From Chic Silber #3

WONGTRUP, a photo by bucklesw1 on Flickr. Funny that I mentioned Carl Wong yesterday I just came across this press release from The Dallas Symphony Orchestra where Carl has worked for the past 31 years & is about to retire this month & from it I also learned that Kim Sue Valla (Bertini) is his daughter Orchestra – July 9, 2012 Carl Wong's resume must have listed some interesting job skills when in 1980 he joined the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as an assistant stage manager: Good balance Thrill seeking Fearless concentration Loves to travel Able to do handstands Not afraid of heights The last point was important for Wong's job prior to joining the DSO. Wong was a circus acrobat. For three decades, he specialized in a death-defying "high pole" act, performing with regional circuses such as Gil Gray Circus, at the State Fair of Texas, and with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Balanced atop a swaying 100-foot pole, Wong would do tricks above the dazzled crowd. "I like height," Wong says matter-of-factly. "I just like height." Carl Wong with The Jim Wong Troupe The Jim Wong Troupe. From left, Lum, Carl, Arlene, Jack and Sang. At the DSO, that affinity comes into play only while rigging light grids or sound speakers to be used during DSO Pops or Live at the Meyerson shows. Mostly, Wong moves chairs, rearranges music stands and rolls grand pianos on and off stage, most noticeably between pieces during DSO concerts but also before, during and after every DSO rehearsal at the Meyerson. With a stage crew of Marc Dunkelberg, Andrew Linhart, Brad Breitbarth and others, Wong also crates, loads and transports percussion instruments, double bass cases and other equipment to Dallas-area parks for Community Concert Series performances and to suburban churches and performing arts centers for DSO on the Go concerts. He also supervises transport and stage set-up at the DSO's summer residency in Vail, Colorado. This month, Wong, 74, will retire from the DSO. He's been moving chairs and music stands for 31 years. Here's Wong's story, in his own words: about how he joined the circus, came to Dallas, and came to work for the DSO. Adrenaline. The pole act was a thrill act, and people would scream and get scared, and I used to enjoy that. There were two different pole acts I used to do. One is the sway pole. It's a straight pole that goes from the ground 90, 100, 120 feet in the air. The pole is made out of gun barrel steel and it bends; it will bend back and forth. In the act, you have another pole about 25 feet away from the first pole and that also bends back and forth. And what you do, you crisscross and do tricks on top of the pole. Then the final trick is you and your partner switch poles - you go to his pole and he goes to your pole while they're moving. The pole act I did on the Ringling Bros. show was what they call the "break-away pole." It's a pole 100 feet in the air, and halfway along its length is an axle. Then, you do the same tricks just like you would do on your sway pole. But for the break-away pole, the finale trick is, you do a handstand up there on top of the pole and as you go swaying back and forth, there's a guy down below that pulls a pin on the axle and the top half of the pole thing will go completely over. It looks like the pole broke. The pole swings down and keeps swinging back-and-forth, and as it slows down, you do your dismount and take your bows. One time, a stage hand forgot to take a rope out of the way, and when I went over on the break-away I hit the rope, scraped along it on my way down. It burned my leg and ripped my costume, but that was it. That was the only time I was ever hurt. I was born in Manhattan in New York City in 1938. My parents were acrobats. My family emigrated over from China in the 1920s to work as acrobats. There was tons of work then. You had vaudeville, circuses, nightclubs. Every theater had vaudeville acts between movies, like Radio City Music Hall. And you had a lot of circuses on TV, like Big Top. They were on Ed Sullivan, but mostly they were on with Milton Berle. Milton Berle loved my family; he'd put them on his TV show all the time. Our act was called Jim Wong Troupe. I started out as an acrobat, when I was five or six years old. That's when they start you training, when your bones are soft. About nine or 10, that's when I went into the act. But I like height. When we'd go into circuses, I used to go up and rig the cables. Then after that I started in with the high acts. I came through Dallas a lot. Jim Wong Troupe performed a lot at the big tent circus out at State Fair of Texas, in the Sixties. I did my high act at the Mobile stage behind Big Tex. Later, Ringling Bros. came through Dallas, first at Convention Center, then at Reunion Arena. We were with a circus that wintered here in Dallas, the Gil Gray Circus. When we moved here, that's how I got into stagehand work. We used to work the Dallas Summer Musicals at the Music Hall, the opera at Music Hall. We worked all kinds of shows and conventions; the Mary Kay convention every year was always big for us stagehands. Johnny Gutierrez, the DSO's stage manager, hired me in 1980. I thought I'd help him out only for a short time and then I'd go back out doing my act. Johnny was an acrobat, too, so he knew my family. And the stage manager before Johnny was an acrobat, Gus Bell. He had his own circus; he did a flying trapeze act, when they fly from one swinging bar to the other and the other guy catches him. A flying return act, that's what they call it. So actually, you had three DSO stage managers who were in the circus business. And I'm the last; that's it. I enjoyed working with the symphony. I wish I was 20 years younger so I could stay a little bit longer. But I never dreamed I'd be here 31 years. I wound up sending my daughter to school here. Kim Valla is her name. She's in the circus now; she does bicycles, unicycles, trampoline, aerial. My former wife has a dog act, Joanne Wilson down in Florida. She was a pretty famous animal trainer, working with dogs, elephants, horses. We were all raised in the circus, so when my daughter was raised in the circus, she decided to stick with it, too. After the DSO concerts in Vail, I'm retired. My daughter goes out on shows, and I'm just going to go with her. Her two children, my grandchildren, are learning the act, too. The thing is, their grandma and all, they don't want them to do aerial, because a lot of people do get hurt. So they want them to stay away from aerial and just learn things on the ground. But I'll finally go back out with the circus. I'll come back from Vail, pack my stuff, go home for a week, and go back out with my daughter. -- Carl Wong