Almost all my life I have been on stage.

First as an assistant in the circus- and showacts of my parents, later on as William and Sister (a combination with my twinsister Thea) and from 1974 with my partner and – lady of the house – Joke Smith.

7 juni 1952: Anthony Muijsstraat. Schiedam. R.K. elementary school. Ulo-B. Havo.

On 03-10-1974 embarked on matrimony with Joke Smith.
Daughther: Léonie 12-01-1987.
Length: 1.84 mtr.
Weight: Somewhere near 80 kilo.
Colours of eyes: Light blue.
Size suit: 49/50.
Size schoes: 41/42.
Nationality: World citizen.
Constellation: Gemini.
Is: Unstoppable enthousiastic, sweet, comic, honest, faithful, a little bit selfwilled, a positivist.
Has a lot of: Perseverance.
Passion: Soccer. Was:  A Forward with a beautiful left foot. In: the 7-e team Excelsior’20. Champion?: 2 x.
Soccer hero: Di Stefano.

Food: Italian, but also a brown slice of bread and butter with old farmer’s chees and tomato.
Delicacy: Stroopwafel.
Drink: a glass of Castagnolo Orvieto Classico Superieure DOC Barberani but also ‘Mango’ tea.
Movie: Festen.
Book: Sabbath’s Theatre.
Musical: Hair.
Song that makes my flesh creep: ‘The greatest love of all’.
Singer: Mick Hucknall (Simply Red).
CD: Stay.
Female singer: Oleta Adams.
What I like to do: Read a good book.
What I also like to do: Work in our Garden.
Impressive: Cirque du Soleil.
Volunteer at: Unicef.
Support: Greenpeace.

Bicycle: Gazelle.
Camp out: in Italy.
Animal: Dolfin.
Little Beast: Squirrel.
Don’t: Smoke.
Enormously proud of: Daughter Léonie.
Friend for life: Joke.
Convincing: Humanist.
Incredible dislike: Discrimination.
Detest: War.
Always respects: The other.
Incomprehensible: Child battering.
Cry: To often.
Laugh: We have to do this more and more!.
Will never: Hate anyone.
Shy?: Formerly very much, nowadays just a little bit.

Future: Peace all over the World.

Future: Our planet full of Joy and Happiness.

Mission by Ed van der Elsken: Show who you are!

Website:

http://flavors.me/wimuijtdewilligen

It was just an adventure, and I was planning to go back to school and have a regular life.

There was always a reason for a party, always music in the house.

Originally the dream was about traveling and developing a job that would permit me to travel. And I decided to go into street performing because it was a traveling job; it would let me go around the world.

We had every problems starting a big top could have. The tent fell down on the first day. We had problems getting people into the shows. It was only with the courage and arrogance of youth that we survived.

The sun stands for energy and youth, which is what I thought the circus should be about.

It was live or die in L.A. And we bet everything on one night.

By the end of the show, standing ovations. The day after, tickets were selling like crazy.

Business is difficult. But it could be approached two ways: Seriously, or with the same way you’re doing your job, with entertainment aspect, with pleasure, with fun. And we decided to try to make it as fun that we do our creativity.

I believe that the profits will come from the quality of your creative products. Since the beginning, I’ve always wanted to develop a self-feeding circle of creative productions: The positive financial returns from one show would be used to develop and create a new show, and so on.

I believe in nurturing creativity and offering a haven for creators, enabling them to develop their ideas to the fullest. With more and more talented creators being drawn to Cirque in an environment that fulfills them, these are ideal to continue developing great new shows.

I have a great team around me, and they know how I work and what I need to know. Creatively, I am a little more hands-on – but then again, not in the complete creative process.

I like to not be too involved in the beginning and during the process so as to keep this fresh look and be able to give constructive recommendation on the final production.

We are each but a quarter note in a grand symphony.

We cannot go out and conquer. We need to enroll people that come from those cultures.

We’re not afraid of risking what was our success yesterday in order to explore some new field. We’re adventurous. We like the challenge of unknown territory, unknown artistic field, and that’s what stimulates us.

We didn’t reinvent the circus. We repackaged it in a much more modern way.

I have seen many successful people fail after they start fearing they might lose what they have built.

[We stop growing] if we start being afraid of taking risks and if we start diminishing our creative pertinence. We should always aim at doing more-creative endeavors, not in terms of volume but in terms of more creativity and more sharing.

I don’t believe in pitfalls. I believe in taking risks and not doing the same thing twice.

Our approach was very simple. It was about creating a universal language. A show that will be attractive toward every people coming from all over the world. And that was a big thing.

We are in a position of financial and social power, and we could be agents of change in our society. Without pretension, I believe we could be a nice little gardener who takes care of the garden, and hopefully our neighbor will do the same. Then, maybe we’ll achieve a better world.

Inside every adult there’s still a child that lingers. We’re happiness merchants – giving people the opportunity to dream like children.

You know, in life you always have to give yourself some sort of challenge and for me the game of poker, because of the mathematics, the personality aspect of it, I feel very comfortable in it. It’s a great experience.

I have a lot of shows here in Las Vegas, so in my free time, I go into the poker room and play there.

In life I’ve learned one thing; if you want to be good you have to connect with the best people. So I got very close to the high-stakes players here. I get to watch them and play with them a little bit.

You can get killed pretty fast, so you develop the ability to read people. If somebody is trying to take advantage, there’s a natural rejection.

In the street you have to develop that instinct of trusting people and reading people because that instinct is your life saver. That’s something you can definitely apply in the game…In some ways, we’re still a bunch of little street kids.

Well today I have had no hands, so I had to be very careful. I’m kind of cruising around; I have a couple good moves but that’s about it.

I don’t know what’s going to happen in this tournament. I have some meetings tomorrow and Friday; I didn’t expect to go that far here. So if I go farther than today I’m in trouble! I’ll have to reschedule.

Our biggest goal is to continue to force ourselves to always start our creative work on a white page and not take advantage of past successes and challenging ourselves.

I believe there are so many other disciplines and themes that we still haven’t explored yet. It’s infinite what we can apply our creativity to.

I bet everything on that one night. If we failed, there was no cash for gas to come home.

I am blessed for what I have, but I believed in it from the beginning. Today, the dream is the same: I still want to travel, I still want to entertain, and I most certainly still want to have fun.