Cirque du Soleil

One of the most famous and successful active circuses nowadays worldwide, calls itself Cirque du Soleil. Cirque du Soleil is a contemporary circus founded not all too long ago in 1984 by two street artists. To understand how it came to be and by what it was inspired, we need to go back in time.

Philip Astley (http://www.circopedia.org/Philip_Astley) is concidered the father of the modern circus as he created the foundations of it to make it appealing to a wide range of audiences in 1770. He was an Englishman with the aim to attract masses in order to make more money from the show business in theatres in England. Thanks to his contributions to the business, more people visited the shows. He had managed this by observing what an audience enjoys most and came to the conclusion that visual input was one of the most important traits of shows, just like variety.

This lead him to the combination of acrobatic, equestrian and “clown” acts such as pantomime which lead him to immediate success and circus it is known today.

Another well known circus company that was founded way earlier than Cirque du Soleil, are the Ringling Brothers. Founded in 1884, the Ringling Brothers came about 60 years after the first real circuses in the USA. Unlike the theatres in England, the entertainers in America had to travel far to get to as many audiences as possible. The reason behind this was that the US was still very much developing and creating new communities that were spread out making it very hard to build a theatre that would have enough audiences in one area.(http://www.circopedia.org/SHORT_HISTORY_OF_THE_CIRCUS)

The first traveling circus with tents instead of wooden buildings, was a larger group of people than usual in those times, traveling with animals as a menagerie and later a few other circus acts. The creator of this concept and the traveling tents, was a man named Joshua Purdy Brown.

The founders of the Ringling Brothers were five brothers, who were already performing in America, Wisconsin at first, then they traveled as common in those times, with juggling tricks/routines. When in 1884 they finally expanded their show, the ringling brothers were born. The ringling Brothers is one of the circuses nowadays which still include live animals in their shows, one of which is the elephant named Jumbo. In 2015 the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey announced that Jumbo, along with other elephants will stop performing by the year 2018. Also as the Ringling Brothers have a history of animal abuse.

Russian circus: https://in.rbth.com/arts/2015/02/22/history_of_the_russian_circus_41535

After the Russian revolution in 1917, circus became a lot more popular in Russia due to the change of government, which lead to all the circus schools that had been private, being owned by the government. Because of this, more people were engaged in it. The soviet circuses started to actively travel outside of Russia after the second World War, demonstrating that they were ahead of most other circuses. While traveling, they were forced to change some of their traditional acts as these would not come across to the audience, e.g. the clowns act (more info on that is in the chapter Clowns). According to most circus experts, the Russians are still on of the best circus producers in the world at this time. Russian performers and Cirque du Soleil started cooperating in 1990, and still, many circuses have Russian personnel.

Circus disasters: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/05/life-and-death-at-cirque-du-soleil

Sadly, it is a known fact that athletic performers sometimes die in the attempt of performing a stunt. Cirque du Soleil also has some unfortunate accidents that have happened on stage. The first publicly known accident in Cirque du Soleil happened to a performer of the show named Ká, on June the 29th 2013. The show included, performers hanging from the ceiling from wires, when Sarah Guillot-Guyard fell to her death.   

It is always in everyone's interest, the performers, the directors, the investors, co-workers and also the audiences, that no one is injured in the show. To stop this from happening, many safety measures have been taken, however it stays a risky job to be a performer for a circus. Alone at Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas, in 2012, 53 performers were injured (only counting those that were reported to the government).

Compared to some of the major circus accidents though, the ones happening nowadays are not as major. Fires for example don’t spread as easily in the circuses nowadays decreasing the risk of uncontrolled fire and safety nets are almost always present.

Here an example of a major accident in the past:

Ringling brothers fire http://listverse.com/2013/04/22/10-most-horrific-circus-accidents-in-history/

An accident so famous, there is even a book and movie about it. The ringling brothers experienced a big hit in 1944 when their tent and a lot of other equipment burned down causing the death of an estimated 169 people not including the animals that also died. This accident could not happen like this any more because the tent is not made waterproof with puffin wax and gasoline.