Show's next Lincoln Center annual promises a more down-to-earth party. Best of all, I see doggies on the show's new poster. Do you? Are the current owners, whomever they are, daring to be a touch more authentic again? Golly molly, wonder of wonders, it looks like a circus is coming! Best of all, it still calls itself a circus!
Pardon my unintended sarcasm, but I am looking to circus to stave off the end of human civilization, as more and more, the digital world is competing to replace it with a nightmare alternate universe composed of what are called called "bots." I finally got around to googling out what those ugly four letters spell. Oh, you already know? ROBOTS. I am always, it seems, a few upgrades behind the latest gizmo. More and more, these clever invaders are making more humans feel less connected, needed, valued. More and more, we are coming closer to the inevitable showdown between us and them. I'd love to see a sci-fi flick in which the bot bastards go to war with each other and blow themselves up into impotent digital dinosaurs imploding over and onto each other. Crash and collapse!
Over in San Franfreako, here in the State of Insanity across the polluted bay, the new driver-less taxis are getting hissed at and attacked, smashed and left feeble, possibly by the Uber and Lyft drivers they are designed to render obsolete. How sorry I feel for those drivers. When I talk to them, I can feel the hurt in their voices, the void in their hearts. Many of them value what they are doing. And I recall Chinese premiere, Xie issuing an order to a few regions: If humans can do what your robots are doing, hire the humans. "Hire humans." How revolutionary. A preview of what may have to come?
Which, for me, makes real circus as opposed to the human and bots variety, a welcome retreat to the real.
The mere sight of some jumpy dogs getting to perform with humans tells me that, gradually, the public may come to see what has been lost under our tents in the name of progress. And then maybe a horse act, and then, maybe some riders, and then, maybe a pig down a slide. One step backward at a time.
There are still animals, plenty of them, in the Russian shows, and in many European shows too. And over here, among a few heroic hold outs, there is the Zoppe Family. As I have previously noted, the Zoppes play to a more sophisticated clientele down in the Redwood city main library parking lot, in the the heart of Silicon Valley.
Whatever happened to Jenny Vidbel? She deserves an apologetic encore. Bring back her magical menagerie, and let the circus be circus again!
No comments:
Post a Comment