.comBethWhitehouse1

Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.