Tiger trainer Burning Bright; Circus Artist Spurns Whip And Chair.

New York Times
Glenn Collins
Published Feb.24,2000


''Up, Jasmine, up!'' the trainer said, using sheer force of will to urge the 400-pound Bengal tiger to try her signature trick. Jasmine paused a bit -- milking the crowd as usual -- then at long last reared to her seven-foot height, then hopped on her hind legs right across the cage. The crowd of 6,200 in the Hampton Coliseum, which had been holding its breath, offered thunderous applause.

Instead of taking a bow, the trainer, Sara Houcke, extended her slender fingers and dropped a meat treat into the palisade of 30 sharp teeth that was Jasmine's gaping mouth. Then she gave the tiger a big hug. As she ruffled Jasmine's fur, the tiger was actually purring, as if this predator were an outsize tabby cat.

Ms. Houcke -- her name is pronounced hook -- is blond, 22, and the star of the 130th edition of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. In an era when circuses are routinely picketed by animal-rights activists, her gentle, low-key performance is being served up as the animal-friendly, gender-forward entertainment for the arena age.

In one respect Ms. Houcke is nothing more or less than a headliner performing in a touring show that is the only live entertainment regularly seen by millions of Americans every year. But she is also the embodiment of the improbable adaptability of the circus, an ancient celebration of the interaction of humans and animals that has somehow managed to remain relevant to the ticket-buying impulse of United States audiences since the 18th century. Last year the Ringling show, which has spanned three centuries now, played to 27 million people.

The seventh generation of a European circus dynasty, Ms. Houcke is taking the center ring without relying on the classic props of the testosterone-happy tiger trainer. Bullwhips are out, as are white chairs, pistols loaded with blank rounds, flaming hoops and gimmicky multistage pedestals. Her performance is the antithesis of the classic rapid, slick, trick-bound tiger show. With supreme assurance this 5-foot 10-inch 140-pound trainer goes one on one with her eight cats in a slow dance, as intimacy underlines her vulnerability to the overwhelming 8-to-1 majority.

Not since another blond -- Gunther Gebel-Williams, the electric lord of the rings who retired from performing 10 years ago -- has Ringling made such a fuss over a tiger trainer. Not only is Ms. Houcke on the cover of the new Ringling program, but her image is the centerpiece of Ringling posters and a multimillion-dollar television advertising campaign for the Blue Show -- one of its two separate circus units -- that is wending its way north to Madison Square Garden, its traditional opening-night arena, on March 16 after performances in the Meadowlands and at the Nassau Coliseum.

After Mr. Gebel-Williams arrived in the United States from Germany on Jan. 6, 1969, ''his act was considered revolutionary, because he rejected the 'fighting style' of training,'' said Greg Parkinson, executive director of the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wis. ''Gunther's style then became the standard across the globe.'' Although the charismatic Mr. Gebel-Williams never cast the cats as his enemies, he was the epitome of the dominant male in the center ring, encouraging tigers to jump through flaming hoops and ascend elaborate pedestals.

Now the advent of Ms. Houcke ''is the biggest departure from Gunther's European style of presentation over the last 30 years,'' Mr. Parkinson said. ''Billing her as the star of the show takes Ringling into new territory.'' It is also dangerous territory. Given tigers' unpredictability, betting the circus on Ms. Houcke is a high-stakes gamble.

To the audience, Ms. Houcke's style ''looks very easy,'' said Mr. Gebel-Williams, 65, the avatar of tiger training, now a Ringling vice president. ''But to be gentle with the cats, this is quite difficult. It is easier to control them with authority rather than being gentle. You can never forget that these are tigers.''

''Mark and I are concerned for her safety,'' Mr. Gebel-Williams added, referring to his son, Mark Oliver Gebel, who presents tigers and elephants on the Red Show, the other touring unit. ''I keep telling her she needs to be more of a tough guy with the cats.'' So far Ms. Houcke has ''only a scratch or two from playing with them,'' she said, adding that the tigers purr to her ''and I purr back,'' adding: ''If they aren't purring, I know I should stay away. I'm very sensitive to their moods.''

And there are moods. The big cats have maimed or killed many trainers, most famously Alfred Schneider, who made circus history in 1925 by presenting 40 lions at once. A lion named Othello killed him in 1941. (Lions are less popular in circuses these days.) Richard Chipperfield, one of Ms. Houcke's predecessors on the Blue Unit, was severely injured in 1998. At a publicity session Arnold, a normally well-behaved 350-pound tiger Mr. Chipperfield had raised from a cub, suddenly took a large bite out of his skull; Mr. Chipperfield, 24, has still not fully recovered.

Minutes after the mauling his 28-year-old brother and tiger-act partner, Graham Thomas Chipperfield, used a shotgun to kill the tiger in its cage. After an investigation Florida officials declined to press animal-cruelty charges against the brother, who retired from Ringling. Of Richard Chipperfield, Ms. Houcke said: ''You just can't think about that. I trust the tigers. They trust me.''

Ringling is clearly trying to make the most of Ms. Houcke in the show. In addition to her tiger presentation, she directs a ring of five elephants and bids the crowd welcome and farewell from atop a pachyderm. ''I view Sara as an icon, associated with our circus for a lot of years to come,'' said Kenneth Feld, Ringling's producer and chief executive.

The privately held Ringling show, which brings in some $600 million in annual revenue, ''has a core audience composed of moms and their children,'' said Tim Holst, vice president for talent and production. ''What better time to have a woman tiger trainer?''

Ms. Houcke makes her entrance in a shimmering white suit as she stands atop a lumbering six-ton elephant (not an insurmountable challenge for one who did acrobatics atop a galloping camel at age 11). Her tiger extravaganza in the 15-foot-high steel-mesh cage is the centerpiece of the show's first act, in which she emerges Venus-like from a mirrored ball. Transported aloft by a trapeze, she is deposited in the 45-foot-wide tiger cage, so she can welcome the cats to the center ring.

She arrays the five male and three female cats by uttering commands in English and German. Ms. Houcke offers the tigers beef treats by hand from a sequined beige bag, instead of rewarding the cats with food at the end of a long stick, as generations of trainers have done. ''The interesting thing about her style is that she stays back, and the cats come to her,'' said Mr. Holst. ''It shows a relationship, and a calmness.''

The Ringling publicity machine has dubbed her the ''Tiger Whisperer,'' a nod toward Robert Redford's film portrayal of a trainer who had a gift with horses. She smiled when asked about that designation, then said, ''After being with tigers for 24 hours a day, you really can understand what they are saying, and you feel what they're feeling.''

''We whuffle together,'' she said, describing the chuffing sound cats make. She described it as a backward whistle, sort of a sighing intake of the breath. ''Perhaps I'm the tiger whuffler,'' she said, laughing.

Away from the spotlight Ms. Houcke's far-from-glamorous days with the cats begin before 7 A.M., when she feeds them, cleans their cages and cuts up 80 to 120 pounds of beef and 20 pounds of chicken. She does this herself (though two cat wranglers help her transport the tigers) for training continuity, ''since you can't just see them in the cage and that's it,'' she said.

If Ms. Houcke is the first contemporary female Ringling tiger honcho, the circus has presented tiger-training women before, most notably Mabel Stark, a star in the 1920's and 30's who kept on mesmerizing audiences in other shows until the 1960's, despite being maimed 18 times.

Mr. Holst said he had long sought a woman for the tiger cage, and Ms. Houcke said that independently she had been wondering about working with cats. At a meeting three years ago in Massy, France, where she was presenting a solo horse act, the two had a tiger chat. Mr. Holst invited her to join the Red Unit as a zebra trainer last year; soon, at Ringling's behest, she began honing her tiger skills with Josip Marcan, a veteran Hungarian trainer.

Although Ms. Houcke had never before worked with cats, she had the example of her great-uncle, Gilbert Houcke, a legendary European tiger trainer. Her great-great-aunt Sarah Rancy, for whom she was named, ''performed with tigers in the 1930's,'' Ms. Houcke said. ''I guess it's in the genes.''

The inheritance is multigenerational. Ms. Houcke's father, Sacha -- whose wire-walking ancestors were touring Europe in circus wagons in the 18th century -- was performing in a circus as a Cossack rider when he met the woman who would become Ms. Houcke's mother, an English-born dancer, in a casino show in Beirut. The two married and while they were touring in Torquay, England, Sara was born in 1977.

At the age of 4 months Sacha put her on a horse, and by age 2 Ms. Houcke had made her debut before a circus audience in Switzerland, taking the role of a child in a haunted-house clown act. At 6 she rode her first elephant in the ring and by 16 was performing an act with dolphins and seals.

Her mother, Judith Benson, is divorced and now working for the Ringling one-ring circus, Kaleidoscape. Ms. Houcke's 16-year-old sister, Karin, has not yet evinced any tiger-training ambitions.

Ms. Houcke speaks four languages, and her English has the slightest pan-European accent. Performers who know her say that Ms. Houcke goes her own way. ''When I was 17, I was offered a chance to work in an act with a pygmy hippo and buffaloes,'' she said, ''so I went on the road by myself.''

During interviews she was ready with a bubbly smile and a self-deprecating laugh, but if Ms. Houcke were to inspire a Mattel doll it would be Tongue-Stud Barbie. (Hers is made of surgical steel.) Not only is her navel pierced, each ear is adorned with three diamond studs. Rejecting the circus train, Ms. Houcke pilots her own 40-foot Travel Supreme house trailer.

She had a relationship with a significant noncircus other for four years, ''but life is easier now that I don't have a boyfriend,'' she said. ''I am my own person, making my own money, and a lot of guys seem to want to be the dominant one. But I won't give up the circus for any man.''

And she will not leave the tiger cage because animal-rights protesters criticize her profession. ''I couldn't possibly mistreat the tigers,'' she contended. ''I love them. They are my everything. If they felt mistreated, well, I am alone in the ring. They could do anything they wanted to do.''