Here’s Seven Stars for the USA: That Many Circuses Are Springing Back in Spring with Safe, Doable Fare .... Southern Dates Dominate the Arrows ...

     THEY CAN'T STOP TROUPING, though New England may not know it, not with our seven one ringers favoring dates leaning westward and southward, with Texas, not a surprise, the most valued midway. Culpepper & Merriweather – or waryweather — uncorking in good old reliable Hugo, OK on March 18, then heading down into Longhorn country.  In my unscientific memory, this is the most receptive spot in all of  America for circuses from near and far.

     ALSO HEADED TO TEXAS is Circus Funtastic, coming to us, let’s have fun assuming, from a wing of the Byrd family.  They’re calling this mini sampler  “a superhero adventure.”  Wishing them plenty of super crowds to match the adventure, being sold for a charitable $5 to $15. This just might give the dormant Byrds a more viable hook into how to fly their bigger tents once again.  Add to the Texas guess list, soon to arrive, Circus Venardos, the small time charmer with a breezy mix of circus, magic and various poetic touches.

     OVER MY WAY in the State of Insanity, there is Circus Vargas, the name growing stronger and sturdier by the year, bless its hopeless addiction to the life.  From website photos of the show, I  see a classy spread of refined ground action tinted in hues of Cirque du subtle.  Animal-free all the way.  Okay, yes, I do understand.  “We don’t  have any animals, and haven’t had for about 20 to 25 years,” culture signals one of the company’s own to a media reporter, nibbling around the subject we dare not speak.

     SHOWING OFF YOUR  wokeness is damn near necessary to avoid being run off your own lot by some amateur thug running out of a drug store with legally stolen loot, and pausing to slam the beastly sins that you circus people should still be ashamed of!  No wonder, the Vargas voice, later in the interview, inserted, “We have two rescue dogs” (signal, signal). Okay, who can blame her, considering the open air asylum in which Vargas  gratefully and graciously operates. Seats are going for $28 to $70.  Heck, next time they come my way, I’m gonna go full tilt on my wallet and try the ring-curb view.

     ROYAL HANNEFORD rolling royally down Alabamy way ... While, up in red hot Georgia, the new Big One, (UniverSoul), flexing up its  funky strut and “black owned” creed for a month of soulful jazzing up the sawdust in Duluth, Ga, then settling into a mighty two month stay in Atlanta.   Tickets a friendly $25 to $40 ... But without a live band, I can’t quite call them “the Big One.” Retract that signal.     

     HECK, THERE'S EVEN something for me!  I only need ride an empty BART car to transfer to an empty bus over a bridge to San Rafael, from there to train up on the new  “smart train” (dumb, really)  to Petaluma, once the “egg basket of the year.” Drum roll!   The Zoppe Family Circus will be jumping from Colorado to California, with a first stop in the still old-fashioned egg basket,  August 25 to September 5.  They do get around, and I admire their pluck, first seeded in 1842.  Remember Cucciolo?  

     TWO BIG QUESTION MARKS:   Over at the Big Apple Circus website, this message: “We’ll See You Again Next Season”. Missing are the words “October” and “Lincoln center.” Prominently displayed at top is the word “Wallenda.”   And  I am voiding out here, stuck between Nik’s shredding dream of Gotham glory and a memory of Kenneth Feld talking up the return he keeps talking up.  Maybe by then, there will be mandatory mask implants so that a brave  new faceless world can return to the new abnormal.   It could be worse, or could it?  Keep the exotics in the barn, and tell the clowns to stick one pink nose on their face covering.  Better yet, skip the Golden State like Elon Musk is doing and tent up in Texas.

Chance Circus Reflections... from Olympian Flops to the Glory of Colleano ...

 

     RANDOM RANTING AND RUING, in no particular disorder.  May I begin by officially bashing the Bumblers-in-Chief behind this Olympian disaster (aka, farce). From the top, NBC, which shoves under or overwhelming personalities at us, from the dull man in the control booth to Iceland’s precious guess-who-I-really am gender bender, Johnny Weird.  Gosh, world, do you really need him to inform us that a number of male figure skaters are gay?  Duh?

     NOT TO SLIGHT the elegantly corrupt IOC.  Give them a gold for Site and Scheduling Stupidity. ... Founder of the games, a Frenchman, declared it was not the act of winning but that of entering the race itself that merited respect for all.  Today, some of the young contenders are berated by their coaches for falling short of the gold. Silver for Shame.  Bronze for Boooo!                           

     SIMON COWELL’S Extreme Desperation?  I bumped into his latest, a strained effort chasing the extreme sports market, which lingered too long between its Big Moments (one, truly close to death), and padded the slightest evidence of danger ahead with overwrought judges faking near-hysterical dread.  And then, running the action in slow motion!   Since when did I want to watch the cannon man in slow motion?  Since when was speed not a thrill?

     SOME OF THESE TRICKS are old circus and carny stunts.  Pardon my insensitivity in recalling one of the biggest let downs of them all, this from the “Nerveless Nocks,” whom I could not wait to see on Ringling-Barnum – lured by the image (in my mind only) of the performers jumping from the tip of one spar to another and passing each other in breathless  “mid-air exchanges.”Actually, those maneuvers were grasping and clumsy, as the Nocks clung to each other’s bodies while exchanging poles. A stunt, period, redeemed, however, when each of the Nocks came sliding down their respective spars, head first, for a terrific finish.

     WHEN DID THE END begin?  Here is the cover before me of a White Tops, featuring a photo that shows a sign “PLEASE HELP SAVE THE CIRCUS” You see some young people signing petitions spread out on a table during intermission at Circus Vargas, and you marvel at the date of the magazine: July-August 1975. May I repeat: 1975.   That early?   Yes .... It was a long time in coming, with PETA up and running, Cirque du Soleil yet to attack ...

     CRITICALLY GONE: Writer and critic Ernest Albrecht, from whose possibly last review I quote, this from his March 2020 Spectacle on line, which went dark thereafter.  Albrecht was reviewing Circus Sarasota, just before Corona came to call. He was was high on two acts, and left to pick over the rest with notes.  Samples of discontent:  “A juggling act called Get the Shoe never really got very interesting ... comes off as nothing more than sloppy juggling mixed with martial arts.”  About a labored cradle routine from Hannah Griffth,  “It might help if she could do something to break up the monotony and engage the audience, perhaps with some flirting.”  Like, say, a little Lilian Leitzel? ...  A thoughtful voice was  he who supported and favored the best in all forums, including what he called “the new American Circus,” which, sadly, was maybe still new but hardly thriving by the time of his passing.  A serious voice worth missing

     BIG APPLE ANONYMOUS:  Was there ever a more thoroughly under reviewed show that came to New York city than Nik Wallenda’s version of the still-beleaguered Big Apple Circus, this having marked its third incarnation out of a shaky bankruptcy.  What went wrong?   Early in his rocky trial date with Lincoln Center,  Nik threw a three-ring snit when ordered by his landlords  to remove posters on construction walls.  And this he turned into an ugly campaign that did nothing to enamor this particular Wallenda of the city that never sleeps, or forgets.   

     BIGGEST MYSTERY OF ALL is how many seats he filled.  If he attracted healthy crowds, Nik gets double-high marks for playing Gotham in the dark when  media attention totaled ZERO.  Not a single notice in any of the dailies. So I offer you a rare review, this one posted here as a comment, which I subsequently posted  as a real review -- by the ever-sharing Anonymous.  See if this does not strike you as smartly observing stuff. Samples:   

   "THERE ARE SOME STELLAR solo and duo acts, [but] the show is ONLY solo and duo acts apart from the wire act, which is made extremely cringe-worthy by Nik's several interruptions to show video and speak on mic to the audience ... It's all made worse by the suspicion that he is doing nothing but alienating his neighbors in Lincoln Center by his Page Six video, hollering about discrimination and unfairness." **
   
     IN YOU TUBE WE TRUST, when all else fails, with or without posters, Monte Carlo acts or “character arcs.”  You Tubing is the ultimate road to circuses then and nearly now. I stumbled into an eight minute stream of Cirque du Soleil’s 2014 Volta, and found two standout displays  – the shimmering acrobatics of a woman from her web; and the very circus-like action of some bike riders up and down ramps. Exciting! The rest?  Home made action to my eyes, even the props, or the way they were worked, looked humdrum. If this is a typical Cirque entry, I can’t see them packing the tent.  

     AUSSIE AWESOME: You Tube streamed me to the image of low wire god Con Colleano, and I linked, Yes!  And  was swept away into glorious black and white, a stream of old film first showing the Big Show trains unloading in the yards, the tents going up, and then the Great One dancing upon and somersaulting over his wire on fire.   How lucky was I once upon a superior season when Clyde Beatty Circus came to Santa Rosa, and with it, Colleano.  Such passion and thunder! I knew I was watching a true wizard of the big top.  I never got to see another Great One —  Colleano’s wife, Winnie, who arguably took the single trapeze turn to its highest summit ever.   

    THEY WERE STARS in those days!  Names known!   Hollywood wanted Con Colleano, to fill in for Rudolph Valentine following his passing.  Con was not turned on to the offer, remembers an Aussie interviewed on the feature, but stuck to his first love, The Circus. And doesn’t that give you a rare good feeling in these especially precarious times? 

     GOODBYE, SWEET KIEV: Misty memory of a cool Autumn evening in 1979,  on foot in my favorite Soviet city (such sparkling grandeur) to take in the circus.  Along the way, a handsome young fellow, earnestly inclined, discretely joined my company, striding alongside.  Why, soon it became clear.  He told  me how hard it was to buy the jacket I was wearing in his world, and then commenced a soft campaign, hoping I would understand and allow him to purchase the prize off  my back.  Politely I declined.  Gently, he continued, from other angles.   And then I reached the circus, and he reluctantly stood aside as we parted company.  I felt a genuine sadness. I can imagine him, maybe 20 years later, finding a jacket like mine in then-liberated  Kiev.  Tomorrow?  I am not so sure.

**to read the full review link  to "circus reviews" found on the right sidebar and scroll down a ways.

The Olympics That Never Were ...

UPDATE, 2.22: They're calling it "a disaster." NBC suffered 50% drop in viewers. Pissed off marque losers headed for therapy.  Birng back ABC! (moments later, from googling) Good grief, I  see that we're stuck with NBC through 2032.  Recall!  Recall!

 Nathan Chen, from quad to quad to quad

 

Anybody watching it?

I looked and deflated, all those empty seats, so sad and depressing.  The High and Mighty Americans were gutless in not boycotting the games rather than using them as a platform to bash China.  Yes, there is plenty about China to bash, but not at the Olympics, which is supposed to be an international athletic completion.  The Chinese may coerce and exploit children through Olympic training. Over here, seems that hordes of young female gymnasts are sexually exploited by their coaches.

Those who culture signal are like Kapernick "taking the knee" on his paymaster's time.  Collecting more than most people could ever hope of earning, and then using game time to  promote a fake cause before captive crowds.

Another thing, I love ice skating, but am put off by the self-precious look-at-me-and-deal-with-it Johnny Weird, a neon advertisement for the gender-less society.   When last I toiled to endure him, he was obviously pleased with himself in flaunting his LGBQT++++ credentials**  Daring the hard-working center to try figuring him out. This is not a commentator; this is a social radical making a sideshow of himself. 

Quad mania.  I did manage to watch Nathan Chen's Gold skating in replay. He is one magnificent athlete. But, it looks as if these skaters are competing to jam as many quads as they can get into a program,  which  can render the routine short on artistic contrast and mood, long on horse racing mentality. Boooring.

And NBC itself comes in for some blame.  When I got serious about watching their coverage in the past, I could never find accurate scheduling in order to know when what I wanted to watch would appear.  I hated NBC for this.

And I read this sad sad affair may pull the lowest Olympic coverage ratings in years. I was one of the no-shows.

The greedy IOC is as much to blame as anybody.  They should have postponed the games. They would have done everyone a favor.

Besides which, okay, I hold a grudge. My own sport (yes, laugh) is or was roller skating.  They came close many years ago to getting roller hockey in.  Then, the president of the IOC, Juan Samaranch, was himself an avid roller hockey player and fan. He could have made it happen but did not, the gutless coward.  Likely he was lobbied and gifted by a cunning ice lobby bribing away to keep those on wheels out.  Believer it or not, there are forms of roller competition, such as school figures and regulation (ballroom type) dance, arguably superior to how they are skated over blades. 

** Now on the Dramatist Guild website is an insanely long listing of various "genders" one can give for whomever the hell, in their protected opinion, they happen to be at the moment.  I could not believe my eyes. 

Life in Woke-Joke America. Were I now dating in any lane, I would love to have an app on my iPhone able to sense the reality of intimate candidates:  GAB -- Gender At Birth.

Revisions to My Musical, Those Ringings, Reveal Stronger Personal Feelings Confronted ..

Now posted on Amazon are some changes I made near the end of Those Ringlings: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Musical.  Deeper feelings between James A Bailey and his long-time secretary, Merritt Young, are shared. 

In the next scene, the young boy Raymond, who has tried to adopt  Al and Louse as his parents, is  now, in the wake of a midway melee, maybe close to death.  A grief-stricken Louise, deeply attached to the boy, seems unable to face Al, and her coldness devastates him. Fearing he is losing her, he pours his heart out to his closest brother Charles, feeling he has failed in selfishly depriving Louise of any offspring. Charles gives Al what perhaps none of the other brothers could. 

Are these factors based in reality?  Surely, the Bailey-Young relationship is.  The bond between the two was profound, In fact, for the year or two when Bailey was away due to chronic illness, Young, a bachelor, was with him every step of the way.  In fact, Bailey valued the loyalty of bachelors, for they came with no marital distractions.

With Raymond and Louise, this is mere speculation.  No, I do not know of a young kid like Raymond, although I know that Louise had a long time personal chauffeur to whom she willed some of her money. And there were rumors of an affair between the two.  And of course, inevitable would have been the likelihood of a young boy running away with the circus and finding comfort in the association of Louise and Al.

Those Ringlings, I believe, may now deliver its most heart-felt moments in the final scenes.

Ernest Albrecht ... February 3

I feel a  deep sadness.  Although I had never met Mr. Albrecht, I admired his voice and his dedication to what he called in his well received book, The New American Circus. And though I disagreed on the concept, I acknowledged how more valid might be his perspective in time. We have arrived, you might say, closer to the concepts he reported on and championed, or at least constructively embraced, more so than I have ever. 

I have missed his Spectacle magazine on line.  Something did not quite feel right. So many important contributors to our American circus scene have been leaving us. The Felds, who may return -- let us pray.  Johnny Pugh's Cole Bros. The Byrd's Carson and Barnes. Paul Binder's Big Apple. John Ringling North II's Kelly Miller.  The Biggerstaff's Circus Report  And now, Ernest Albrecht.

My warmest condolences to his family and friends everywhere.

Packed Houses Greet UK's Down-to-Basics CIRCUS SPECTACULAR ... Shocking Photos of Unmasked Patrons!

Ain't that Beautiful, ALL those mask-less faces! -- or did you take them off just for me, people?  I LOVE IT! Here they are opening night at Telford.  And, down, there they we are opening night in Bradford a bit back.

I feel your joy.

Gosh, have I just re-entered planet earth?. ALL THOSE SMILING FACES!  Humanity's return.  I am near tears. Look at them, real looking people, relaxed, eager, happy. 

Tis a wee lad who runs this charmer, and his name suits the cause: James Shone.  His photo won't download or I'd flash him to you.  This kid  has the makings of a bold stroke dynamo, daring to pitch this:

Join us for the Greatest Show on Earth!

Over here our obsessive "science-based" control freaks seem close to requiring that we all have mask-implants.  I think there are lost or maybe found souls I see on the streets of anonymity who may never show heir mugs again, who revel in a shared oppression,who may prefer keeping their visages to themselves.  They scurry about as if smugly connected to a new world disorder. 

The Rebirthing of Kenneth Feld? Big Show Boss Tosses Aside Adding Machine for Director's Beret (so he says)

Erase from your mind the classic Kenneth Feld image -- obsessive nerd with adding machine at desk awaiting daily phone-ins from fretting event directors reporting on the day's ticket sales.

Enter the new, artistically repentant Kenneth Feld, the Big Show's Big Picture Man. Hey, I read all about it in The New York Times. To breathlessly quote:

"My strengths are really in the creative side, coming up with big ideas, knowing how to get them done. But the day-to-day and the administration are something that I wasn’t good at, because I didn’t have the interest. I started restructuring the company around ’94, and I found out that you never stop. And I now have an outside president and chief operating officer who take care of all of the day-to-day, and we have constant communications and meetings. But I don’t get involved in the detail the way I used to."

This he explained to the Times Adam Bryant for a Corner Office Q&A profile in last last Sunday's edition. Interesting story worth a read. We might have a little more fun with it here somehwere up the road.

I am fairly shocked, after all the years reading about the Feld of Felds referring to his happiness at the desk pouring over stats and invoices, ordering up fireworks between hiring and firing. Just being a common ordinary anonymous producer in the background, humble worker bee operating a huge honey hive, if you will.

Listen on!

"As a result of that, I’ve been able to become a lot more objective in looking at the business — what’s happening today, but more importantly, what do I think is going to happen next year and in the next five years. "

He paid tribute to his president and chief operating officer, Michael Shannon, hired only a few years ago following a 10-month search, whose name appears directly under Feld's on the corporate masthead.

I know people buried out there in cyberspace, pro people in the "know"who would have me believe that this Mr. F. is a career iceberg doomed never to change course. That he lacks the infectious enthusiasm and, well heck, the warm fuzzy humanity of his late father Irvin.

I don't know. I've always seen KF as a sinister version of detail-obsessed James A. Bailey. But in his own reigning right, he is one shrewd operator who absorbs exterior trends into his own shows, something like Billy Gates imitating Steve Jobs. 'ya know, that mouse thing. He may have found a new role model in Cirque du Soleil's Guy Laliberte, who is well known for having a very strong CEO at the desk while, he, Guy, serves as "The Guide" in birthing new baby Cirques.

The biggest status quo buster to the Feld empire was that one-ring thing, a crushing occurrence under U.S. big tops which forced the Felds -- one father, three daughters in all, so far -- to regroup, rethink and reproduce, out of which emerged one brilliant solution in last year's Boom-A-Ring fling in Coney Island. I'm waiting for another Boom-A-Ding-A-Dum-Drum thing as talented and tight and taut and straight ahead and ticklingly fresh ...

A fresh metrosexual makeover for the numbers cruncher-turned-impresario? Perchance a cape? Perchance a photo sit for Maxwell Coplan?

Enter Ringling's new "Guide" -- Kenneth Feldiberte.

[photo above by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times]

 From 10.30.10

clowns at gas pumps Just what we need when we needed so much less ....Good grief, does it ever end, this riisula sla from king

Forget bog rolls and petrol, Northern Ireland is suffering from a shortage of... clowns!

The news comes from David Duffy, co-owner of Duffy's Circus, as Northern Irish circuses return to the road after the lifting of lockdown restrictions, several months of after big tops elsewhere.

"Because the circuses in England and Europe have been operational for the past six months, that huge pool of EU artists are already back at work  and we haven't been able to get visas for non-EU artists," said Duffy, who has resorted to advertising for trainee clowns without experience.

"We're trying to reach out to any folks who feel that they could give it a go," he said.

So what does it take to be a Joey?

 

You have to be really adaptable and able to think on your feet, said the circus boss.

"When you go into a circus ring and you've got 700 or 800 people looking at you, then no matter what sort of mood you're in you have to light up that circus ring.

"A clown can be the loneliest place, because you're in there on your own and you have to be able to read your audience. In a few short minutes you have to get a rapport going and interact with them and feed off them."

 

In England, meanwhile, the Circus of Horrors has adapted to the fuel crisis by having Anastasia Sawicka pull her van to a filling station with her hair - a publicity stunt that got the show's current tour into the national press.

The Horrors also called on their KillerKlown to scare panic buyers away from the pumps!

 

Circus Anonymous... Is This Who We Now Are? Where We Have Gone? ... Shadows Hidding Behind Shadows ... The Last Sparks of Lost Glories Venting in the Dark ......

Brother, can you spare a name?

The voices attached to names are mostly gone, some writers, some bloggers:  Ernest Albrecht, The Biggerstaffs, and all the pros who moved  and sold the shows, Big Cage stars like Wade Burke, Concession men like Dick Dyes, old times veterans and then up and coming clowns Steve Copeland and Ryan Combs.

The voices afraid to be known, lurking among the ruins with opinions, some spot on, others settling scores, maybe.

Once upon a better season, a number of proven troupers posted comments, maybe only once, but once. Names like John Ringling North II, John Herrriot, Paul Binder, Steve and Ryan even.  Some of the knowing still check in known then, be they James Royal, or Douglas McPherson across the Big Pond, or Don Covington, the last soul on the lot keeping us connected and informed with the links he sends our way.  

Back in 2016 -- a golden age compared to now -- there were maybe a dozen circus blogs up and running. Now, what, one?  two?  Lonely out here on the darkening blank lot, the last tent having been struck, the last wagon maybe now at the runs waiting to be pulled up to the flats for the last haul home.

Anon (Anonymous) checks in now and then.  All Anons might be the same for all I know.  I print the ones I can who park their profanity or vile at the marquee, and take what I can. 

It was always a hush-hush world among the fans, more than the pros.  And it still is.  At least, a few are able to rouse themselves to issue a thought, an irk, a jab, an insight even -- careful to stay safely out of sight. 

And barely on goes the no-show ....

WHO WILL RULE THE FUTURE -- CIRCUS OR CIRQUE? Open Reply to Anonymous ...

...  on your comment at the end of the post that follows this one --  "The Impresario Enters"

Thanks for your contribution.

I was about as awed by Cirque du Soleil in the beginning as you are now.  It’s future will be most interesting to follow.  Will the public, already suggested, tire of the artsy allusions to dance and theatre?  Perhaps they will not, as long as the show gives them a sufficient number of A grade World class acts.

In the big picture of circus performance  history, I see our having lived through five epochs:

1. 1770: The one ring circus as invented by Philip Astley in England.
2. 1881: The three ring circus of Barnum & Bailey in America.
3. 1919: The Russian one-ring circus elevated into a quasi-ballet, without ballet, which would significantly influence what came about from Cirque du Soliel, whose founding artistic director acknowledged that much.
    4. 1938: John Ringling North’s brilliant transformation of the three ring circus with unified costume design and interlocking production numbers.
    5. 1984: Cirque du Soleil’s transformation of the one ring circus into a new kind of  border line circus. There can be no doubt its impact on public perceptions

Paul Binder, in my view, upgraded the art and showmanship of the one ring format – as had Louis Stern and Irving J. Polack before him in the mid-thirties with their Polack Bros. Circus. A pity Paul is gone.

Irvin Feld, you might argue (not I, exactly) glorified the format of John Ringling North, to which he was slavishly devoted.  I believe his son Kenneth has been  more inventive.  Sometimes, perhaps too much for his own good.

Will true circus (animals, acrobats, clowns) fade out completely?.  I doubt it.  Will they ever make a comeback? For that to happen, I believe we would need a big spectacular statement from the likes of a Kenneth Feld with vast resources, combined with a public so fed up  with woke culture, that going to a traditional big top will be one way of rediscovering and reclaiming lost traditions of  enduring value.  This could very well happen, but it might not be during our time. 

Wait to see what the Feld of Felds does, if he follows through on his promise to revive Ringling.