Thurs. Tweets: John Ringling North II Drops One "P" Word for Another ... Big Apple Circus Acts to Abdu Dhabi

Give the man spiffy high marks for flexing his new circus muscles. Senior big top graduate, John Ringling North II, now in his fourth season operating, shepherding, creating, nurturing and, yes, "producing" Kelly-Miller Circus, is now calling himself just that -- a PRODUCER. Okay to be p-precisely exact, the word now put into ink [actually, last year, I belatedly discover after posting this] is "produced," as in, on the front cover of the new program magazine, words that spell out "Owned and produced" by him, p-period. Up 'till 2009, blame it on a legal challenge from the House of Feld to the House of Ringling-North over trademark issues, resulting in Mr. North agreeing not to use the P word at all. They were tossed a p-alternative: "proprietor," which made Kelly-Miller's neophyte proprietor look more like a country vendor of tractors, bale rings, and coffins.

Congrats, producer North! ... I'm not sure whether dueling legal departments compromised, or if on his own daring-do, North decided to. heck, let the world know it is he who is producing Kelly Miller. And evidently feeling p-professional. I think his dad, Henry, would be p-proud as p-punch, cause Henry's son grew up charmed by visions of his one day taking the Ringling reigns. Even his Uncle John in a program made direct references to such a plan in the works. Then came the p-persuasive Irvin Feld, and the rest was history.

Further advancing a new-found confidence, credit all the mud through which he's triumphantly trudged, on the inside cover of this year's program magazine, North the Sequel issues a pugnaciously pithy preamble to producing pride:

"Welcome to America's One Ring Wonder! This Kelly Miller performance is the result of a team effort. After you have seen it, I hope you will agree that we are the A team." ... Go, team, go!

Big Apple Circus testing foreign markets? They're press dept., no, make that the Abu Dhabi Press Office, in a release, making a big to-do about the show's first middle east appearance, to happen at Abdu Dhabi City in the United Arab Emirates this summer in connection with a family festival. Package will feature, according to a general release, "a stellar cast of international stars from Europe and Russia." Don Covington tells me this will not be the stateside show now on tour, but a second unit. Yet to be known: whether it will be a complete show or a sampler of world circus. Why, oh why, does absolutely nothing about this mid- east invasion jump out at me from their website? ... Meanwhile, in BAC land, it feels like they're floating uneasily in transitional limbo, waiting to see what the new man artfully in charge, Guillaume Dufresnoy, will reap. The names Binder and Christensen still stand tall near the top of the masthead, (topped only by exec director Gary Dunning) and they're not being called "Emeritus" anything. The key I think is to watch what happens to Grandma, she recently playing for a Shrine temple ... A house cleaning war in the works??

Big Top Bits: Spain's famed lion trainer, Angel Cristo, dead on May 7 at 65 of a heart attack in Madrid. Married to a showgirl, Cristo's stylish life was the center of gossip. And here comes the voice of another icon, still thankfully with us: "He was a great artist and one of the best tamers across Europe," said Cristina Segura, a Spanish trapeze artist known as Pinito del Oro. "I met him at the circus when he was eight years old. Ángel was hanging around with tigers even then." Gave me a little thrill when Pinito's name appeared! Does anybody have her phone number, twit-link, tweeter-code? I'd love to call her. She was to me the Mystic Goddess of surreal aerial thrillers ... Sarasota's decades-old Sailor Circus, fondly known as "The Greatest Little Show on Earth, strikes its tent for a metal roof, promised to simulate in design billowing canvas. For sure, they are going against the wind ...

Sunday Out of the Past: Snapshots From a China Luckily Shared ...

This first appeared on May 11, 2010











How do you describe a land as vast and varied as China? The contrasts are so great as to leave you stranded, straining for a hook, a theme, an easy summing up. There are lovely green farms so painterly perfect. Miles and miles of earth and river darkened by industrial indifference. Brilliant new architecture under the Shanghai sun. Faceless old stone high-rise apartment buildings one after another after another that rise and fall at artless intervals with depressing repetition out the window of a passing train. Are they the grim handiwork of communism? Or merely another variation on the human condition stacked in concrete shelves? If there is toxic waste here, and there appears to be plenty, yet this, "the oldest continuous major world civilization" according to the U.S. State Department, is now investing more money in green technology than the United States. And, indeed, is predicted by the experts to surprass the U.S. as the world leader within fifty to one hundred years. Do not take your eyes off China.

Shanghai is the promised land here; just as my friend Boyi Yuan had described it: Look one way, old city; look the other, new city. There I am, a few photos up, in front of a new skyscraper that took my breath and heart away, a radiant sliver of soft blue floating skyward. Love at first sight. In my book of constructed wonders on planet earth, there is the Gaudi cathedral in Barcelona, the Frank Gehry Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and now this transcendent marvel in Shanghai. And take a look at the cosmetics store above, it felt like floating through -- what? I groped for words. Suggested Boyi, "crystal." The photo hardly captures the sparkle. It makes Macy's San Francisco look rather average. High sophistication is on the rise in the Middle Kingdom.


You'll discover small things of large significance, like the subway above, without the imprisoning doors between cars, granting a wonderful sense of open-ended freedom from one to the next. (try enlarging the photo on your monitor to get the full impact.) Safe city, too. Maybe something to be said for social harmony? I was shocked to discover, however, under a crumpled blanket in a doorway, an actual homeless person. I am told the country is rife with a homeless population reaching into the millions, although millions more have been in recent years lifted out of poverty.


Taxi rides are as exciting as carnival rides, the way these fearless cabbies dart in and out and around all manner of humanity on foot or wheel at schizophrenic intersections. Must be in their DNA. Dining is a delight, the food so fresh and rich, and more than enough for two people for as little as from six to ten dollars! So good that only once did I defect to an American option, and only for the novelty -- fries and a chicken burger at MacDonald’s -- very good facsimile.

With Boyi, who launched the idea of our taking this trip over a year ago, every footstep is a photo op. He is a sort of camera-ready actor, improvising as he goes: This was surely the two most photographed weeks of my life ever.





Here we are at the ERA Intersection of Time in Shanghai, ready to take in our first of three acrobatic shows. This production cast the artists in a circular setting, unlike most Chinese troupes that perform on a stage. In its surreal reach, spiritually akin to the Cavalia horse show, I found it fairly mesmerizing. Indeed, it was more a creative manifestation of the Cirque du Soleil way than an outright imitation. But Boyi was left unmoved by a venture evidently too artistically heavy for his tastes, much favoring the next two shows we saw -- one, the totally unimaginative, very old fashioned Charming Shanghai Acrobatic Show in a rundown theatre (he thought the performers did more with their routines); the other, in Beijing, a fantastically compelling performance of primal exotic energy, tautly paced, called the Flying Acrobatics Show. We agreed that it was the best of the three. What a marvelous original score by Guo Feng, and what stunning production values. More about this in a future post.


As was our custom, we paid for the cheapest tickets to see the Flying Acrobatics Show, and landed VIP seats!


Riding overnight rails: The trains we rode were pleasantly oldish and a little folksy (except for the sleek semi-high speed D32 from Shanghai to Beijing). Following widespread advice, we took snacks aboard and avoided the diner, a big disappointment for me because I love this aspect of rail journeys. A relaxed sense of community prevailed throughout the train. Generally, I found the Chinese people to be very warm and unpretentious. Inside a coach car ahead, I glimpsed the entire aisle crowded with people who had paid to stand and maintained their respective positions with polite decorum. Something about that scene touched me.


In our four person sleeper from Guangzhou (Canton) to Shanghai, remarkably, everybody easily settled into respecting each others' space, and you can meet interesting people. For all I knew, two of these guys (Boyi is second from right) could have been college students.

Such natural camaraderie unfolded among us. They wondered if I knew the song "Hotel California." I tried humming it, and failed, a failed hippie. As it turned out, these guys were all businessmen returning from the Canton Fair! Wong King, left, manages a factory; "Eagle" finds factory labor for outside businessmen; and Jordan, who dreams of visiting America, is a Sales Rep for Shanghai Jiatai Machinery & Electrical Equipment Co. What a difference the lack of a suit and tie can make.


Here we are on train T15, Beijing to Guangzhou, co-inventors of a new board game called Can't Stop Shopping, playing it for the very fist time! So you could say we opened in China.


A poetic highlight of our journey was ending up, back in time, at Boyi's old house in the farming village where he was raised outside Taishan in the Guangdong province. To get there, we rode this bounce-happy two seater box powered by a motor bike, then continued on via a serene walk from the village where Boyi went to school -- now a cow barn -- to his own village at the grand arch under which, several photos below, he exultingly stands. So soft and lyrical a place and a walk, as if time stood still. Now and then, a figure quietly at work, along a stream, through a field unchanged. And how reassuring a contrast to other parts of the country apparently molested by the expedient forces of modern production.











Boyi's house, built by his great great grandfather. He hoped to find some toys he had left behind in a desk drawer when his family immigrated to New York in 1998. They were still there! He took most of them back to the states. And here are some of his neighbors stepping in for a visit. In all the time I was in China, I never felt like I were looking at the Chinese people, never felt overwhelmed by another ethnicity. With Boyi, I felt more like I was one with them, even though I do not speak their language.


A land both ancient and modern at the same time ...








Of the hundreds of photos snapped by our respective cameras, these are a few of my favorites.


5.11.10

Photos and Words ... In and Out ...

Some recent images that charmed my fancy, or fancied my charm, along with whatever random musings muse up my mind ...


From the new Kelly-Miller program magazine. I was very saddened to learn on Steve and Ryan's blog of Steve taking a very nasty fall. What a trouper this guy is, still going on with the show. I wish you a speedy recover, Steve. And please, insert a touch of caution into your domestic flights of fancy ...


Here's a photo, circa 1938, I saw of JRN in his bustling prime. Found it in Wikipedia, surely the finest on-line source for circus history. Heck, it was this website who gave the world likely the fullest account of the life of the great Barbette. BTW, you Texans, Sir Harry at the forefront, may know that Mr. B. hails from Rock Round -- or is it Round Rock? I know I got it wrong in my book Behind the Big Top.


The man you can thank for my being here this very moment. The man you can thank or blame for my open-ended mouth. The man possibly responsible for all the books I wrote and luckily got published. The man who published me in my precious fourteenth year: Walt Hohenadel, then editor of the White Tops. Never had seen what he looked like until I came across this shot in an old Cole Bros. Circus program. It was he, whether he intended to or not, who gave me permission, merely by publishing intact my first review, to tell it exactly as I found it.


Jack Ryan forwarded me this wonderful picture. Nice to see two trapeze titans (easy alliteration, I know) sharing a warm moment. Whatever friction there may have been, I like to think they have come to appreciate each other. Go Tito! Smile, Miguel!


Grandma plays the Shrine! Yes, Barry Lubin recently accepted a Shrine date. Not sure what that means. I was touched, although maybe his security at Big Apple Circus is a bit wobbly, and he's opening up new options. Why not a triumphal return to Ringling-Barnum, from whence he came? I might pay for a better seat to enjoy Grandma, double the tariff if he promises to sing in the rain ...


Scene from Chimelong Circus. This is one show Boyi and I did not get to in China, likely the most un-Chinese of all the circuses there. As tempting as it is, I refuse to offer a suggested review because you've got to see these things in person from first blast to final finale to see how the acts roll. It does impress, okay, theoretically ...

5/16/10

Sunday Morning From Baraboo: New Clown Museum to Open; Tim Tegge Offers Affordable Videos -- Ringling '55 TV Christmas Special Reviewed ...

This sweet sleepy town where the Ringling Bros. launched their legendary career as circus kings just keeps on giving. So small and yet so historically gigantic. So off the beaten path, and yet, what a major path to the past.

Enter laughing! Soon to open on Fourth Avenue in historic downtown Baraboo is the International Clown Hall of Fame & Research Center, transferred in from Madison and presided over by one-time Ringling clown and clown alley supervisor Greg DeSanto. And how nice to see a circus museum run by a person with a life long passion for and working knowledge of the subject. The doors will be open daily except Sundays, 10 to 5. Super friendly admission charges are $5 for adults, $4 for kids and seniors. Among the novel artifacts on display, the first Ringling Bros. cash box made for them, when they opened in 1884, by their father! Did I say this town just keeps on giving?

"We are honored to join the Circus World Museum and the Al Ringling Theater as key spokes in Baraboo's celebrated wheel of circus history," said DeSanto.

Perhaps the Mirthmaker-in-Chief will eventually ascend to the executive throne of Circus World, which needs somebody like him, in my distant opinion, who can help them break their insatiable we-must-restore-every-circus-wagon-out-there habit. Never met the guy, but he seems a perfect fit for the post.



And here comes yet another Baraboo gift for hopeless circusphiles, from the emerging collections of Southern California native Tim Tegge, who also calls Baraboo his home when he is not on the road clowning. Great news! Tim has begun selling DVDs and CDs at wonderfully affordable prices, only $19.95 each, with shipping included. I tried and tried to reach the vast Bobby Hakes collection as a prospective buyer, but never could get an answer. Even then, the Hakes DVDs struck me, when last I checked, as prohibitively expensive.

From Tegge, I've just watched, for the second time (better the second time around in this instance) the 1955 TV special hosted by Charlton Heston, Christmas with The Greatest Show on Earth. Filmed under the actual Ringling-Barnum big top at the Sarasota winter quarters, complete with erected seat wagons, in grainy and glorious black and white. What an historical gem. I can see myself re-watching this pleasure periodically. Among the highlights:

* A young 16-year-old Tonito throwing near flawless backward and forward somersaults on the low wire, topping it off with such charismatic showmanship as he postures with confident flair to the audience. Were these kids of circus royalty born taking bows?

* A very young Elvin Bale, being interviewed by host Heston (who comes off a much happier Heston than the one you remember from the tough-guy role he played in the movie), addressing that stubborn tiger in the big cage who refuses to exit. Says Elvin to his wild animal trainer dad, "Say please, papa!" Papa takes the cue; tiger complies charmingly. One winning turn in a labored act that most of us considered to be essentially a furniture moving display.

* 10-year-old Dolly Loyal Perez, after to Heston declaring her independence from the family act, turning an amazingly full and accomplished single trap routine, complete with heel catch. The circus kids interviewed show such attractive class and crisp articulation.

* The clowns, oh those rowdy ruffians and misfits and overblown wise guys stealing as much sawdust as they could get away with, so much more real than the pretty faces who followed after the man who "saved the circus" ordered up sanitized coloring book images. They perform Paul Jung's Quick Service Laundry gag, the whole thing resembling a kind of silent flick. It has the kind of comedy payoff that can tickle you over and over gain.

* Emmett Kelly, every time he is on, whether trying to craft his own rolly bolly, or at the end of the last parade, there with the kids, hoping for his own gift from Santa, getting handed a package and then, feeling guilty, passing it along to a moppet, but still meekly waiting for something. Nothing. His walking away empty handed amounts to a minor drama. It's taken me a lifetime to finally appreciate the genius of this artist: he gave the American big top the one single emotion it for years had lacked: pathos. I have never forgotten the poignant image he cast at the end of the Holidays parade that same year when I saw the show out here, gratefully walking around the track holding a birthday cake in his hand.

* Hugo Schmidt working four elephants; am I reaching, or had he a gift for getting his big behemoths to act and look charming?

* That ultra sexy Cordon woman in the whip cracking paper shredding act.

* On and off Merle Evans, here revving up the holiday classic "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" to a peppy refrain as only HE could could do.

* Glimpses of some of the glorious Miles White costumes that appeared in the 1955 specs. For this mid-December TV special (which takes us into the homes of many television personalities, including a very young Johnny Carson, for commercial breaks) the parades were obviously thrown together from floats current and past and reconfigured to favor the Christmas tree and Santa gift-giving angle. At the end, we see the circus stars in front of a large lighted tree outside the big top singing "Silent Night."

I have to wonder what a set of very young eyes looking at this DVD would think. Old hat? Vulgarian? Too dangerous? Lacking a story line? If you are a vintage fan, and certainly if you swoon to all things Ringling, this DVD is a MUST BUY for you.

Within seven months, that big top would be declared a thing of the past by the man who had filled it so generously with such wonderful talent and lavish spectacle --- John Ringling North.

Next Stop: 13 years later for televised highlights of the 1968 edition of Ringling-Barnum.

To inquire about Tim's collection (very limited at this moment, let's hope he secures plenty more): www.circustimevideo.com

Lena, How I Loved You ...

Love can be a moment's madness
Love can be insane
Love can be a life of sadness and pain

How she tore into the song like no other. And how my heart opened wide when she did. She belted it perhaps with the same ferocity that marked her passionate connection to civil rights. She fought against stereotypes, refused acting offers for that reason, and for her outspoken views born of racial injustice, she was blacklisted in the 1950s.

Love can be a joy forever
Or an empty name
Love is almost never ever the same

When I saw her perform at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco in the early 1980s, I could not wait to hear her sing those words. Maybe those words were her life. I did not know if she would sing them. How could she not? She was born to sing them. She would have to! And ... she did.

Lena Horne. She passed away on May 9. To me, she seemed alone in her exceptional talent. And maybe alone most of her life.

Despite all the hardships, imagined or real, that she faced and fought down -- now, who in show business does not face hardship in the form of rejections, setbacks, betrayals? -- yet her sultry voice and steamy personality helped to advance the cause of her people. Lena and Sammy, Ella and Nat and all the others made a lasting contribution by merely reaching deep into our souls through the power, the luster, the sass and the beat of their music.

I have one of her albums from my teenage years, the one above, that I played over and over again. And tonight I think I will play my cast album recording of the Broadway show Jamaca, in which she starred.

It can be ecstasy
But it’s true
It doesn’t always happen to you

I'm not sure if it ever happened to her. I recall once hearing her talk about having "learned" to love her second husband, Lennie Hayton, a man with important connections in music at MGM whom she later admitted she had married essentially to advance her career.

So maybe she chose a career over love? Maybe love had done her in, beaten her down one too many times along the way, leaving her an expert on the subject, leaving her with a lingering anger that gave birth to a great voice, to a great performance of a great song.

Had she been spared the professional insults and the rejections that hounded her through the early years, the demeaning requests to be this a little more, that a little less, might her talents not have hit the heights they did? Who can ever know exactly how an artist's work is shaped by the pains they suffer on the way to success?

It can be ecstasy
But it’s true
It doesn’t always happen to you

Love can be a dying ember
Love can be a flame
Love pledged in September
May be dead in December
You may not even remember it came

Colossal Catch Up: Feld To Big Apple Rescue ... U of Kent Offers BA Degree in Circus ... Cirque du Soleil Lands Michael Jackson

Update correcton, from the Washington Post, May 10:
"A May 3 story about Feld Entertainment Chairman Kenneth Feld said Feld wrote a check to cover the Big Apple Circus's deficit caused by a drop in donations in the wake of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme scandal. Feld wrote a check to cover a portion of the deficit, not the entire circus shortfall."

Back from China, what first to address? I feel slightly disoriented, jet lag or culture shock, herewith challenged by a slew of media reports advanced my way by Don Covington. Most interesting of all is a Washington Post profile, predictable, of Ringling boss Kenneth Feld, cold cold cold, who last year asked somebody at Big Apple Circus how much in debt they were, and then, being given a figure, wrote out a check for the exact amount. [wrong, see above] Warm warm warm. Gosh, maybe the guy has a heart after all, or, oops, just an angle to look ever so giving? ... How embarrassed and humbled must the Paul Binder family be, taking money from a circus very much unlike the sort it has long advocated?

Who is Feld, we keep asking? Really, not a mystery at all. Let's put it this way: James A. Bailey on ice. The Post story covers the usual highlights, downplaying the darker side of one very sinister operator. He is a numbers cruncher, a shrewd marketing man able to placate changing audience tastes, though, curiously, Dominique Jando, who if nothing else knows how to get quoted, is quoted as suggesting that Mr. Feld, at "a critical point," is a risk of losing his audience base. "They have tried to create something with a lot of video effects ... it's not the Ringling that audiences expect to see." Oh, really? Last I checked, they were holding their own, and the video effects were out the tent. The Post story does not disclose actual circus attendance numbers other than to indicate, overall, how fabulously successful Feld Entertainment is. All shows undergo changes; Ringling, say what you will, has been forced to shakeup up the format for the very reason that the American public in fact has come to expect something different, blame or thank Cirque du Soleil and the back-to-one-ring movement of recent years, championed, by among others, Jando's one-time employer, Big Apple Circus ... Feld's obsession for elephant acts remains a little puzzling to me. But this guy takes in about 200 of his shows a year, so he must be viably in contact with audience reactions to his product, must knowing something we don't.

Elsewhere, in uppity academic circles, ever ready to save the big top from the big top, the community and college-based circus schools continue to spring up, each singing a new more intellectual kind of circus that can really impart big meaningful ideas and satisfy the younger generations seeking a new way out of old big tops into a better day. University of Kent, in England, now offering a BA degree in circus art! ... Listen here and take redemptive hope: "Once relegated to the tent of tigers and tricks, rise of Cirque du Soleil has spurred increased mainstream popularity." Says Lella Jones, producer for Roundhouse CircusFest in London, "There's a move away from traditional circus to become more challenging and sophisticated" Says I, no, no no, not on a populist level. Make all the references to Cirque you wish, but that company draws from some of the best circus artists in the world who perform, pardon my dropping that dirty word, World, "tricks." Incredible tricks, yes, tricks under gorgeous tents of wonder ... More schools popping up in the U.S., but I continue waiting to see graduates appear in our rings of commerce. I continue thrilling to talent from places like Russia and China and Peru, from everywhere but the USofA.

Big Top Bits: Circo Hermanos Caballero kicked out of Baldwin Park in So Cal, owing to contract disputes with property owner. Something to do with the cost of an insurance policy. These Mexican troupes leave a lot to be desired. ... Cirque's new touring unit, Totem, drawing a rave from the hometown Montreal Gazette, claiming that with CDS, "there's no such a thing as a bad circus." Well, not exactly. BTW: CDS licensed to produce a series of shows built upon, around and inside the Michael Jackson persona and song catalog. Will there be cookies and warm milk kid acrobats, me wonders? I stand amazed, wondering when this mighty Montreal monster will come tumbling down. Only because at some point, the public has to tire of its recurring styles, or is Guy Laliberte really that clever at reinventing himself over and over again? His Banana Shpeel, once nearly stranded in Chicago, finally, as of this moment, ready, really ready this time to face the NY critics at the Beacon on May 19 .... Back to the Feld of Felds, In the Post story, just to be madly fair, let's quote some stats: "Feld Entertainment these days tours 67 countries, tallying more than 5,000 performances a year. Its annual audience exceeds 30 million, generating nearly $900 million in revenue. On a big weekend, the far-flung empire is entertaining nearly 1 million patrons from Denmark to Greece to Wheeling. W. Va." One million? I did some number crunching of my own. Something about this claim, wrapped in formal journalism, makes me doubt the entire story. I've learned not to be a sucker for a good press kit, kids.