Eight Ringling Bros. acrobats were in the hospital Monday after falling about 35 feet during a performance in Providence, R.I.
The performers, part of the “Hair Hang Act,” had been dangling by their hair from a structure that was made to look like a “human chandelier” when they fell, The Washington Post reported.
At first, some circus-goers thought it was all part of the act. Others described the chaos, in the Providence Journal: “One of the performers was crying. It looked pretty bad. They just dropped. It happened so fast, you didn’t really believe it happened.”
When they struck the ground, “their necks went forward [and] it was awful,” said one audience member, Sydney Bragg, 14, in ABC News. “They kept the lights off so no children could see. When the lights went on, we could see them lying there.”
A spokesman for Feld Entertainment, which owns Ringling Bros., said the metal frame structure that the performers’ hair was tethered to broke free from its truss, The Associated Press reported.
The acrobats’ injuries, which occurred during a Sunday morning show, were not life-threatening, The Post reported.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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