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THE GREATEST PERFORMANCE ON EARTH: A HISTORY OF THE CIRCUS
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From nearly 20 feet in the in the air, perched on a 5-foot-wide platform, I can tell you why. I'm afraid of heights. I have bad shoulders. There's no such thing as a "friendly sky." And, if it's safe to jump off this platform and swing from a steel pole, then why would I sign a waiver that you can do it? "Our coach, Elsa "Al" Firstenberg, shouted from below, giving two thumbs up. My six classmates at swing school, all younger than me, looked less certain, but clearly fascinated by my obvious panic and potential for disaster.
Standing next to me, another instructor, Patrick Horrett, a hybrid of Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, stretched out a Thor-like arm to grab a bar delivered by a colleague on the opposite platform. Patrick laughed. "Come on, Holls," he cooed, immediately fooling me. "Time to fly."
So it's not time to fly. Just climbing the ladder without supplemental oxygen. Going down? I thought. No way.
Mind you, I'm no coward. I've survived dangerous missions: swimming with sharks in the Caribbean; riding buffalo in the Brazilian rainforest; standing in line at a Nicholas Sparks book signing in Greenville, South Carolina.
Definitely flying at the Espa?a Streb Flyers Academy in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, wouldn't kill me. Correct? After all, the demise of the Learning Flyers, the most popular offspring of the traditional traveling circus, has unearthed a thriving ecosystem of boutique circuses and participatory ne'er-do-wells across the country. Though the Ringling Brothers retired in May, you'll still want to dry your eyes and let the clowns' noses show; there are still plenty of circuses you can visit with your eyes open or run away to attend.
But no joke: circus scholar Janet Davis counts some 85 circus schools and training centers spread across the country, where everyone from the truly top-notch and art-house professionals to curious civilians and energetic youngsters can learn circus ropes, high wires, and German wheels. More down-to-earth types can master the art of juggling and clowning, while fitness fanatics rise to become yoga aerialists and trampoline acrobats.
And traveling troupes and one-ring spectacles abound. According to the World circus Federation, 90 percent of us live within an hour's drive of a performing circus, and each has their own unique magical talents. Like Circus Amok, whose clowns perform free outdoor shows in tow, with spotlights on social issues from AIDS to immigration to gentrification. Or Absinthe, a naughty Las Vegas cabaret vaudeville circus that the New York Times hailed as "Cirque du Soleil channeled through a rocky horror picture show." Cirque du Soleil, based in Sarasota, Florida, sets up aerial programs of choral music, featuring more than a hundred singers and a 40-piece orchestra, and the University of Atlanta, the only African-American-owned Cirque, is an extravaganza of black culture from around the world. Les7DoigtsdeLaMain (Seven Fingers of the Hand) from Montreal recently toured the U.S. in "Food and Confessions," in which a troupe of jugglers, dancers, storytellers, and acrobats also cook and serve food to the audience.
In simpler times, the Big Top was an exciting escape from monotony. In today's messy world, these shows and many others offer an interactive and intimate respite from the technological age, where overloaded emails, smartphones, Twitter feeds, and queues of Netflix TV shows demand our attention, steal our time, and rob us of our memories.
So my plight at the Espa?a Streb Trapeze Academy, founded by famed acrobatic choreographer Elizabeth Street, made my heart skip a beat you ask the first human cannon? That was the most interesting (tightrope walker) William Leonard Hunt, aka The Great Falini, which raises the question, why wasn't he the first human cannonball? ("Zazel, you go first.")
After the explosion, Nicole "Nitro" bows and announces an intermission, reminding people how much the world has changed: "If armed, stay calm and look for the nearest exit."
Highlights of the second half included 12 tigers strutting in a giant cage, and Tabayara "Taba" Maluenda, a sixth-generation Chilean circus performer, wrapped in a show-stopping costume. Tabayara "Taba" Maluenda, a sixth-generation Chilean circus performer, is wrapped in a dazzling green sleeveless velvet jumpsuit, complete with armbands and knee-high leather boots. With a crack of Taba's whip, these noble beasts sit down, jump from stool to stool, lie down side by side, and tumble one after the other. Taba sweats and wipes his mug. But when he bowed facing us, it was clear those were tears running down his face.
The coach turned and kissed one of the cannibals on the nose. He greeted them with a sob. "For 30 years you've been putting food on my table," he said. "Katana, you're 6 months old, and I've been raising you for 13 years." He called Katana to him and buried her head in her fur. Then one by one he shooed the cats away and thanked each one by name. The last one disappeared and Taba kissed the empty floor.
Ending the night, an era, Kristen Michelle Wilson, Ling's first (and last) frontwoman, gathered about 300 cast and crew members onstage to sing "Auld Lang Syne. Backstage, husbands, wives and children joined them. Not a single baby was crying, but all the adults were.
"We circus people always say, 'We'll see you on the road,' " Wilson said, her voice rising with emotion. "So, ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages: we'll see you on the road!
*****
After Ringling Bros. and Barnum&Bailey hogged the circus spotlight for nearly 150 years, you might think they were the big bang of it all, but not so. Stand up, and I'll tell you a story of freaks, fantasies, escapes, and destinies, where the dream of a great American capitalism is true. Excuse me, sir, please turn off your iPhone.On April 3, 1793, America's first circus
premiered in Philadelphia. The founder and star was John Bill Ricketts, an energetic Scottish rider who rode a stallion in a ring standing in the saddle with a 9-year-old boy standing on his shoulders. One of the attractions of the show is a Revolutionary War hero - a horse named Jack, once ridden by General George Washington (so the story goes), who was a diehard circus fan and had commissioned Lickety-Split to perform the horse for his show.
Soon the ragtag troupe is driving through town in horse-drawn wagons, putting on "mud shows" in canvas tents, inspired by the work of their European ancestors. Because this is America, you have to have a gimmick; and what American managers add are exotic animals: lions, tigers, bears and other gifted wildlife caught in nets along the way.
The golden age of the American circus coincided with the Gilded Age, and one Phineas Taylor Barnum (P.T. for short) was a living symbol of both: a New York City con man who called himself the "Prince of Tricksters" and began his career selling tickets to see a "mermaid" mummy of monkeys sewn onto a fish. A mummified "mermaid" with a monkey's head sewn onto a fish.
P.T. Barnum's big traveling museums, zoos, caravans, and arenas, which housed not one but three tents, and sometimes as many as seven, were used to compartmentalize the audience's attention among the wacky, fantastical performances. Along with lion tamers, clowns, and trick riders, he added a few grotesques to his repertoire: the Bearded Woman at the Human Zoo and the "Armless Spectacle." When Barnum merged with his pint-sized counterpart, J.A. Bailey, in 1881, they crowned their alliance "The Greatest Show on Earth. Show."
"KDSP" At the turn of the century, when country schools, mills, and stores were closed for "Circus Day," poor farmers and their children boarded discount trains to the nearest town center, where the tents were located. For the children, the sight of camels marching through the streets and "running away with the circus" became a dream and an option.
The latter was true for the five Ringling brothers, who were first raised by a harness maker in Iowa and later Wisconsin. after visiting the circus in 1870, they hand-sewed a ragged tent in their backyard, charging a penny admission fee, and earning enough to upgrade to cotton. by the time Barnum and Bailey returned from their six-year European tour in 1902, the Ringling Circus was already in its infancy. the Ringling Circus had become a potential usurper. The brothers capitalized on the same global gymnastics trend that revived the Olympics in 1896. Freaks and geeks are what passes for Therese; the Ringling's focus is on action-oriented fare.
When the rivals joined forces in 1918, the show was called "The Big One". They weren't bragging: in the 1920s, the Big One had 1,600 performers on 4,100 trains. Before the Great Depression, it was all fun and fantasy. It wasn't long before the talkers attracted an audience. There were attempts at modernization: entire performances based on a single theme or choreographed like complex ballets, including the 1942 Elephant Ballet, choreographed by George Balanchine with an original score by Igor Stravinsky.
In the '70s, new circuses, classic one-ringers influenced by European artistic affairs that eschewed side shows and animal acts, sowed the seeds of revival flowers: smaller operations such as the San Francisco-based Pickle Family Circus, with its collaborative structure and troupe vaudeville, and the clown-centered Big Apple Circus (which, after closing in 2016, this year announced earlier that it will return to new ownership this fall.
In 1984, a band of 20 street performers became Cirque du Soleil, led by fire-breathing, stilt-walking accordionist and high-stakes poker player Guy Laliberte. Like all '80s hair, shoulder pads, and attitude, it got big and wide, recreating a spectacle on a grand international scale, with huge tents, lavish costumes, and elaborate theater combining with awe-inspiring acrobatic skills. As the circus grew into a billion-dollar industry, the last of the Ringling Bros.' performing elephants retired to a 200-acre Florida sanctuary in 2016 due to pressure from animal rights activists and shrinking ticket sales
The Ringling Bros.' last performing elephant. The circus staged a life-size puppet revival in 1903. (Alex Tehrani) Circus performers take a bow during a show at Madison Square Garden in 1903. (Alex Tehrani) David Williamson, a.k.a. the ringleader of "Willie Whipsnade," introduces an elephant to a young audience at Madison Square Garden. (Alex Tehrani) Cirque 1903 performer Senayet Assefa Amara, "The Elastic Dislocator," captivates the audience at Madison Square Garden. (Alex Tehrani) The circus elephants of 1903 were puppets, created by the same group of puppeteers behind the Broadway play War Horse. (Alex Tehrani) Florian Blumel, a.k.a. The Bicycle Cyclone, performed at the Madison Square Garden Circus in New York in 1903. Linda Simon, author of The Greatest Show on Earth: A History of the Circus? Linda Simon,
"It's a business model they can't perpetuate." . "They held down ticket prices, but to put on an event like this, how would they feed their train cars and thousands of employees? In the lobby of Madison Square Garden, I saw two male balancers in red-and-white-striped leotards and wondered if they knew that their leotards were first worn by the 19th-century French aerial artist Jules Lothard, who coined his own name and stood up and flew through the air with great ease and without wedges. The two move from one circus classic to another in a sculptural strength as looks like toilets and their little outhouses drinking cocktails, sodas, wolfing down popcorn and candy.
The bells summoned everyone to their seats to watch the spectacular circus, 1903: the golden age of the circus, a new trip on it, also a bar balanced on their shoulders, while a woman slides in half in the middle. This lady knows how to put the fun in entertainment.
Hey, when it comes to the circus, it takes all kinds. Carl Wallenda, founder of the famous circus, mused, "Life on a tightrope." . "The rest is just waiting." For most of us, waiting is fine, as long as we get to see something worth waiting for. In a circus peanut shell, that's why the show goes on.
"The future of circus," Simon said, "is a combination of different genres, so there's dancing, acrobatics, swinging, satire, commentary, juggling, all in a different kind of intimate experience." , I would like to make a complaint. More often than not, these hip newcomers seem to abandon the symbol of the circus and its beating emotional heart: the clown. It reminds me of Yale University, where on a cloudy day this spring, students walked around the classroom with red rubber noses, oozing raw emotional outbursts. If you suffer from phobias, you're freaking out right now. Again, if you're like me and you've always wanted to say "I went to Yale," this class is more fun than skipping school.
Christopher Bayes, the head of the Yale School of Drama's physical acting department, gives his students a sound bite. "Anxiety! "There's nail biting, frowning, hunching over and curling up in a corner."
In "Anger! "20-somethings look like me on a Time Warner Cable call."
Desperation! "They longed, wailed, and prayed to heaven; some even literally cried."
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"I tried to get these people to go to the primaries, and the expression didn't filter through," said Bayes, who was childishly handsome in jeans, a gray T-shirt and metal-framed glasses. He starts with negativity. "And then we can find our way to have fun! "Party." He adds, "It's not therapy, but it can be therapy."
Fitting, because clowns embody the spirit of the circus, just as aerialists and acrobats represent the raw meat of the circus. Each infuses the other with meaning and creates a balance. Says Beyers, "After watching people fly through the air and do all sorts of stunts fighting death, clowning really humanizes things and makes us laugh in a very simple way." . "They draw people deeper and deeper into the show in a more innocent, rooted way."
While the red nose was inspired by the red horn of the yellow hound, a nose is not required. Ancient cultures from Egypt and China to Greece and the Amerindians had versions of the clown. Our modern examples include Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Carol Burnett, Steve Martin and numerous Saturday Night Live icons.
Not for nothing, President Nixon, lover of clowns, signed Proclamation 4071 on August 2, 1971, declaring the first week of August "National Clown Week". But it wasn't long before clown representation became hugely popular, thanks in part to John Wayne Gacy Jr., the killer clown in Stephen King's novel "IT," and recent reports of real-life violent clowns lurking in certain U.S. neighborhoodsBayes says, "The United States is the only place where there is this culture of clowning. . "Europe doesn't. They don't have Pozzo, Krusty, the clowns who laugh for no reason, the grotesque clowns, the scary clowns who wear clown costumes but aren't clowns, 1965 (Bruce Davidson/Magnum photo) Fritz performs an elephant juggling act at Madison Square Garden in 1939 (AP Photo/Tom Sande), 1949 (AP Photo/ Matty Zimmerman)
, which means the future of American clowning seems rather uncertain. Beyers' students won't be going to the circus, he speculated. "They're going to be ic performers, some of them; some of them will make a lot of money, some of them will struggle. I want to be an infection: the spirit that sends these beautiful students out into the world to start their own revolution in life. "He's training them to "take them down," he says, "and then we come back to a kind of frolic with something worthwhile."
*****
The morning after my swing class, I returned to Elizabeth Streb's Grand Slam Warehouse (aka Streb's Motion Mechanics Lab), where, in addition to the swing academy, she rents out warehouse space to professional courageous do-it-yourselfers. There's a girl twirling in aerial silks; men swinging between swings; and the Streb Extreme Motion Troupe, a troupe of six men and three women of equal size and strength rehearsing for the troupe's "sea show" (a whimsical extreme motion show).
They launch from trampolines, fly like synchronized missiles, and plant their entire bodies on mat after mat, uprooted and side by side. Like cartoon characters, they incredibly withstand the onslaught, jumping up and down again and again: bang, bang, bang, bang. At first, the sound of rain falling on the ground is a little nauseating, but it soon becomes an organic drumbeat, rhythmic and cool.
"Get some air, get some air!" !" shouted Strieber, 67, sitting in a metal folding chair a few feet away from the landing pad. "Yes! That's it! Be careful!
Streb ruffled her thick black punk-rock hair with her hands and adjusted her thick black-rimmed glasses. In a black suit with gold trim and pants tucked into knee-high motorcycle boots, she looks every bit the goth foreman, avant-garde artist, and intellectual godmother of the circus new wave. All of which she is, as well as a 1997 MacArthur Foundation "genius" member for her "original approach to choreography that is geared toward action and fighting gravity."
"I always tell them, 'Harder, faster, faster, higher.' "That's the mantra," says Strieber. (After a moment, she shouts, "Roll slower! "
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Streb has designed glasses of all sizes, including a series of performances during the 2012 Olympics, when her troupe used jaw-dropping London landmarks: acrobatics bungee jumping off the Millennium Bridge, along the side of the Guildhall building "walking" and dancing with ropes tied to spokes
Her wild idea was born in a tent in Rochester, New York, where Strieber grew up and made annual trips to the Temple Circus. "That was my obsession," she says. "I loved the weird stuff: the smells, the sawdust, the filth, the fact that it was in a tent. It was a magical world. I wanted to be an actor like that. I want that lifestyle. I know.
After studying dance in college (though she never took a dance class), she went to San Francisco before moving to New York, where her one-woman show evolved into a troupe of acrobats she called "action heroes," acrobats who were almost dead weight, with no nets, grotesque physical stunts that might have included ropes, cinder blocks and iron girders, or trusses and giant customized machines like spinning ladders and wheels.
Asked how her troupe evolved from the circus, Streb points to synchronized flyers of flattened bodies crashing to the floor. "We do what other circuses wouldn't do, and now they'll steal my idea, and that's us landing," she said." . "Why do circuses pretend gravity doesn't exist? Why do they think it's beautiful? You're lying!
"In a traditional circus show, you perform tricks, pose, smile, and they applaud," said aerial expert Bobby Hagelin-Taylor, a Streb coach and performer who also trains Broadway stars. "Those days are gone. One thing that attracted me to Streb and her work was that she didn't have Pitt & Circus. A week later, Strieber paced in front of an audience of all ages and races in a black suit emblazoned with the words "Pac-Man," looking both anxious and excited. A guard pumped the crowd, saying, "We encourage you to make noise! Take pictures! Film the show! Post it to social media! Get the word o