From Noah’s Ark To Cirque Dreams

Heady entertainment: Yeshiva bocher-turned-circus entrepreneur Neil Goldberg with two acrobats from his “Jungle Fantasy” circus.

Heady entertainment: Yeshiva bocher-turned-circus entrepreneur Neil Goldberg with two acrobats from his “Jungle Fantasy” circus.

by Curt Schleier
Special To The Jewish Week

Neil Goldberg searched the world for innovative ideas for his latest production, “Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy,” which opened last week at the Broadway Theater. Ironically he found what might be the most spectacular in a book he shared with his grandmother when he was a child.

“Jungle Fantasy” is the latest of a dozen Cirque Dreams shows he’s created since 1993. They combine acrobatics, music and color to create an experience more typical of European circuses than entertainment traditionally found in the U.S. This one pays tribute to “nature’s unpredictable creations”; in it we follow a man’s journey through an enchanted forest. It features 25 acrobats, aerialists, contortionists and musicians performing in 15 acts over a two-hour span.

One is based

on a Noah’s ark book Goldberg remembers reading with his grandmother.
“Suddenly, as I was putting the show together, I had this image of the animals walking into the ark two by two,” he said.

On the surface it may not sound like much of an epiphany. But add two acrobats Goldberg discovered at the Moscow Circus School, thin wooden planks perched precariously atop a stack of swaying cylinders and you have the makings of an act that will have the audience holding their collective breath.

Both actors wear giraffe costumes — topped off by yarmulkes. Sort of. “In our wardrobe shop we have these skullcaps that we shape into head forms. I asked a wardrobe assistant to get one out, but I kind of whimsically called it a yarmulke. And we’ve been calling it that ever since. So before [the acrobats] go out on stage, someone always reminds them, ‘Don’t forget your yarmulkes.’”

Goldberg, 53, grew up in an Orthodox home in Oceanside, L.I. The family ran Mendel Goldberg, the eponymous textile store founded by Neil’s great-grandfather; it’s still in business, at 72 Hester St. on the Lower East Side.

“That’s where I started to get my inclination for design and fashion,” Neil says.
It was an inclination noted by his parents. He’d attended yeshiva, “but, by high school, my parents sort of figured out that the best thing to help me, to help satisfy my artistic bent, was to experiment in public school.”

Initially, it was a “very traumatic experience. Imagine, a yeshiva bocher showing up in high school wearing a yarmulke. Even through college.” It wasn’t that he faced anti-Semitism as much as “teenage bullying and picking on what was different.”
His first job after attending C.W. Post College was as a fabric designer in the Garment District, but his real love was show business and in off hours he designed sets for Off-Off Broadway theater productions.

But his main job moved him south to Florida to be closer to the mills, and he subsequently went bankrupt. Married (to the daughter of cantor) and with two kids, “I needed to find something else to do.” Providence came in the form of a bar mitzvah. A friend was planning an elaborate party for his son and asked Neil to make the arrangements. It was a success, and Goldberg went into business as Parties by Neil.
As his reputation spread, corporations came calling — American Express, Coca-Cola and IBM.

The last gave him a lot of money and the chance to tour Europe, where he discovered that acrobats there were considered artists.

In many countries they are trained in government-sponsored schools. “I had a vision of putting them all together — acrobats, jugglers, contortionists — to tell a greater story. “Here we tend to rely on technology, and you lose the sense of artistry from the human perspective. I’m not saying we don’t have technology, but we try to interpret wildlife and nature through the human body.”

Eventually, Goldberg was approached by an executive from Bally’s in Atlantic City, N.J., who asked that he come up with a show to be housed there. That put him in the circus — make that cirque — business.

“Honestly, I think very inherent [in my company] are very strong Jewish traditions,” Goldberg says. “For me, one of the most beautiful and memorable things growing up was the Shabbos meal we would always share with guests. I’ve taken that into my business; I’ve brought in artists from Mongolia, Germany and South America, and I bring them into my home. My mother made cholent for them.

“These family traditional values have helped keep the performers involved in my life and my company. And I think that shows onstage. I have over 150 artists working for me today, and at one time or another I’ve invited them all to my home. It’s what I was taught as an Orthodox Jew growing up.”

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