Circus Sarasota & Jersey Mike’s Subs Team Up for Month of Giving in March

“Day of Giving” March 27

TAMPA, Fla., Feb. 21, 2013 – Circus Sarasota, & the Sailor Circus Program are joining forces with local Jersey Mike’s Subs restaurants throughout Sarasota for the 3rd Annual March “Month of Giving” fundraising campaign. The campaign will culminate in the nationwide event, Jersey Mike’s “Day of Giving” on Wednesday, March 27.

During the month of March, customers can make a donation to Circus Sarasota, & the Sailor Circus Program at any area Jersey Mike’s restaurant. Then on Wed March 27, a special nationwide celebration, “Day of Giving,” will take place at all Sarasota Jersey Mike’s locations to benefit 86 different charities including hospitals, youth organizations, food banks and more.

On that day, area residents are invited to come in to a local Jersey Mike’s restaurant and enjoy a delicious sub meal. All area Jersey Mike’s restaurants will donate 100 percent of the day’s sales to Circus Sarasota’s youth training program, The Sailor Circus. For more information on our charity partners, please visit www.jerseymikes.com/mog.

Circus Sarasota’s youth training program: The Sailor Circus

“The Sailor Circus of Sarasota, Florida is thrilled to be chosen by Jersey Mike’s Subs for the Month of Giving,” said Joan Leonard, Administrative Director, of the Sailor Circus Program. With this partnership we are able to continue serving the youth of Sarasota by providing a safe environment to learn life skills through the exciting tradition of the circus arts. The Month of Giving allows us to provide our program to students whose parents cannot afford after school specialty programs. Together with Jersey Mike’s we are able to teach our students the importance of community and giving back to the community that one lives in.”

Participating Sarasota Jersey Mike’s Restaurants:

  • 3820 S. Tuttle Ave, Sarasota
  • 8210 Tourist Center Drive, University Park

Last year’s Month of Giving campaign raised nearly $858,000 for 74 different charities nationwide. Since 2010, Jersey
Mike’s locations throughout the country have raised more than $5 million for worthy local charities and distributed
more than 500,000 free sub sandwiches to help numerous causes.

“I would like to extend a personal invitation to come in and enjoy a Jersey Mike’s sub during our Month of Giving in
support of one of your local charities,” said Peter Cancro, Jersey Mike’s founder and CEO, who started the company
when he was only 17 years old. “The opportunities to give are all around us so we hope this March you will join us to
make a difference in someone’s life.”

For more information about Jersey Mike’s Subs Month of Giving please visit: http://www.jerseymikes.com.

About Jersey Mike’s
Jersey Mike’s, a fast-casual sub sandwich franchise with more than 750 locations open and under development
nationwide, has a long history of community involvement and support. Started at the Jersey Shore in 1956, Jersey
Mike’s serves authentic East Coast-style subs on fresh baked bread – the same recipe it started with over 50 years ago.
The company’s mission is to bring its customers the highest quality, freshest made sub in the industry and give back
to the communities in which it operates. A store locator and franchise information for Jersey Mike’s can be found at
www.jerseymikes.com.

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Let’s Run Away to the Circus!

When asked if I wanted to take a trapeze class while on a girls getaway to Sarasota Florida, without hesitation or really even much thought, I exclaimed “Yes!” What could be more fun than flying through the air, ideally with grace and strength? I recruited my friends Dawn and Robin (my adventurous partners in crime: see What Happens in Vegas…). Circus Sarasota offers a few different circus-type classes, and we were quick to sign up.

First, we took the Aerial Gym class. The description read that hoops are used, suspended about two or three feet off the ground. We thought the class sounded fun – we just didn’t realize how hard it would be! The five us in the class used the steel hoops as support in various Pilates- and yoga-type moves – plank, bridge, even downward facing dog. The most fun, though, was when we balanced our chests on the hoops, used our arms for leverage and swung, swan-like (maybe?!), through the air. My favorite move of the class, though, was (Wo)Man in the Moon – we balanced on our thin steel hoops, bending and shaping our bodies until we conformed to the hoop’s curve. In the pose, I felt graceful and limber – all I needed was a sparkly outfit and I would’ve been set!

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A Circus That You See — and Hear

SARASOTA, Fla. — Long live the beautiful lady on the flying trapeze in the big arena and the magic of a Sunday afternoon in a world upside down — a circus performed with a 150-voice chorale and a symphony orchestra.

There is no sawdust on the floor and no pink lemonade for Cirque des Voix. Missing is a circus band blaring “Barnum & Bailey’s Favorite.” Instead, a semi-circle of violins and cellos and French horns plays the music of “1492: Conquest of Paradise” for a hand-balancing act.

This is taking the circus to a new level. A packed crowd of 1,000 cheers and gives the performance a standing ovation. Some paid as much as $45 for their seats.

HERE IS AN EXCITING, enchanting show. It is bringing the soul of “The Greatest Show on Earth” to a remarkable level of class. Performers like this can only be assembled in a circus city like Sarasota; nowhere else is there such a gathering of talent.

It would be difficult to assemble the circus-minded Sarasota Key Chorale at the i wireless Center in Moline to sing John Williams’ “Themes From ‘The Lost World’” while four members of the Flying Wallendas are walking a thin cable and risking their necks high above the audience heads.

There are moments when you are so thrilled by a lovely aerialist’s cloud swing that you cannot pay attention to the combined symphony and chorale music, “Dark Night of the Soul.”

All through this performance I keep thinking how — in its circusy way — it reminds me of the Holiday Pops at the i wireless — the choir, the symphony, the performers, the color, the adoring crowd. Steve Jobman, the Quad-City “Pops” director, should fly down to Sarasota next holiday season when Cirque des Voix is to be performed with a Christmas theme.

THIS EARLY SPRING performance has been rehearsed and fine-tuned so choir and symphony are in synch with the performers. What a challenge it was for symphony and voices to be in tune-time as the Wallendas do their four-high bicycle pyramid 50 feet in the air.

“It is a circus that is quite different and it is thrilling — with such musical accompaniment to the acts,” says Pedro Reis, a former aerialist who now runs the widely hailed Circus Sarasota, which is performed in a Camelot-like tent. He is in a tuxedo to introduce the Cirque des Voix, and gives us a little wave when it is time for the appearance of Dolly Jacobs, his wife and the co-owner of Circus Sarasota.

I cannot take my eyes off Dolly, in her bird-like swirls, sometimes with her flying partner. She is the first lady of the circus, and honored by Circus Monaco (Pulitzer of the circus world) as the world’s great aerialist of all time. I pay no attention to the music, which is so appropriate. She soars to “Across the Vast, Eternal Sky” and “Walking in the Air.”

The Sarasota Herald’s reviewer said of Dolly: “No matter how many times you see her, Jacobs manages to create magical and ethereal beauty in her performances.”

We ARE sitting in the front row, so close to the thick riggings that I can touch them and feel their tense strains as young women and Spider-Man slide from the top of the arena and twist and turn on long strands of colored silk. It is one of the scariest and most dangerous acts in the the circus world of performing.

At intermission, Tom and Jane Rudbeck of Davenport walk by, suggesting that I dig into their box of popcorn. “We expected to see you here,” he says.

In my long life, I have likely seen a hundred or so circuses. Never have I seen, or heard, one as entrancing as Cirque des Voix.

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