Uproarious Life as a Ringleader

Picture Julia Roberts or Gwyneth Paltrow on the big screen, bossing around seven quarter-ton Bengal tigers in a circus ring. Typical Hollywood casting, right? Great for box office, but tiger tamers just don’t look like that.

Look again.

Just as the real-life Erin Brockovich proved that Hollywood doesn’t always have to make this stuff up, the lanky blond, blue-eyed Sara Houcke has strutted her way into the spotlight during her first seven months as the tiger trainer for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

But though Houcke (pronounced “hook”) may be one of the prettiest performers to command the center ring since Marilyn Monroe climbed aboard a Ringling elephant in 1955, it’s the 23-year-old’s ability to “talk tiger” with snarling big cats that has endeared her to audiences.

Just seven months after first performing before an audience, she’s been dubbed the “horse whisperer of tiger tamers.”

Houcke has incorporated her own methods for handling the pointy-toothed beasts. There’s no whip cracking or yelling commands to intimidate the tigers when Houcke is in the ring. She instead uses the whip merely to cue the tigers. And keeping her distance from the animals is not an option for Houcke, who rewards them with hugs, kisses and chunks of raw meat that they eat right out of her hand.

Even outside the spotlight, she’ll pull up a chair and hang out with the big cats while they’re in their cages or in the playpen.

Houcke doesn’t seem concerned about comments that her physical contact with the tigers is foolhardy.

“If something happens, maybe I will change,” she says.

Her up-close technique is probably more dangerous than the old-school way. Though she declines to directly discuss other trainers’ methods, she believes her method is not only better for the tigers but safer for her as well. Although the animals are wild, she doesn’t believe that the tigers would attack her without reason.

“If anything ever happened, it would not be the tiger’s fault,” Houcke insists. “It would be because I was in the way or in the wrong place.”

Houcke’s hands-on techniques fit with Ringling’s desire to go “outside the norm” of the traditional tiger tamer, says Ringling Chairman Kenneth Feld.

Southern Californians can witness the rapport between the beauty and the beasts today through Aug. 6 with stops at the Long Beach Arena, Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim and the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

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When P.T. Barnum began 130 years ago what would become known as “the Greatest Show on Earth,” the circus was just about the only place for the public to see exotic animals.

Feld says the circus fills a similar role today.

“The environment is shrinking,” he says. “If people are going to see these animals, they’re going to have to see them in a place like the circus.”

With children interested in video games and computer-generated characters, the circus may also be one of the few places left to see live feats of daring.

The difference between Barnum’s day and now is that audiences can be concerned about the animals’ care.

In Houcke, Ringling has a dazzling performer who answers concerns about the well-being of the animals.

“Sara presents a new way of working with animals,” Feld says. “She shows them respect.”

“I don’t read their minds,” says Houcke, though watching her interact with the animals, it appears that’s exactly what she does, interpreting the meaning of a tiger’s snarl or stare or growl.

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Over lunch at a Southwestern cafe on a sweltering 110-degree day during a Ringling stop in Phoenix, Houcke was dressed in black, from her shades down to her wedge sandals, her nails polished deep red.

“I hate the heat,” says Houcke, who is accustomed to the mild summer temperatures of Germany and Switzerland, where she grew up as a seventh-generation (on her mother’s side) circus performer.

When the shades come off, her soft, youthful features belie the fact that she earns a living risking her life with wild animals. She’s a young woman brimming with curiosity--and a certain amount of amazement at the way her life has evolved over the last six months.

“Just about everybody’s dream in Europe is to come to America and work for Ringling,” Houcke says, her English inflected with a Swiss-German accent.

Houcke, who speaks four languages fluently and has lived on her own since her late teens, learned her trade from her French father, Sacha, a fourth-generation animal trainer with European circuses. When the veterinarian would come to see the animals, “my father would explain everything to me,” she says.

Houcke grew up around animals, helping her father care for horses, zebras, elephants and an assortment of other circus critters. She fed them, cleaned cages and doctored the sick or injured.

“I didn’t know until later it was a learning experience,” she says.

At age 4, Houcke recalls, she said to her father, “Daddy, I want to work.”

“He would put me on the pony,” she says, “and then he’d rear up.”

By age 11, she was doing handstands on camels. By 14, she was training horses and zebras. When she was 15, Houcke’s parents split up, and she and her younger sister, Karin, went to private schools in Switzerland. The curriculum required her to choose a vocation.

“They asked what I was going to do. I said, ‘I’m going back to the circus.’ ”

Houcke appeased her instructors by choosing to be a hairdresser.

“That wasn’t my thing at all,” she says, laughing. Then she tried being a travel agent. “I assumed they would send me all over the world.”

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In the end, at age 17, she went back to her roots. She took a job with an amusement park in Austria that needed a trainer for the dolphins and sea lions. At that time she thought people who worked with tigers “were completely nuts risking their lives in there.” But after four years with the amusement park, she began thinking about the big cats.

“I didn’t see a lot of female tiger trainers in the cage, and I wanted to do something different,” she says. “I didn’t want to do what everybody did.”

About that time, Ringling Bros., in need of a wild animal act, came calling. Feld had known of the Houcke family since Houcke was a child. For Feld, putting her in the spotlight “was not an afterthought.”

“I knew Sara would be great. She has a tremendous background. I must say though, she’s gone beyond our expectations.”

It was Houcke’s experience with zebras that persuaded Feld that she could handle the tigers--one of the few circus animals she had not worked with before joining Ringling last year.

“Zebras are an animal you have to bond with individually,” he says. “It’s the type of relationship she has with each tiger as well--and the audience sees that.”

When she arrived in the States about a year and a half ago, Brian Cristiani, Ringling’s superintendent of animal care, was skeptical about putting a woman in the cage.

But once he saw the amount of time she spends either with the tigers or talking about them, he was quickly won over.

“I was very impressed. Just seeing how much time she spent with the animals and how dedicated she was and how willing to learn,” he says.

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Coincidentally, Houcke was named after her mother’s sister Sarah, who presented tigers before Sara was born. Now, Houcke says laughing, her mother calls giving her that name “a curse,” because she ended up following in her sister’s boot steps.

“They are scared for me,” she says, affectionately. “I’m still their little girl.”

Her mother is also a veteran circus performer, and she followed Sara to the States a few years ago to work with Ringling’s one-ring Kaleidoscope circus. Next year, her father and 17-year-old sister will join the Ringling family. The circus is traditionally like one big extended family because the close-knit group spends at least two years traveling and working together.

The circus becomes a lifelong commitment for most performers, so the skills and techniques are typically passed along from generation to generation. On the Ringling marquee, for example, the Marinellis acrobat team is made up of family members, including the youngest performer in the circus, 13-year-old Josue Marinelli. The Quiros of Madrid are fifth-generation performers who dazzle crowds by leapfrogging over one another on the high wire--without a net. One of the Quiros brothers is married to one of the Ayala Sisters, an aerial team from Mexico (she’s seven months pregnant and won’t perform here).

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Houcke, who naturally counts members of the cast and crew among her friends, is among the few who don’t travel on the train. She prefers instead to drive cross-country in her own 40-foot trailer, which she parks near the circus site so that she’s closer to the animals than the train, where most of the crew stays. While she says it allows her to see the country as well as stay closer to the animals, it’s also a symbol of accomplishment. Pleased with the trailer’s TV, VCR and air conditioning, she explains that it took her parents many years to get a similar one.

“My parents said, ‘You’re 21, you’re so lucky you already have an American trailer,’ ” she says, proudly.

Outside the circus arena, Houcke is a typical young woman who likes adventure, dancing and partying with her friends. With her Southern California trip imminent, however, she is more excited about the prospect of going to Sea World and the Wild Animal Park than checking out the club scene in Los Angeles.

“I’ve seen [the theme parks] on Animal Planet,” she says. “That’s my favorite channel.”

At this point, Houcke isn’t really much interested in life outside the circus. Seeing her work, it’s apparent why. Such maturity takes over when Houcke steps into the circus lights that she appears considerably older than she does offstage. Maturity and dedication to the animals are two qualities co-workers mention in conjunction with her name.

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She and her training methods have been a hit with audiences. The only drawback so far is that the tigers occasionally take advantage of her nonthreatening techniques.

Jasmine, a 7-year-old female, loves to be the center attraction. Always the last to leave the cage, she prefers to gaze at the lights above and revel in the applause as Houcke tries to coax her out of the arena.

“She does it every time,” says Houcke affectionately. “She’s a complete little diva; she wants to steal the show.”

Another tiger likes the personal touch.

“When he’s in a good mood, he likes to be petted,” Houcke says. “I can’t pet him for five minutes the way he wants because the act is only eight minutes long.”

Her stylish attire also stands out in the arena. For that she has Los Angeles designer Bill Whitten to thank. Whitten created Michael Jackson’s glove as well as concert clothing for Elton John and other rock musicians.

“She’s very feminine but at the same time didn’t want to be a sex kitten,” Whitten says. “We wanted to make Sara appear young and fashionable, which she is.”

Whitten decided against the ringmaster-style jacket and created vests in natural colors, with high boots and tailored coats that complement her figure.

Houcke cheerfully points out the one aspect of the circus that she disdains.

“I always forget to say I hate doing my hair and makeup,” she says. “That’s the only part of the circus I don’t like.”

BE THERE

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, Long Beach Arena. Today, 11 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.; also Friday-Sunday. Arrowhead Pond, Tuesday-July 31; L.A. Sports Arena, Aug. 2-6. (All Sports Arena shows are bilingual.) Tickets $10-$35. Long Beach info: (562) 436-3661. Pond: (714) 704-2500. Sports Arena: (213) 748-6131.