Welcome to Circus Week!
This week’s theme is the circus, and boy are circuses full of interesting stuff to look at! Circuses have been popular since the way old days, when people didn’t take photos of the circus, but instead painstakingly painted the horses and acrobats with a bunch of tiny little dots of paint. Actually, the only guy who did that (that anyone cares about) was a French chap named Georges Seurat. One of his most famous paintings is of the circus:
And actually, that painting is super old – from 1890 (more than a hundred years ago!) but the earliest circuses happened in the late 1700s (more than TWO hundred years ago!!) and started out as just being horse shows – where people rode and did tricks on horses.
I guess the appetite for exciting entertainment has really ramped up since then, because now circuses have all kinds of amazing acts.
There are horse acts, of course:
But there are also acrobats. Acrobats can do all kinds of tricky things with their bodies – jumping, balancing, tumbling – and make it all look so easy. Some acrobats are all about riding nine to a bicycle, waving their paper fans in the air (for balance, obvs):
Other acrobats are all about dressing in pleather and hanging five to swing:
[The swing-hangers are a special subset of acrobats called trapeze artists. Believe it or not, if you’d like to take trapeze lessons, you can! I once learned how to do a flip and a catch on the trapeze at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore for just $60. If you’re interested, it’s super fun. There might be a trapeze school near you (seriously – I was just going to list the ones I know in NY, Baltimore and DC, but it turns out if you google “Trapeze School” and the name of a city near you, they’ll probably have one).]
And, of course, some acrobats are just into the simple, but elegant, single-handed walkover cartwheel:
And then there are those acrobats who just want it all, who want to outdo everybody, those fourteen-to-a-bike showoffs who everybody else at the circus hates for stealing the limelight:
There are also tightrope walkers:
And tightrope walkers on bikes:
A lot of circuses have animals acts – elephants who sit politely behind safari ladies:
Or tigers who sit politely under other flying tigers:
And, of course, no circus is complete without clowns (ALERT: if you are scared of clowns like my friend Carol is, then DON’T LOOK AT THE NEXT PICTURE!)
Clowns are actually the backbone of the circus – the ones who keep things moving along while the other performers are getting into their pleather or looking for their paper fans. They’re the ones who help us relax between all of those other high-anxiety death-defying acts. And as it turns out, being a clown isn’t so easy:
Actually, being a circus isn’t so easy. When you stop and think about it and start looking around, you realize that all of that stuff around you had to come from somewhere – the tent, the rings, the trapezes, the tightropes, the elephants, the tigers, the horses, the people! Most circuses travel around, which means that someone has to move all of that. Well, here’s a little behind-the-scenes look at taking down and putting up a circus tent. Keep in mind that this is for Cirque de Soleil, which only has people performers, so they don’t have to deal with transporting elephants.
Holy cow is that a lot of work!
If all of this has convinced you that you’d like to join the circus, I put together a Pinterest board with some fun-looking (but not tested) circus-related crafts: HERE IT IS. And HERE is a great site on activities you can learn to become your own circus, including juggling and walking a tightrope! Post pictures of your clown faces, tricks, juggling feats, or acrobatics in the comments below!
If you don’t want to actually do anything circus-related, then here are some books about the circus to check out:
And one last thing: if you want to see an interesting documentary (parents) about trying to become a cast member of the Cirque de Soleil, check out this 45-minute program. Fascinating to see just how specialized circus talent is.
OKAY. That’s all I’ve got for you for now. It should be enough! If you come across any fun circus-related stuff over the next week, please feel free to post it here in the comments! And remember: we choose one commenter a week to award the EXPERT TROPHY to – you get a downloadable coloring page with your trophy on it, along with an archival print of this week’s auction item in the mail! Go to it!