Class Beginning to Look Like a Three-Ring Circus

Today’s kids don’t have to run away to join the circus. The circus comes to them--at least in Los Angeles--and it comes complete with free lessons in juggling, clowning, tumbling, acrobatics, trapeze flying, unicycling and wire walking.

Since Feb. 2, the Circus Arts Foundation’s Alexander Pavlata, a fifth-generation Czech circus performer, and a second foundation teacher have been providing classes for 150 students. The youths, ages 10 to 13, attend Los Angeles’ 9th Street and 10th Street schools and the Frances Blend School for the Visually Impaired.

“The reason that this is such a good athletic event for the kids is that first of all it’s non-competitive,” said Jennifer Jewell, company manager of the nonprofit Circus Arts Foundation. “So for underprivileged kids who already have some insecurities and for disabled kids, it’s good because they don’t have to compete.”

The program is goal-oriented, however. If some of the students prove to have excellent circus skills, Jewell said, they will be invited to perform at the Music Center at Christmas and at the L.A. Street Scene with Circus Flora, a small, traveling tent circus which is a reproduction of an 18th-Century Italian circus that performs at arts festivals. Some students, Jewell said, might even join the nonprofit Circus Flora at a later date.

Building a Better Bird

Not enough bucks to buy your own airplane?

Consider building your own, or at least attending a lecture by a man who successfully did--and has been flying it for the last seven years. Richard B. Clark, a Hughes Aircraft Co. engineer currently at work on the Strategic Defense Initiative, built his “very fast, very small” plane using plans designed by Burt Rutan, designer of the Voyager aircraft piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager.

A pilot since 1963, Clark will give a free lecture on “Building a Composite Vari-Eze” at Northrop University’s Alumni Library Auditorium, 1155 W. Arbor Vitae St., Los Angeles, at 4 p.m. April 28.

As for the savings to be gained with the build-it-yourself approach, Clark said he built his two-seat plane for $14,500 but estimated it would cost more than $20,000 to build one today. “If you had to buy a new airplane that would do the same thing, it would cost you $100,000. If you bought a used plane, it would cost $30,000 to $50,000 or more, but these planes wouldn’t be nearly as fuel efficient as the Composite Vari-Eze. It has a top speed of 200 m.p.h. on 100 horsepower and does better than 30 miles per gallon, cruising at 100 m.p.h. Automobile gas is about half as expensive as aviation gas.”

Why build a Composite Vari-Eze, an early Burt Rutan design, in the era of the Voyager?

“You wouldn’t build the Voyager as a fun airplane,” Clark said. “Even Dick Rutan hates flying the Voyager.”

The ‘Can-Do’ Expo

One year before Dr. Jonas Salk developed his polio vaccine, Dick Wooten was stricken with the disease. Today, he is the producer of the seventh annual “Abilities Expo--The Show That Emphasizes Abilities, Not Disabilities,” which will be at the Los Angeles Convention Center next Friday through April 26.

This free show is a marketplace of products and services for the disabled, senior citizens and professionals who work with these groups.

And as Wooten sees it, the show is a comparison shopper’s dream-come-true.

“I’m disabled myself and I know from my own experiences that after 35 years in a wheelchair, medical equipment is automatically very expensive,” he said. “A standard, manual wheelchair costs about $1,500. A power wheelchair is $1,500 to $10,000. If you need a van to transport the wheelchair, they cost between $18,000 and $40,000. I felt it was important to have one place where somebody could come and do comparison shopping.

“There are things at the show that you literally won’t find anywhere else except in a catalogue and then you’ve got to know where to find the catalogue. At the show, for instance, you can see 24 manufacturers’ different wheelchairs.”

This year’s expo is the ninth such show Wooten has produced in Los Angeles. He said he is looking to take the show to other cities but that Los Angeles has been an ideal launching pad because of its “very large disabled and senior population because of the climate.”

According to Wooten, among last year’s more than 10,000 registrants were visitors from 47 states and nine foreign countries.