Ameera Diamond feels for Roy Horn, half of legendary illusionist tag-team Siegfried & Roy, who's recovering in California from a tiger attack during the duo's October 7 show at the Mirage.
"People do forget that they [tigers] are trained and not tamed—that's the risk you take working with these animals," says Diamond, tiger lady of the UniverSoul Circus, a black-owned, hip-hop-inspired big-top act once dubbed "Cirque Du Soul" and in town through Saturday at Cashman Center.
"It was an unfortunate accident and I hope he recovers quickly."
And what of the theorems circulating around the Horn attack? That the tiger was confused and meant Horn no harm, or that this encapsulates the fundamental problem of using animals for show?
If the tiger wanted to kill, it would've, assures Diamond, refusing to speculate further because she wasn't there.
Neither the attack, nor the ensuing media billow, nor renewed sniping from activists about the treatment of performance animals (UniverSoul was recently hit will allegations of animal cruelty), nor the fact that she makes a living caged in with trained-but-not-tamed tigers has swayed Diamond away from her job the past three years. No reward without risk. So far, the risk-reward ratio has yielded a handsome payoff: stadiums full of smiling faces, travel throughout the United States, cultural exposure for her son and the chance to play den mother to a handful of sharp-toothed carnivores.
"I'm responsible for feeding them and caring for their personal and medical needs, so I'm just like a mother," says Diamond, who works with eight tigers and has only her voice and a whip as protection. "They're like my kids. I've gotten to know each one of them personally, to know their attitudes and behaviors."
Diamond's charges are every bit as idiosyncratic as the kindergarteners she dealt with as a teacher's aide in Norfolk, Virginia. They're more emotional than Sybil: moody, hyper, pensive, sullen, aggressive, isolated, extroverted. She noticed as much her first time in close quarters with eight tigers, including three who were starting their first day of training. A born tiger lady, she's surprisingly fearless.
It helped that she wasn't being asked to test the limits—putting body parts in tigers' mouths or roughhousing with the big cats, tricks practiced less and less because they're "dangerous and overrated," she says. Beside, inside the cage is no place to turn chicken.
"Fear doesn't enable you to think clearly," she says. "At any given moment, things can go from good to bad."
Training tigers is a far cry from her first circus gig as a dancer with Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus. During a class field trip to the circus, she inquired about being a dancer, returned after work to audition, and two weeks later was on the road, performing for the next two years before taking a year off to give birth to a son. A Ringling Bros. tape featuring Diamond made it to UniverSoul owner Cedric Walker, and in 1999, she was on the road again, dancing, riding elephants, performing with dogs and hamming it up with chimpanzees. Offered the job performing in a big-cat act, she accepted, figuring it was "a natural progression if I was going to continue working with show animals." It's been tiger lady and her kitties ever since.
Diamond says she's not privy to the complaints leveled recently at Universoul (mistreatment of elephants) but that her tigers receive great care and pass Department of Agriculture inspections with flying colors.
"I take very good care of my animals, but I can't speak for everyone else," she says.
Tickets are $14.50 to $25. Performances are at Cashman Center, 850 S. Las Vegas Blvd.