At 7:30 PM, Giovanni Perez Guerrero entered his room for the first time in twelve and a half hours.

“Okay, it’s a Monday,” he sighed, preparing himself. “I’m gonna have to stay [at training] until seven, and then I’ll have to go home, eat something, then go to the gym, then work on my schoolwork…that’ll probably leave me at 12:00 AM.”

The training in question? An international family tradition since the 1720s. One that, as of thirty years ago, has lived on through Guerroro’s father, Daniel Oscar Perez.

“[When I was three], my dad moved to Vegas because he got a gig for Le Reve, a Cirque du Soleil show that’s been closed down now…that’s when I kind of started piecing the stuff together…like, ‘Oh, he’s a circus performer.’” Guerrero said. During that time, his father also began creating Cirque Legacy, where he performs locally. 

In two years, Guerrero assumed the same role. 

“Although I will say I was very inconsistent with…my training…[but] this has always been something…in our family. So for me to…let it go would feel like a waste.”

“My dad has always wanted me to be a circus performer, because he knows that the only thing that he can pass down to me is obviously circus. In Cuba, there’s not a lot of…you know…colleges; Either you go to school, you become, like, a gymnastics person or a mixed martial artist…Circus was like…the only options we had back  then.”

Those options, as Guerrero explained, led Daniel Oscar Perez to Paris and Rome for his performances. 

“A lot of people think, like, when you think of a traditional circus, you think, like, one big family.” As he explains, however, such notions are rarely a reality. 

“Sometimes, [your family is] gonna have to go and work holidays, you know: Christmas, Thanksgiving…Easter. You can be spending Christmas by yourself…[and] summer by yourself…[but] it’s providing for the family.”

In the fleeting moments where each of his participating family members are present, Giovanni reminds himself of what he deems to be one of his most important philosophies. 

“Always be grateful for what you have in the moment. You never know when stuff will switch up on you. One day, you can have the most perfect life…and then the next, it’ll just go down.”

“When I went to Europe, I will say I was on my phone a lot, but I did take in a lot of the moments. But…I still took the time to [understand] that moment, because I don’t know when I’m gonna be able to go to Europe again. As much as I love to say that I hate school, it’s like I look at it in a great way by saying ‘I don’t know when I’ll be able to see my friends again. So I’m trying to take as much time…as I can.”

Such an approach, he explains, manifests itself further into one’s life than mere moments. 

“Most people that I know that are…circus performers do their school online, but my mom was very strict on, like, doing public school. She wanted me to finish my public school.”

In the realm of training and discipline, the lessons learned through the circus have created a sense of discipline in Guerrero that he explains may not have been present without his unusual lifestyle.

“Monday and Wednesdays, I have circus training, and then I have acro gymnastics training…Sometimes I will say ‘I don’t feel like going to practice…But I’m like, I know that later on…if I don’t practice today, it’s gonna bag me two days. If I go today, it’s gonna benefit me for two days. It’s the consistency of…constantly going, constantly training, constantly putting in the hours. Because when you do that, you’ll start to see the progress.”

Progress, as Guerrero hopes, will lift him higher than his predecessors in a chair stack of performers 300 years in the making. 

“My dad is like 60 years old now…he’s almost about to retire. Taking a moment …and seeing how different it is to see someone who’s dedicated their whole life to it, to someone who’s just barely starting. Me and my brother have both looked at it in a way that we’ve both said ‘we can be equally as great as them, if not greater.”

He explained how his earliest knowledge of such performances was from his grandmother back in Cuba. Knowledge of the industry, however, isn’t the key determinant in an increasingly competitive circus environment, such as the United States, as Giovanni explained. The final factor is a family’s “strong will” and “determination.”

“If you look up Venardos Circus, [the founder] didn’t know anything about the circus. He just put up a tent. He put up a ringmaster.” 

Here, Guerrero explains, is where Venardoa found its star gymnast, Angel Ramos, who continues to headline at the tent. 

The final message? “As long as you keep going, you’re going to gain something in the end.”

With this, Guerrero’s future guarantees his contribution to the three-hundred-year-old stack.

“My dad is already making another tent, and he wants me to manage that tent for him. He can also teach me how to manage the business.”

Like the forerunners of his circus roots three centuries ago, Giovanni Perex Guerrero knows what it takes to not just succeed in the circus, but find fulfillment in the areas outside a profession—a lesson carried chair by chair to the height of his ever growing stack that, by the passion of his family, has only just begun. 

More information on Cirque Legacy.

More information on Venardos Circus.