It’s perhaps an understatement to say that the École national de cirque has an awful lot on its plate right now.

At 1 o’clock on a recent sunny afternoon in mid-May, disgraced former ENC coach Marcelo Berti Marques was being escorted from his jail cell to begin his bail hearing. He has been charged with luring children, inciting sexual contact, making sexually explicit material available to a child and possession of child pornography. Uptown, at precisely the same moment, the doors of the École national de cirque were flung open to national and international media—not to discuss the sex crime allegations but for a preview showing of the school’s upcoming graduation season performances. For the beleaguered school, it was clearly a case of “the show must go on.” As in previous years, the graduating students have been split into tw...