Ringling Bros. back in NYC after years-long hiatus — but without iconic circus animals: ‘Worse than separating from my wife’

The famous Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is back in New York City, at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center until Sunday, after a seven-year hiatus that left many expecting it would never return.

You’ll see skateboarders and BMX bikers doing wild tricks, trapeze artists flying through the air and a “human rocket” who shoots the arena at 65 mph — but no jumping tigers or majestic elephants.

In 2016, after years of complaints from animal right activists and a lawsuit over mistreatment allegations, Ringling Bros. phased out its long-standing elephant performances.

While animal-rights organizations, including the Human Society, had been ordered to pay Ringling a nearly $16 million settlement, paid for making unproven allegations over mistreatment of elephants, it was too late. Attendance was down, operating costs were up, and the legendary circus had to call it quits — performing what looked to be its last-ever show, at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum, in May 2018.

Some 400 workers were out of jobs.

Among them was Tabajara Maluenda, now 53, who had made a big-top name for himself as the man who could tame tigers, elephants and horses. He loved the animals, loved the accolades and loved life as an animal trainer and performer for Ringling Bros.

“It was extraordinary,” said Maluenda, who began with the circus in 2004, of life on the road with his wife and two kids. “We traveled as a family, living in the circus’s trailer. Ringling Bros. provided a teacher, on tour with us, to teach the children.”

The kids also grew up alongside tigers Hercules, Princess and Shakira.

“My son and daughter helped raise the cubs,” said Maluenda. “The tigers were like family. The children played with them in the pool. In the morning, the kids would feed the cubs from bottles of milk mixed with meat.”

But once the circus shut down, the elephants, horses, tigers, lions, camels and zebras that had been part of it were sent to sanctuaries around the country.

“It broke my heart,” Maluenda told The Post. “It broke me into pieces. The split broke my heart even worse than when I separated from my wife.

“The tigers lived with me and my family when they were six months old,” Maluenda recalled. “Tears come to my eyes when I think of the time I spent with them.

“In 2017, I took the animals to a sanctuary in Tennessee. I don’t want to remember the place’s name. I couldn’t stay to say a long goodbye to the animals. It was too emotional.”

He wasn’t sure what to do next; it’s not like there were many opportunities for a guy who made a living getting multiple tigers to roll over in sync.

“All the other circuses had their animal trainers [and didn’t need new ones],” Maluenda said. “I was left with nothing. I had to have a strong mind to keep pushing forward. I had two angels, my children, who prevented me from wanting to take my own life.”

But with a family to feed, Maluenda had to pick himself up.

“I moved to Las Vegas,” he said. “I needed to find work, any work, right away. I drove an Uber and did set-up gigs [putting up and taking down stage-sets for other performers]. After being the main star at Ringling, appearing in magazines and going on TV shows, doing something that was the complete opposite was difficult.”

Other jobs included cutting down trees and delivering cars. But the worst moment came when his past and present worlds collided.

“I had to go to the stadium at UNLV, which is where I performed with the circus,” Maluenda remembered of his time doing odd jobs. “I had to stand there, with a mop in my hand, in the center of the floor … remembering what it was like to stand in that very spot, performing with tigers and making 10,000 people rise to their feet as they watched me with the animals.”

It’s not just animals and their trainers who have been cut from Ringling Bros. Old-school slapstick clowns are out, too.

“I had to leave [the US] in May, 2017, one day after the circus ended,” said Mariko Iwasa, a Japanese citizen who had been a clown with Ringling since 2012, told The Post.

With her work visa no longer attached to a functioning company, “I couldn’t even go to New York to say goodbye to friends.”

After a year in Japan, working in a Tokyo department store, she was able to get a green card and return to New York City, where she now does a bit of clowning in hospitals and freelances as an actress. As for Ringling Bros., she’d like to go back but acknowledges, “There are no performers with clown make-up and big shoes.”

Traditional clowns have been replaced with what a representative for Ringling’s parent company Feld Entertainment calls “comedic performances in a modern take on clowning. The removal of the makeup allows them to make a more personal connection with the audience.”

Sandor Eke performed in traditional clown makeup — the white grease paint and red nose — from 2001 until the show folded in 2017.

Cut loose, he also moved to Las Vegas with his family and spent eight months as a househusband before landing a job as a casino stagehand. Ringling Bros. called him back — but, at 48 and having missed six years of performing, he knew his moment had passed.

“I still practice juggling at home and teach my son acrobatics,” Eke, 48, told The Post. “But getting on the rolling globes and doing backflips? That is not going to happen at my age. I got a call to go back to Ringling Bros. as a stagehand. But to do that and to not perform would be heartbreaking.”

After two years in Vegas, Maluenda landed a job in 2019 as the animal trainer for Circus Spectacular, based in Myakka, Florida, near Sarasota.

Maria Pontigo used to herald the opening of the Ringling Bros. show by riding atop an elephant named Luna.

“I was super blessed to have an extraordinary connection with the elephants,” she told The Post. “It was a dream to be part of the circus with the animals and the clowns.” 

A fourth-generation circus performer, she couldn’t imagine herself doing anything else. For at least part of the time, following the Ringling Bros. hiatus announcement, Pontigo walked the wire for Circus 1903, a throwback to early 20th century big tops.

Now, the 40-year-old is back with Ringling as a high-wire performer, telling The Post that she is the first female to walk the wire with another performer on her shoulders. 

But Luna remains close to her heart.

“We are nomads who never stay in the same place,” Pontigo said of being a circus person. “We  never say ‘goodbye.’ We always say, ‘I’ll see you down the road.’ That was what I said to Luna. Of course I will see her again.”