Fall! Fall! Fall!

In the program it is called the "Giant Gyrating Gyro-Wheel," and that is probably as good a name as any for the contraption. Two or three times a day at Manhattan's Madison Square Garden, where the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus has settled in for its spring visit, a British-born performer named Elvin Bale approaches the device, unlimbers its 40-ft. arms and sets both himself and the great wheel into motion. Thus begins what Ringling Impresario Irvin Feld says is "one of the most fantastic thrill acts the show has ever had."

For once, circus hyperbole comes close to fact. At one end of the Gyro-Wheel's arms is a heavy counterweight; at the other is a circular wire-mesh cage 8 ft. in diameter. Bale and his wife Jeanette give the cage a mighty push. As it begins to turn, Bale hops inside, then makes like a hamster in an exercise wheel. As the cage rises, he runs up the inside to help maintain speed. When it reaches the top, Bale backpedals frantically to slow the whooshing descent, reversing again at the bottom to propel himself around the loop once more.

So far, so good. Cardiac-arrest time--the moment when some kids in the audience begin to chant "Fall! Fall! Fall!"--comes when Bale climbs outside the cage and does the whole heart-stopping routine standing on top, with nothing between him and a nasty tumble but an exquisite sense of balance. As the cage dives earthward from the peak of its arc some 45 ft. in the air, he is in danger of being tossed by centrifugal force into the cheap seats. Bale often loses balance on the downswing and has to hang on for dear life.

Bale's Gyro-Wheel act is not his only scary turn. At another point in the show, he dives headfirst off a swinging trapeze bar and then catches himself, at the last moment, by his heels. That stunt gives even Bale bad dreams. "The heel is the last point of your body," he says. "You can't catch yourself if you fall. Sometimes I wake up at night dreaming I have just missed the bar." On these occasions, adds Jeanette, "he almost knocks me out of bed, grabbing at things."

Bale, 30, is a fourth-generation circus performer: his great-grandfather was a juggler, grandpa had a bicycle act, and Dad Trevor Bale is an animal trainer. These comparatively tame pursuits never interested Elvin. Even as a child, says his father, "he was always hanging off things." He was--and is--also always dreaming up new things to hang from: the Gyro-Wheel was inspired by a double Ferris wheel he saw in a carnival and the cage toy his son has for his pet hamster. As for his safety, Bale eschews nets but never forgets a cardinal rule: "If you start taking things for granted, you get hurt. It's dangerous not to maintain an edge of fear."

Select Company. Bale, who lives off-season in Florida, occasionally talks of retiring to run a delicatessen or restaurant in some down-to-earth spot. What keeps him from doing so is not his $50,000 to $60,000 salary but the fact that, as he puts it, "there is always competition in the circus, and we all know the best act will be in the center. This is what makes the circus great." That and its traditions. Bale wants to join the select company of such immortal performers in the big top world as the flying Wallendas, Aerialist Alfredo Codona and Unus, the man who could balance on his index finger. Circus buffs believe that Bale could start slicing pastrami tomorrow and his reputation would be secure.

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