Clad in a turquoise unitard glittering with rhinestones, Eve Rice-Whittenburg steps onto the mat and pulls herself up into a cube-shaped frame suspended above her.
Two men on the ground tug on a rope, hoisting Rice-Whittenburg higher and higher. As the cube rotates, she twirls and twines within its steel frame. Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” floats up from a portable speaker. The performance brings to mind the magic of a mechanical music box.
At 67, it’s perhaps remarkable that Rice-Whittenburg is still able perform this kind of magic with the Triton Troupers Circus. Now in its 52 year, the circus features people from “all walks of life,” with performers who, like Rice-Whittenburg, have years of experience as well as those with none at all. The annual circus showcases clowning, juggling, trapeze, unicycling, wheel gymnastics, and feats of strength.
“When I started at 47, I was already the oldest aerial performer in this circus. Every year, people come and they’re like, ‘Are you still doing this?’” she said during a recent practice session.
She is still doing it, but, she says, this will be her last year in the annual show, which kicks off Thursday evening in the Triton College gymnasium in River Grove.
She is still doing it because, in a very real way, it keeps her from retreating from the world.
“It’s giving me life,” she says.
For all of her adult life, she has suffered from chronic depression and constant physical pain — both so bad that she spends anywhere from five to seven hours lying in bed each day, not including her night-time sleep.
“I have two positions: circus and lying down,” she says.
Put her in front of a crowd, though, and she is transformed, playfully flirting with the audience — even though it’s only a practice session.
“I need to perform. I’m a showoff at heart,” she says, bending forward at the waist and putting her palms flat on the floor.
Rice-Whittenburg grew up in Cottage Grove Heights (near the old Jays potato chip factory, she says). As a kid, she loved to dance. When she was 21, the Ringling Bros. Circus came to town, she auditioned and got hired as a showgirl. She spent a year traveling with the circus.
“I lived on a train with 300 people and we would go from town to town,” she said of the experience. She also dated “a couple of clowns,” one of whom lived with dwarfism, she said.
When she returned to Chicago a year later, she went to beauty school and became a hairdresser. She eventually married and had a child.
The depression tightened its grip, but she never lost her love of performing. She’s taken dance classes, taught tumbling in Calumet City. Then about 20 years ago, she discovered Triton College’s circus.
At one time, she’d perform on the “cloud swing.”
“It’s one of the scariest acts in the circus,” she says. “When I’m swinging on that, I’m swinging practically into the rafters.”
She no longer has the strength to climb the rope to reach the swing, she says. And she has a list of ailments too long to list.
But when she’s suspended above the floor in the cube, she feels like she’s lost in a dream, she said. Up there, the gloom lifts and floats away.
“All I feel is the energy from the crowd, and the world disappears,” she said.
Says Hannah Jeselski, the circus director, of Rice-Whittenburg: “She is an inspiration. She is an enormous help and a beautiful performer. She sets such an example of how to age gracefully, how to continue with circus.”
Rice-Whittenburg’s husband of 40 years, Paul Whittenburg, is retiring soon, and she wants to see some more of the world.
“My pain goes away when I’m at sea level and when I’m smelling the ocean water,” she said. “I’m practically pain free on the ocean, and being pain free helps with the depression.”
