A platform collapsed during an aerial hair-hanging stunt at a Rhode Island circus performance on Sunday, sending eight entertainers plummeting to the ground. Nine were seriously injured in the fall, including a dancer below.
Stephen Payne, a spokesman for Feld Entertainment, the parent company of Ringling Brothers, said the accident happened during an act in which eight female performers hang "like a human chandelier", using their hair.
Payne said eight of the injured acrobats fell up to 40ft, after the metal-frame apparatus from which they were hanging came free from the metal truss to which it was connected.
All the performers had been doing "some variation of this act for some time", Payne said, though he didn't know how long. The current incarnation of the act began in January with the launch of the show, he said.
An eyewitness, Sydney Bragg, 14, said the collapse happened about 90 minutes into the show. She said the platform began to fall as it neared the rafters of the arena. At first, she said, she thought it was part of the act.
"It just went crashing down," Bragg said. "Everyone was freaking out. We heard this huge clatter and then we just heard the girls scream."
She said spotlights were on the performers at the time, but all the lights went out after the fall.
The accident was reported at about 11.45am, during the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus' Legends show at the Dunkin' Donuts Center in Providence.
Providence public safety commissioner Steven Pare said officials and inspectors had not yet determined what caused the accident. He said none of the injuries appears to be life-threatening.
Roman Garcia, general manager of the show, said the accident occurred during the "hair hang" act in which the performers hang from their hair.
The hair-hanging stunt is described on the circus' website as a "larger-than-life act" featuring eight female performers.
"These 'hairialists' perform a combination of choreography and cut-ups including spinning, hanging from hoops, and rolling down wrapped silks, all while being suspended 35ft (10m) in the air by their hair alone," the description says.
"In this hair-raising act, audiences will even see the weight of three girls held aloft by the locks of only one of these tangled beauties."
Another witness, Rosa Viveiros, said the act was covered by a curtain. Shortly after the curtain was pulled away, she said, the performers fell on top of at least one other performer below, a man who stood up with his face bloodied.
The Dunkin' Donuts Center said two shows scheduled for later Sunday and two others for Monday were on hold
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