Circus Juventas (formerly Circus of the Star) is a youth performing arts circus school located in Saint Paul, Minnesota, serving youth throughout the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. The organization was founded in 1994 by Dan and Betty Butler, and offers circus arts training to young people ranging from 3 to 21 years old.
Emulating the style of Cirque du Soleil, Circus Juventas's first show was at Saint Paul's Highland Fest in 1995. From there, the school's enrollment quickly expanded and the organization initiated a campaign to fund a $2.1 million permanent big top facility, which opened in 2001 on Saint Paul parkland in the Highland Park neighborhood. That year, it began to produce annual summer performances showcasing the work of its most advanced students, each with a distinct theme. Yearly themed December holiday shows were added starting in 2020 after that year's summer show was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
These shows have proven popular with local audiences and have been well received critically, with reviewers praising the professionalism and fearlessness exhibited in the productions, while noting students' occasional missteps during performances. Circus Juventas students have performed and competed both around the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area and abroad. As of 2014, Juventas was the largest youth performing arts circus in North America. The school had tentative plans to add a second facility elsewhere in the region.
History The founders of Circus Juventas, Dan and Betty Butler, met as teenagers at the Sailor Circus of Sarasota during the mid-1970s. Dan was a catcher on the flying trapeze, and Betty was an aerialist on the cloud swing. They began dating at age sixteen, went on to perform at Florida State University's Flying High Circus, and married in 1980. Dan became a successful real estate broker in Atlanta, but faced bankruptcy and chemical dependency. The couple came to reside in Minnesota because Dan Butler was receiving alcohol and drug abuse rehabilitation at Hazelden. The Butlers attended Sailor Circus reunions together and after one, in April 1994, Betty Butler wondered, "Wouldn't it be great if we could do something in ?"
The Butlers founded Circus Juventas as a nonprofit corporation in October 1994, citing a desire to give back to the community as one of the reasons for its creation. It was originally known as Circus of the Star, so called for Minnesota's nickname, The North Star State. The newly opened Hillcrest Recreation Center in Saint Paul provided the couple with inspiration for the circus program, and they asked the city if they could hold classes there. The Saint Paul Parks and Recreation Department approved the program, and assumed liability for approximately fifty children who enrolled the first year. About thirty of those students stayed with the program and performed in their first show at the 1995 Highland Fest, an annual family-oriented neighborhood festival. After this performance, interest in the program increased. By 1996, 30 more students were enrolled, and by 1997, an additional 25 had joined the program. The circus was still based out of the Hillcrest Recreation Center's gym, and had to work around the schedule of the other regular activities in the facility. In 1997, the waitlist for the program was around 200 students.
With the school's growing popularity, the Butlers saw the need for a larger space so they developed plans to build a 1,500-seat facility. In an article published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1997, the estimated cost of the project was quoted at $700,000, with a groundbreaking planned for April 1998. The Butlers initiated their capital campaign on February 18, 1998, with the goal of raising $1.1 million for their new building. By August 1999, they had raised $1 million of their expanded $1.6 million goal for the circus expansion, with plans to break ground on the new facility that November. Part of the funding came from Saint Paul's Sales Tax Revitalization (STAR) program, through which surplus funds were distributed by councilmembers to worthy organizations. A total of $627,183 was disbursed for the circus through the program, split between three STAR components: $450,000 as part of Neighborhood STAR which sought to fund local initiatives, $122,183 as part of Cultural STAR which funded arts and culture programs, and $55,000 from 3rd Ward City Councilmember Pat Harris's discretionary Neighborhood Investment Initiative budget. Another $60,000 came from an anonymous recently retired Saint Paul businessperson.
The $1.6 million were raised in full by the end of April 2000, just in time to ensure the circus received its STAR funding which would have been nullified if the Butlers had not made their fundraising goal by May 5 of that year. The Butlers had found the space for the school through coincidence; after driving along Montreal Avenue in Saint Paul one night, they turned into a parking lot, noticed an area beneath some trees, and realized it was an ideal location for their school's expanded facility. On August 25, 2000, ground was broken on the new structure. The big top took about a year to complete, during which time the school also changed its name to Circus Juventas, named for Juventas, an ancient Roman goddess of youth and rejuvenation. Ultimately, the project totaled $2.1 million and by 2006, the school was $700,000 in debt. It was working with various city agencies to resolve the shortfall and faced "no looming threat." The school relies heavily on parent volunteers to help with various operational aspects, from rigging to administrative work to set construction and decoration, and concessions sales. Betty Butler estimated that 90 percent of work on the school's shows is done by parent volunteers. The circus operates with the equivalent of 40 full-time employees.
In 2010, the circus school enrolled students from ages 6 to 21, with an additional enrollment of about 150 toddlers and other younger participants as young as three years old. By 2013, the enrollment had reached over 800 and the school's annual operating budget exceeded $2 million. Circus Juventas has also held circus arts fitness classes for adults, taught by the school's regular instructors. The school is a member of the Outdoor Amusement Business Association and the Fédération Mondiale du Cirque. A listing on the latter organization's website notes that as of 2014, Juventas is the largest performing arts circus school for youth in the United States; other sources indicate that it is the largest in all of North America.
Facilities Circus Juventas's big top is located in the Highland Park neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota. It stands tall and encompasses of floor space built on concrete slab. The structure is supported by an aluminum frame and covered with flame-resistant vinyl-coated cloth. The building's lobby space was designed by Locus Architecture, Ltd., of Minneapolis. The firm connected texteline fabric (often used for awnings) to the system of catwalks and supports to help "the lobby act...as an immersion tank, rather than a threshold, to introduce spectators to the illusion of the world of circus." Although Locus was still installing the fabric within hours of the circus's gala opening, the company won one of the 10 honor awards distributed in 2002 by the Minnesota branch of the American Institute of Architects for their design. The circus school's original bleachers could seat 1,200 audience members.
Bleacher collapse
On August 16, 2009, at the closing performance of the show Yulong, a set of bleachers with a carrying capacity of 450 people and holding 420 at the time collapsed, sending seven people to the hospital. In the ensuing investigation, it came to light that Juventas had not had the bleachers inspected each time they were set up, as required by their lease with the city. They had been issued a permit in 2006 for the bleachers, and had not had them inspected since. The school was fined $500 and shut down until the legal and safety issues could be fully investigated. It reopened about a month later and installed new bleachers with molded plastic seats the next March.
Future In early 2014, the Butlers announced plans to expand their big top facility by an additional . The additional space would house a dance and theater studio, a costume shop, offices, and a gym. Naming rights for the new structure would provide a component of the $4 million the school hoped to raise for the $2 million expansion, a $1 million addition to the circus's endowment, and eventual repairs to the building's exterior, estimated at $1 million. Betty Butler stated that the project stemmed from the desire to create "a true professional program, a separate program" for students looking to study and perform circus arts post-Juventas, even though she and her husband originally shied away from pre-professional training as a core aspect of their circus school.
According to Saint Paul's Parks and Recreation Department, the cliffside space which the expansion would occupy was deemed unsuitable for building a structure of the expansion's proposed size. In response, the Butlers were considering building a new facility of up to in the western suburbs of Minneapolis–Saint Paul. Construction of a new building would likely cost $10 million, require a capital campaign to fund, and probably not begin for five to 10 years. In the meantime, the school is performing a small expansion to its Highland Park space, on which the Circus has a lease for at least 17 more years, as of 2014.
Performances The school typically puts on three shows each year: a spring performance featuring less advanced students studying circus arts at beginning and intermediate levels, a late-summer show to display the talents of more advanced students, and a December holiday show. While the earliest shows were focused primarily on technique and the individual acts, by 1997 or 1998 the school began to emphasize the artistic side of performances, including integrating those acts into Cirque du Soleil-style narratives. Holiday shows were introduced beginning in 2020 after the planned summer show that year was cancelled on account of the COVID-19 pandemic. The school also hosts an annual gala in late autumn that includes portions of the year's earlier summer performance. Circus Juventas does not utilize animal acts in its shows.
Big top summer shows 2001: Mythos, a production dealing with Greek mythology was performed not only in Circus Juventas's newly opened permanent big top facility but also at the Minnesota State Capitol on New Year's Eve, 2001. 2002: Cirque Napoleon, a show that delved into the history of circus, taking place in a French circus in 1859 and honoring Jules Léotard, an early trapeze artist. 2003: Taroq, a production set in Morocco following four traveling nomads on a quest to determine the meaning of life. 2004: Swash, a pirate-themed performance that entailed a quest for lost treasure. 2005: Dyrnwych, a production that included "an amalgam of fairy-tale types, with wicked hag witches, trolls, forest spirits, and warrior women." 2006: Pazzanni, a retelling of the story of Cinderella, inspired by 1500s Venetian carnivals and featuring masks designed by the mask maker responsible for those used in the 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut. 2007: Atlanticus, a performance set under the oceans in the domain of Poseidon. 2008: RavensManor, a haunted house-themed show, based loosely on the Haunted Mansion ride located in Disneyland. RavensManors story, set in New Orleans, included a tragic romance and zombies. 2009: Yulong: The Jade Dragon (sometimes shortened to Yulong), a presentation derived from Chinese legendary and circus traditions. Produced in collaboration with the Chinese American Association of Minnesota, the show spotlighted three Taiwanese guest artists and included an emphasis on Chinese circus acts such as Chinese pole and hoop diving.