We took My Kid to see La Familia Dimitri at the New Victory Theatre in Times Square. I’m so glad we did. The Clown Dimitri, even in his 70’s is still charming and adorable and his offspring, all in their 40’s, are fit and accomplished performers with careers of their own who came together for this international tour were a joy to watch.
The Dimitri family alternated between hard-won skills and novelty gags without the shrill hard sell of so many American variety entertainers.
I know there is more support in Europe for this sort of thing which doesn’t take away from the fact that the Dimitris are an amazing family! Yet I wonder how much easier it must be for performing artists to develop in a country where there are grants and support. They have a chance to breathe and practice and learn new skills without quite as many worries about basics like health care.
In his own show, Lorenzo Pisoni talked about his dad falling wrong during one of his performances “and after eight months of chewing asprin finally going to the doctor and learning he had broken his back and it had healed badly”. How could someone who makes their living as a physical comedian let something like that go for so long, I imagine, unless he happened not to have health insurance at the time of the accident. Hmmm. That was a bad fall. Should I go to the emergency room or the doctor? No. If they find something they will want to operate and that can only lead to bankrupcy. Better not to know.
So Larry Pisoni doesn’t do his Lorenzo Pickle act anymore but the 72-year-old clown Dimitri of Switzerland is still going strong and all three of his children are performers and still making new work in their 40’s.
I also think of frumpy Susan Boyle, 47-year-old youtube sensation, who shocked the “Britain’s Got Talent” by having a beautiful singing voice even though she didn’t look like a 21-year-old supermodel.
Watching the Dimitri family play their instruments together between feats of circus prowess, I thought of how many hours they had spent making music together apart from the hours spent learning their circus skills while they were growing up and how rare it is to be able to build that kind of time into the hurried, penny and minute counting chopped-up, scheduled days that form the backbone of culture in which I am raising my child.