Classical Circus

Throughout the Ages

The modern circus was invented in England by Philip Astley, and from its inception the core of the circus Performance had been equestrian acts interspersed With acrobatic, balancing and juggling acts.

Contrary to popular belief, the circus as we know it did not originate in Ancient Rome, although several of the components that are part of a circus performance (tumbling, juggling, rope-dancing, for instance) can trace their roots back more than two thousand years. Join us as we explore the history of classical circus throughout the ages.

Modern Circus

An English Invention

The modern circus was invented in England by Philip Astley (1742-1814), a former Sergeant Major turned showman. The son of a cabinetmaker and veneer cutter, Astley had served during the Seven-Year War (the French and Indian War) in Colonel Eliott's Fifteenth Light Dragoon Regiment, where he displayed an outstanding talent as a horse trainer. Upon his discharge, Astley chose to imitate the trick-riders who exhibited with increasing success all over Europe.

Jacob Bates, an English equestrian based in the German States who performed as far as Russia (1764-65) and America (1772-73), was the first of these new showmen to make his mark. Bates' emulators, Price, Johnson, Balp, Coningham, Faulkes, "Old" Sampson and many others, had become fixtures of London's pleasure gardens and inspired Philip Astley.

In 1768, Astley settled in London and opened a riding-school near Westminster Bridge, where he taught in the morning and performed his "feats of horsemanship" in the afternoon. The place featured a circular arena that Astley called circle, or circus, which would later be known as the ring. The circus ring however was not Astley's invention; it had been devised earlier by trick-riders. Beside allowing the audience to keep the riders in sight during their performance (not an easy task when they dashed back and forth in open fields at full gallop), the ring also proved ideal, through the generating of centrifugal force, in helping riders keep their balance while they stood on the back of their galloping horses. Astley's original ring was about 62 feet in diameter. This diameter would be eventually settled at 42 feet, which has since become the international standard for all circus rings.

The Circus Is Born

Recipe For Success

By 1770, Astley's considerable success as a performer had outshone his fame as a teacher, and after two seasons in London he needed to bring some novelty to his performances. He hired acrobats, rope-dancers and jugglers, and interspersed their acts between his equestrian displays. Another addition to the show was a character borrowed from the Elizabethan theater, the clown, who filled the pauses between acts with parodies of juggling, tumbling, rope-dancing, and even trick-riding.

In 1782, Astley opened Paris' first circus, the Amphitheater Anglois. That same year he met his first competition in the person of the equestrian Charles Hughes (1747-1797), a former member of his company. In association with Charles Dibdin, a well-known author of pantomimes, Hughes had opened a rival Amphitheater and riding school in London. Dibdin named it Royal Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic Academy the first element of this rather grandiose title was to be adopted as a generic name for the new form of entertainment: Circus.

In 1793, Hughes introduced the circus to the Court of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg, Russia. That same year, one of Hughes' pupils, the British equestrian John Bill Ricketts (?-1800), opened the first circus in the United States in Philadelphia. In 1797, Ricketts also established the first Canadian circus in Montreal. His only competition in America, the British equestrian Philip Lailson (who came to the U.S. in 1795), introduced the circus to Mexico in 1802.

Circus performances were originally given in circus buildings. Although at first these were often temporary wooden structures, every major European city soon boasted at least one permanent circus, whose architecture could compete with the most flamboyant theaters. Such buildings were also erected in the New World's largest cities: New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, Mexico, etc. Although in Europe, buildings were to remain the choice setting for circus performances well into the twentieth century, the circus was to adopt a different format in the United States.

Evolution Of The Circus Performance

The New Arts

The U.S.A. was a new, developing country with few cities important enough to sustain long-term resident circuses. Furthermore, in frontier America, settlers were still on the move, establishing new communities in a land in constant expansion. To meet their public, showmen had little choice but to travel light and fast. In 1825 Joshuah Purdy Brown (1802?-1834) was the first circus entrepreneur to replace the usual wooden construction with a full canvas tent, a system that became commonplace by the mid-1830's.

J. Purdy Brown came from the region of Somers, New York, where a cattle dealer named Hachaliah Bailey (1775-1845) had purchased a young African elephant that he exhibited over the country with great success. Soon the addition of other exotic animals led to the creation of a bona-fide traveling menagerie, and Bailey's increasing prosperity convinced other farmers from the Somers' area to go into the traveling menagerie business — to which some added circus performances. In 1835, a group of 135 enterprising farmers and menagerie owners, most of them from the vicinity of Somers, joined forces in creating the Zoological Institute, a trust which controlled thirteen menageries and three affiliated circuses, thus cornering the country's traveling circus and menagerie business.

Therefore, the American circus had found its own specificity: It was a traveling tent show coupled with a menagerie, and run by businessmen — as opposed to European circuses, which for the most part remained under the control of performing families. In 1871, former museum promoter and impresario Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-1891), in association with circus entrepreneur William Cameron Coup (1837-1895), launched the P. T. Barnum's Museum, Menagerie & Circus, a traveling combination of which the "museum" part was an exhibition of animal and human oddities, soon to become an integral part of the American circus known as the Side-Show. In 1872, Coup devised a system of daily transportation by rail for their circus. Another of Coup's innovations of that year was the addition of a second ring. The circus had become by far the most popular form of entertainment in America, and Barnum and Coup's enterprise was America's leading circus.

Always the businessman, Coup resolved to increase the capacity of their Big Top. Due to structural limitations, this could only be done effectively by increasing the tent's length, which resulted in hampering the view of a large fraction of the audience. The addition of a second ring, then a third (1881) and, later, up to seven rings and stages solved the problem physically if not artistically (many critics argue that it changed the focus of the show to emphasize spectacle over artistry), and it became another unique feature of the American circus.

Circus Conquers The World

Traverling Menagrie

As the circus was essentially a visual performing art, and therefore unfettered by language barriers, early circus companies embarked on extensive international tours. In 1836, the British equestrian Thomas Cooke went to the United States and, upon his return to England in 1840, brought with him the American travelling circus tent.

This was to ease the task of a group of European circus pioneers consumed by worldwide ambitions. The most remarkable of these early touring companies was managed by the Italian equestrian Giuseppe Chiarini (1823-1897). In 1853, Chiarini left Europe for Cuba, established a circus in Havana, then went to the U.S., crossed the Pacific, and landed in Japan in 1855. In 1864, Chiarini settled in Mexico, from which he toured Chile and Argentina, before returning to Europe in 1869. In 1874 he went to China and then sailed to Brazil. In 1878 the company embarked on a tour of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Singapore, Java, Siam, India, and South Africa. And so it went, until the death of the intrepid Italian manager in Guatemala in 1897. The French equestrian Louis Soullier (1813-1888), who managed Vienna's Circus at the Prater, toured the Balkans, settled for a time in Turkey, and then continued to China, where he introduced the circus in 1854.

When he returned to Europe in 1866, he brought with him Chinese acrobats who in turn introduced traditional Chinese acts such as perch-pole balancing, diabolo-juggling, plate-spinning, hoop-diving, etc., to Western audiences. Another French equestrian, Jacques Tourniaire (1772-1829), went to Russia in 1816, where he definitely established the circus as a performing art. After his death, his sons Benoit and Franois followed in his footstep; they toured extensively in Siberia, and traveled to India, China, and America.

This frenzy of travel caused the circus to be "global" long before the word became fashionable, and traditional circus dynasties to experience some confusion as regards to their national identities. The German equestrian Carl Magnus Hinné (1819-1890) established circuses in Frankfurt, Warsaw, Copenhagen, and eventually, in 1868, in St. Petersburg and Moscow, where he was later succeeded by his Italian brother-in-law, Gaetano Ciniselli (1815-1881). Thus German and Italian circus names like Hinné and Ciniselli became associated with Russia. The French Gautier family is known as a Scandinavian circus dynasty; some of the German Schumanns became a household name in Denmark, although the "Danish" Schumanns are Swedish; the first "French" circus dynasty was founded by an Italian, Antonio Franconi; and so it goes...

European circus companies had ventured into new territories because this could be financially rewarding — a potentiality that was not lost on a handful of American circus entrepreneurs. Before entering a partnership with P. T. Barnum in 1881, James Anthony Bailey (1847-1906) had embarked his Cooper & Bailey Circus on a trip to Honolulu, the Fiji Islands, Tasmania, the Dutch East Indies, Australia, New Zealand, and South America, which lasted from 1876 to 1878. After Barnum's death, Bailey took their Barnum & Bailey "Greatest Show On Earth" on an extensive European tour from 1897 to 1902. Bewildered Europeans discovered P. T. Barnum's gargantuan vision of a circus which traveled nightly by special trains, and set up and tore down every day with amazing efficiency immense canvas tents that housed an amalgam of circus, zoological exhibition and freak-show. If the three-ring format and the sideshow met only with middling enthusiasm, European circus owners were impressed by Barnum & Bailey's touring techniques, and menagerie owners whose business was fading at the time were quick to see the advantage of adding a traveling circus to their zoological exhibitions. Thus the tented circus and menagerie developed in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century.

When Bailey returned to the U.S. in 1902, he found his old market under the control of a serious competitor, the giant circus conglomerate created by the Ringling Brothers, Al (1832-1916), Otto (1837-1911), Alf T. (1863-1919), Charles (1864-1926), and John (1866-1936). One year after Bailey's death in 1906, the Ringlings acquired Barnum & Bailey, which they combined with their own circus in 1919 under the title, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows.

In Europe, the traveling circus and menagerie reached its peak between World War I and II, especially in Germany where the flamboyant traveling enterprises of Krone, Sarrasani, and Hagenbeck dominated the European market. Yet in large cities circus performances were still presented in buildings: Krone had its own circus building in Munich, Sarrasani in Dresden, Hagenbeck in Stellingen — and Paris alone maintained four permanent circuses. This of course had created a demanding audience (in cities at least) who had grown accustomed to a fair level of comfort and production values; and while in the U.S. the tenting techniques developed by W. C. Coup would remain practically unchanged for over a century, German and Italian tent makers, and later French, constantly developed new systems for circus tents and seating, which eventually made some European traveling circuses nearly as comfortable and production efficient as any permanent building.

American Traveling Circus

Portable Tents And Side-shows

Changes did not occur only in the commercial and physical aspects of the circus. The performance had consistently evolved since Astley and was undergoing fundamental changes by the turn of the twentieth century. From its inception, the core of the circus performance had been equestrian acts (trick riding, bareback acrobatics, dressage or "High School," presentation of horses "at liberty," and even comedy on horseback), interspersed with acrobatic, balancc ing and juggling acts. Dibdin and Hughes had added to this original fare the pantomime, a dramatic presentation which traditionally ended the performance, and involved a good amount of tumbling, clowning (not necessarily mute) and equestrian displays.

It often illustrated famous battles which, true to Astley's spirit, gave equestrian performers a good opportunity to demonstrate "the different cuts and guards as in real action" or "a general engagement, sword in hand, with the different postures of offence, for the safety of man and horse . . ." [From an old Astley's handbill]. Pantomimes remained extremely successful during the nineteenth century, and survived under various forms well into the twentieth: The last notable circus pantomime was a spectacular adaptation of Lewis Wallace's Ben Hur that the French circus Gruss (then known as Grand Cirque de France) toured for several years in the 1960's.

Although equestrians, male and female, were still the true stars of the circus, acrobats began getting real attention toward the middle of the nineteenth century. Not surprisingly it started with acrobats on horseback, especially Americans — such as John H. Glenroy, who accomplished the first somersault on horseback in 1846. "Floor" acrobats were also quick to make their mark. The best of them were often clowns. At first, circus clowns were essentially skilled parodists who might talk, sing, ride a horse, juggle, present trained animals, do balancing acts, or tumble. In the first half of the nineteenth century an English clown, Little Wheal, became famous for regularly performing one hundred consecutive somersaults in tempo - quite a feat then as now!

Rope-dancers had been the fairgrounds' undisputed stars during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and were among the first acrobats to appear in the circus ring. There, they developed an adaptation of their art that would eventually become one of the circus' prized attractions, the trapeze. They began by swinging on, and hanging from, a slack rope. Eventually a bar was added in the middle while the half ropes on each side moved toward a vertical position - and so the trapeze was born. In 1859 a French gymnast, Jules Léotard (1838-1870), presented at Paris' Cirque Napoléon (today Cirque d'Hiver) an act titled "La Course aux Trapèzes" in which he jumped from one trapeze to another; he had invented the flying trapeze, and he became the toast of Europe — as much for his act as for the form-fitting costume he originated, and which is still used today by acrobats and dancers, the leotard.

By the end of the nineteenth century railways and automobiles had begun to replace horses and, although major European circuses were still operated by equestrian families, equestrian displays were losing their supremacy to trainers of exotic animals (especially lions and tigers), acrobats, aerialists, jugglers and clowns. While some trained exotic animals had appeared early in circus history (at Paris' Cirque Olympique, around 1812, the Franconis presented Baba, the first trained elephant), it was the combination of circus and menagerie in Europe that triggered the vogue of animal presentations, which were developed in large part in Germany by the Hagenbecks, the world's foremost importers and dealers of wild animals. Another significant transformation factor was a renewed interest in gymnastics and physical activities (which led to the resurrection of the Olympic Games in 1896) at a time when, practically, gymnasts could only be seen at the circus.

Decline Of The Equestrian Circus

Rise Of Sensational Circus

After World War I the traditional equestrian circus was just a memory, and its legendary stars — Andrew Ducrow, Laurent Franconi, François Baucher, Ernest Renz, Oscar Carré, Albert Schumann, among others — had been replaced by the likes of triple-somersaulter Alfredo Codona on the flying trapeze, Con Colleano dancing on the tight-wire, juggling legend Enrico Rastelli, and starr clowns such as Franois, Paolo & Albert Fratellini, Grock (Adrian Wettach), and Charlie Rivels.

If, in the Western world, many circus performers resisted change, at least a handful of producers tried to shake up the shows in which they appeared by modernizing lighting, musical accompaniment, staging, etc.: John Ringling North in the U.S., Bertram Mills and his sons, Cyril and Bernard, in England, Jérôme Medrano in Paris - until the Russian example finally prevailed. In 1974 Annie Fratellini (heiress to the famous clowning dynasty) and Alexis Gruss, Jr. (heir to the last French equestrian dynasty) created in Paris the first two western circus schools.

Both came replete with a performing arm, a circus where creativity was paramount, albeit in both cases within a traditional frame (Alexis Gruss called his circus "Le Cirque à l'Ancienne," The Old Time Circus).

This came not coincidentally at a time when European intellectuals, mostly French, were fretting over the decline of the circus as a performing art. In 1975 Prince Rainier of Monaco (a long time circus enthusiast) created the International Circus Festival of Monte-Carlo, whose Gold and Silver Clown awards have become to the circus world what the Oscar is to the movie industry. It was followed in 1977 by Paris' "Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain" (World Festival of the Circus of Tomorrow) created to showcase and promote the new generation of circus performers, mostly trained in circus schools.

The Gruss/Fratellini model stimulated other artists. In 1977 Paul Binder and Michael Christensen, who had performed as jugglers with Fratellini, created the New York School for Circus Arts and its performing branch, the Big Apple Circus, which re-introduced the one-ring circus to America. That same year, Bernhard Paul and André Heller created Circus Roncalli in Germany, restoring the lost flamboyance of the German circus of yore. In Montreal, Canada, Guy Caron founded the École Nationale de Cirque (National Circus School) in 1980, and in 1984, Guy Laliberét created the very innovative Cirque du Soleil, with Caron as its first Artistic Director. All were outsiders, whose enterprises, each in its own way, were highly creative shows that gave a much-needed boost to the circus (and, for Cirque du Soleil, a drastically different image). They also had a major influence in the development of a "new circus" movement, which redefined the circus as a performing art, and in changing the artistic and commercial attitude of some of the more traditional circuses.

In 1985, the French government created the "Centre National des Arts du Cirque," a professional circus college on the Russian model. Other schools, all private and with various degrees of professionalism, were created in England, Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Australia, Brazil and the U.S. among others, adding to the circus schools already existing in the former Eastern Bloc.

Although China has a 2000-year-old acrobatic theater tradition of its own, its many acrobatic troupes similarly developed new training methods after the Communist revolution, and found themselves welcome participants in the circus renaissance drive.

Director Valentin Gneushev (perhaps the most influential director in the contemporary circus) opened his own studio of creation in post-communist Moscow, while others opened specialized schools, like André Simard's aerial act studio, Les Gens d'R, in Canada.

This surge of teaching activity also led to the creation of a multitude of avant-garde and experimental circus companies, especially in England, France, Germany, Australia and Canada (some of them extremely successful, such as the French "heavy-metal" circus Archaos), as well as to a recent revival of the old variety theater, especially in Germany. At the dawn of the twenty-first century the circus, which by essence has always been a highly adaptable performing art, knows an extraordinary renaissance.