The American Circus PDF Download

Author: Susan Weber
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300185393
Category : Circus
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A showcase of the "golden age" of the circus in America

Author: Linda Simon
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780233981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Beautifully illustrated and filled with rich historical detail and colorful anecdotes, this is a vibrant history for all those who have ever dreamed of running away to the circus, now in paperback. “Step right up!” and buy a ticket to the Greatest Show on Earth—the Big Top, containing death-defying stunts, dancing bears, roaring tigers, and trumpeting elephants. The circus has always been home to the dazzling and the exotic, the improbable and the impossible—a place of myth and romance, of reinvention, rebirth, second acts, and new identities. Asking why we long to soar on flying trapezes, ride bareback on spangled horses, and parade through the streets in costumes of glitter and gold, this captivating book illuminates the history of the circus and the claim it has on the imaginations of artists, writers, and people around the world. Traveling back to the circus’s early days, Linda Simon takes us to eighteenth-century hippodromes in Great Britain and intimate one-ring circuses in nineteenth-century Paris, where Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso became enchanted with aerialists and clowns. She introduces us to P. T. Barnum, James Bailey, and the enterprising Ringling Brothers and reveals how they created the golden age of American circuses. Moving forward to the whimsical Circus Oz in Australia and to New York City’s Big Apple Circus and the grand spectacle of Cirque du Soleil, she shows how the circus has transformed in recent years. At the center of the story are the people—trick riders and tightrope walkers, sword swallowers and animal trainers, contortionists and clowns—that created the sensational, raucous, and sometimes titillating world of the circus.

Author: Les Standiford
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541762266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
“Les Standiford takes us under the big top and behind the curtain in this richly researched and thoroughly engaging narrative that captures all of the entrepreneurial intrigue and spirit of the American circus.” —Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Devil in the Grove Millions have sat under the “big top,” watching as trapeze artists glide and clowns entertain, but few know the captivating stories behind the men whose creativity, ingenuity, and determination created one of our country’s most beloved pastimes. In Battle for the Big Top, New York Times–bestselling author Les Standiford brings to life a remarkable era when three circus kings—James Bailey, P. T. Barnum, and John Ringling—all vied for control of the vastly profitable and influential American Circus. Ultimately, the rivalry of these three men resulted in the creation of an institution that would surpass all intentions and, for 147 years, hold a nation spellbound. Filled with details of their ever-evolving showmanship, business acumen, and personal magnetism, this Ragtime-like narrative will delight and enchant circus-lovers and anyone fascinated by the American experience.

Author: Janet M. Davis
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807861499
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
A century ago, daily life ground to a halt when the circus rolled into town. Across America, banks closed, schools canceled classes, farmers left their fields, and factories shut down so that everyone could go to the show. In this entertaining and provocative book, Janet Davis links the flowering of the early-twentieth-century American railroad circus to such broader historical developments as the rise of big business, the breakdown of separate spheres for men and women, and the genesis of the United States' overseas empire. In the process, she casts the circus as a powerful force in consolidating the nation's identity as a modern industrial society and world power. Davis explores the multiple "shows" that took place under the big top, from scripted performances to exhibitions of laborers assembling and tearing down tents to impromptu spectacles of audiences brawling, acrobats falling, and animals rampaging. Turning Victorian notions of gender, race, and nationhood topsy-turvy, the circus brought its vision of a rapidly changing world to spectators--rural as well as urban--across the nation. Even today, Davis contends, the influence of the circus continues to resonate in popular representations of gender, race, and the wider world.

Author: Katherine H. Adams
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786472286
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
During the years 1880 to 1940, the glory days of the American circus, a third to a half of the cast members were women--a large group of very visible American workers whose story needs telling. This book, using sources such as diaries, autobiographies, newspaper accounts, films, posters, and route books, first considers the popular media's presentation of these performers as unnatural and scandalous--as well as romantic and thrilling. Next are the stories told by circus women, which contradict and complicate other versions of their lives. Across America in those years an array of acts featured women, such as tableaux, freak shows, girlie shows, tiger acts, and aerial performances, all involving special skills and all detailed here. The book offers a unique and fascinating view of not just the circus but of what it meant to be an American woman at work.

Author: Ernest J. Albrecht
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813013640
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
In the 1970s a group of men and women with few ties to the circus emerged from the counterculture revolution and took to the streets, where they discovered how to entertain an audience. At a time when the Big Top was beset by shabby excess, escalating costs, and competition from movies and TV, the young performers dedicated themselves to skill and intimacy, beginning the movement Ernest Albrecht describes as the "new American circus", a reinvention of the circus as an authentic form of art. The first - and most radical - aspect of this movement was its revival of the traditions of the great one-ring shows of Europe and Russia. Focusing on artistry, not spectacle, the new American circus incorporated such allied arts as music and dance and embraced a notion of ensemble that was compatible with the communal ethic of the seventies. Working from interviews and other primary sources, Albrecht traces this history to the present (including current controversies over animal performers and efforts to secure subsidies), sketching the leading players in the new circus and profiling the shows they founded.

Author: Susan Nance
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421408295
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
How the lives and labors of nineteenth-century circus elephants shaped the entertainment industry. Consider the career of an enduring if controversial icon of American entertainment: the genial circus elephant. In Entertaining Elephants Susan Nance examines elephant behavior—drawing on the scientific literature of animal cognition, learning, and communications—to offer a study of elephants as actors (rather than objects) in American circus entertainment between 1800 and 1940. By developing a deeper understanding of animal behavior, Nance asserts, we can more fully explain the common history of all species. Entertaining Elephants is the first account that uses research on animal welfare, health, and cognition to interpret the historical record, examining how both circus people and elephants struggled behind the scenes to meet the profit necessities of the entertainment business. The book does not claim that elephants understood, endorsed, or resisted the world of show business as a human cultural or business practice, but it does speak of elephants rejecting the conditions of their experience. They lived in a kind of parallel reality in the circus, one that was defined by their interactions with people, other elephants, horses, bull hooks, hay, and the weather. Nance’s study informs and complicates contemporary debates over human interactions with animals in entertainment and beyond, questioning the idea of human control over animals and people's claims to speak for them. As sentient beings, these elephants exercised agency, but they had no way of understanding the human cultures that created their captivity, and they obviously had no claim on (human) social and political power. They often lived lives of apparent desperation.

Author: William L. Slout
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
ISBN: 0809513048
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This is the story of the survival of American circuses throughout one of the most perilous periods in our nation's history: 1860-1865. This was a period of transition for traveling exhibitions. The size of equipment and personnel had leveled off, performances were fixed, and the number of proprietors had reached a peak that would not be exceeded until the early 1870s. But still the show had to go on! Complete with notes, index, bibliography, and contemporaneous illustrations.

Author: Tom Ogden
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816026111
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Identifies circus performers, famous acts, and animal stars, explains circus terms, and provides summaries of movies, television shows, and musicals featuring the circus

Author: S.L. Kotar
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786487003
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
To both young and old, the circus remains an icon of American entertainment, a wholesome pastime untouched by the passing years. But the modern circus, with its three rings, ringmaster, animals, and acrobats, is the product of nearly three hundred years of evolution. This intriguing work chronicles the history of the American circus from its roots in England through its importation to America to the end of the nineteenth century. It introduces the early pioneers of the circus, addresses business concerns such as management and training, and discusses the development of the show itself, including the incorporation of menageries, the need for animal training and care, the addition of circus music, the use of the tent, and the unique attractions of side shows and "freaks." Personal stories of those who made their lives under the "big top" are woven throughout the narrative, adding an intimate perspective to one of America's most enduring entertainments.