ALTAMONT — Families huddled under the entrance to the big top as rain drizzled down early Tuesday evening. When music began to play inside the Circus Hollywood tent, children craned their necks to see if there was anyone coming to open the vinyl flaps that serve as a door.
A few minutes later, the door opened, and families led by excited children began making their way into the large red and gold tent. There, padded folding chairs with red fabric on the seats were arranged inside rectangular metal partitions around the ring, and bleachers formed a semicircle against the tent wall.

The floor of the ring was covered in red carpet, and the tent had gold and white stripes around it like a belt.

Serene music played while the circus attendees got settled in, some going up to buy treats from the circus’s vendor.

As the announcement marking two minutes until show time came, the music picked up tempo, and, moments later, the first performer made her way to the ring.

A woman in a black, pink, and yellow spandex suit and a hat with a thick mohawk on it began bopping to the beat as she swirled hula hoops around her with ease. Her act began with one hoop that she bounced from her feet to her shoulders with the motion of her body, and throughout her performance she added more hoops and spun them around in increasingly complex ways.

Near the end of her routine, she lifted at least 20 hoops up and, after a pause, swung them all around her body, covering her from about her shoulders to her knees, turning her into a swirling rainbow for a few moments.

The following act featured a woman in Indian garb who directed two camels, a horse, and an alpaca around the ring in various configurations, including each individual animal going in clockwise and counterclockwise circles, and the horse prancing figure eights around the other animals as they stood with their front hooves on pedestals.

Her act concluded with the horse rearing high on its hind legs before coming down for a graceful bow and exiting the ring with a little buck.

A clown had the next performance slot, and his act was full of balloons, arrows, tricks, and an audience member blindfolded and shackled to a wood board.

Aerial performances came after, as two girls shimmied up fabric tied to hoops hanging high above the audience in the tent. The girls, in pink, purple, and white outfits, spun and hung from the hoops in a myriad of graceful ways, swinging in sync with one another with precise movements of their legs and arms.

When they had finished their routine, a woman with little dogs took to the ring. She had the dogs hop and walk around on their hind legs with her, and one dashed between her legs as she walked across the red carpet. One poodle jumped hurdles, and, to finish her act, another climbed a two-sided ladder with its front and back paws.

The Fusco brothers, jugglers from Argentina, and a female assistant, performed next. This was their first year at The Altamont Fair, and the audience seemed glad to have them as it applauded during the brothers’ precise juggling, both individually and together.

As well as juggling with bowling-pin-shaped objects and small rings, the brothers each balanced a long pole on their foreheads, with one tossing rings onto hooks attached to the pole, and the other tossing balls into small nets on his pole.

Their final trick required the brothers to stand on metal stools, and, after one brother jiggled his stool on the carpet to find a steady place for it, they both climbed up and juggled pins with their hands, and a ring on one foot in perfect balance.

The last performance of Circus Hollywood was a man trained on what the ringmaster described as “the most dangerous act in the circus business today,” the human gyroscope.

A large contraption was wheeled out onto the ring, with one end shaped like a large, metal hamster wheel with beams coming out of it that came together at the other end.

The performer sat inside the wheel a moment before starting, as he chalked his shoes and hands to avoid slipping on the metal. As he began to walk inside the metal circle — which does not spin independently, but as a whole of the entire structure — it began to move upward above the audience.

The contraption swung around as the man walked, ran, hopped, and danced inside the wheel, maintaining momentum to keep it spinning. At one point, he climbed outside the wheel, continuing to spin it around, and even jumped rope a couple of times while at the apex of the spin.

In the moments between the highpoint of the gyroscope’s motion and its swing towards the ground, the man would lift his feet, and be in freefall with the machine for a few seconds before landing back down on it and continuing its journey up and around again.

When he finished his act, the man climbed down onto the carpet of the ring, and took a bow in front of an applauding audience.

Families then filed out of the big top and all its wonders, and back into the light drizzle of the evening.