and the 2012 adaptation of Jack Prelutsky's The Dragons Are Singing Tonight at The Southern Theater. In 2010, a cohort of Juventas students traveled to perform in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at the RiverRocks Festival. Outside the United States, performers have traveled to compete, including at the International Circus Festival in Latina, Italy, and at the Circus Ring of Friendship Festival in Norrköping, Sweden, in which the troupe's triple trapeze team garnered the gold medal. In April 2015, a Circus Juventas spinning cube team performed at the Circus Waldoni Festival in Darmstadt, Germany, where they tied for first place. Students from the school will perform at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., in June and July 2017. Music Much of the accompaniment for the big top summer shows came from Peter Ostroushko, a local mandolin player. Ostroushko, known for his work on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion, became involved in the youth circus after his daughter saw a show and decided to join. In 2005, the Butlers discovered Ostroushko's affinity for the mandolin and fiddle, and asked if he would play a Celtic song at the premiere of their upcoming summer big top show, Dyrnwych. He happily agreed, having expressed a lifelong dream of joining a circus, and played the track, "See It There/Con Cassidy's", not only at Dyrnwych opening but also at each of its subsequent 18 performances. The following year, he composed original music for the 2006 Juventas show, Pazzanni, and expanded his band to five members, including himself on mandolin, fiddle, and mandocello, Marc Anderson on percussion, Dan Chouinard on piano, accordion, and keyboard, Dirk Freymuth on electric and acoustic guitars, and Joel Sayles on electric and acoustic bass guitars. Ostroushko again provided a score for Atlanticus and RavensManor, continued in 2010 with Sawdust, then Grimm, and finally Showdown. Tracks from the first four shows for which he played, from Dyrnwych to RavensManor, are anthologized on the album Peter Joins the Circus, published by Borderland Productions in 2008. Reception Jando Dominique, reporting for Spectacle: An Online Journal of Circus Arts, summarized audience and critical reception for Circus Juventas's shows by describing them as "always sold out and enthusiastically reviewed by the press." Renee Valois cited the age of the performers and the proximity between them and the audience when she asked in a St. Paul Pioneer Press review of Oz comparing the circus school with Cirque