New Circuses Spare the Animals

By DAVID HALDANE

June 7, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

When Circus Chimera opened recently in Anaheim, it had the usual fare: jugglers, clowns, acrobats, trapeze artists.

What set the show apart was what it didn’t have.

There were no elephants doing headstands, no lions or tigers snarling at trainers, no monkeys clinging to bareback riders on galloping horses. Every performer was human.

It’s about time, animal rights advocates and some circus officials say. “The show is better without the animals,” said James Judkins, who created Circus Chimera last year in Hugo, Okla. “We decided that adding them wasn’t going to be worth the argument.”

Indeed, the long-standing argument about the ethics of animal acts is creating more and more alternatives to the so-called greatest show on Earth. To cut costs, avoid controversy and capture new audiences left cold by traditional circuses, a growing number of producers are putting together animal-free shows.

While some are fighting uphill battles to explain themselves to a large segment of the public still enamored of captive lions, tigers and elephants, others are enjoying phenomenal success.

Activists for years have protested the use of animals in circuses as exploitative and morally wrong. Circus owners, meanwhile, have argued that animals are well-treated cast members whose participation is essential to the big-top experience.

But now no fewer than a dozen animal-free shows are operating from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco; a third of them have started in the last two years.

The best known, Cirque du Soleil, employs 1,500 people in eight units and projects attendance of 5 million this year across North America, Europe and Asia. The first nontraditional circus to come within shouting distance of Ringling Bros.’ annual attendance of about 12 million, it has inspired a dozen imitators, among them Cirque Eloize, founded in Montreal in 1988; the Washington, D.C.-based Cirque Ingenieux, founded in 1997; Circus Chimera in Oklahoma and Circus Mellennia in Virginia, both founded in 1998; and Velocity Circus Troupe, formed in San Francisco earlier this year.

Even the venerable Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus has started a show whose only nonhuman performers are geese and horses. Barnum’s Kaleidoscape, based in Virginia, debuted April 30 in Century City after an 11-day preview in Irvine. Ticket sales were brisk, and the show’s producers later extended its stay through last weekend.

“This is going to be my dream circus,” said Kenneth Feld, chairman and chief executive officer of Feld Entertainment, which owns both circuses and has been a frequent target of animal rights protesters. “Obviously, we wouldn’t go into this to cannibalize our existing business. We’re going into it to try and get people who may not go to our other shows for whatever reason; the more people that come, the happier I’ll be.”

Animal advocates applaud the new circuses as a long-overdue alternative.

“I’m thrilled,” said Jane Garrison, a Fullerton-based spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a national organization based in Virginia that has sponsored demonstrations against circuses. “I look at this as a victory.”

Many attendees say they prefer the new performances, whose sophisticated lighting, dramatic music and special effects are akin to theater as much as traditional circus.

“I wouldn’t have come if they used animals,” Nancy Hosh, a kindergarten teacher from Santa Ana, said after a recent performance of Circus Chimera. “This is great; they are so talented,” she said of the performers.

Tony Mercuro, a pharmaceutical representative from Yorba Linda, said “the smell is better and the excitement’s still there.” And 10-year-old Justine Holguin of Whittier added that “it’s better without the animals because that way they don’t have to get whipped.”

Many circus artists, too, applaud the change--if for no other reason than that it focuses the spotlight on them.

“It’s much better for the performers,” said Walter Chimal, 21, a tumbler and acrobat since childhood who works for Circus Chimera. “In a traditional circus, after the show you ask people what they liked best, and they say they liked the elephants; they don’t even notice the performers.”

Pat Derby, a former animal trainer who directs the Performing Animal Welfare Society in Galt, Calif., said: “We’ve always wanted an alternative. If you go in and tell some Rotary Club that going to a circus is a bad thing, you feel like you’re telling them there’s no Santa Claus. This . . . enables us to show that we’re not pushing to abolish circuses, just cruelty.”

Among the allegations made over the years were that circus trainers beat elephants and lions with chains and barbed poles, that the animals are kept in cages that are too small and that they are denied proper diet, exercise and medical care.

In some cases, the allegations have been confirmed. The Humane Society of San Bernardino Valley last year seized seven ponies from a circus trainer, saying the animals were suffering from malnutrition. The trainer was later convicted of misdemeanor animal abuse. One of the ponies died, but the rest recovered and were placed in new homes.

In April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture charged the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus with two violations of the Animal Welfare Act for allegedly mistreating its elephants. Inspectors said they found that several elephants had wounds caused by heavy hooks used to force them to perform. Circus representatives strongly denied the allegations.

Meanwhile, Ringling Bros. also came under fire for the treatment of its elephants. In an affidavit filed with the USDA, a former member of the circus’ elephant crew alleged that the performing pachyderms were kept chained for hours in cramped quarters.

The former crew member further alleged that the elephants were routinely beaten with the heavy hooks--sometimes until they bled--to get them to perform. Ringling said the allegations were untrue, according to a report in the New York Post.

“The life of any animal in a circus is not a good life,” said Todd Lurie, the humane society investigator who handled the case.

Unnatural Behaviors

Many activists maintain that forcing animals to perform at all is abusive because it requires behaviors that are unnatural and demeaning.

If the public has been swayed by such arguments, however, it has not been evident at the gates of traditional circuses.

No one tabulates circus attendance overall, but the experience of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey--the largest circus in the world--is probably indicative of the trend: From the 1930s to the present, attendance has risen steadily, more than doubling since 1979 to the current annual total of 11 million to 12 million.

The number of companies and organizations staging traditional circuses in the United States has risen to about 100, an increase of 25% over the last 20 years.

Officials concede, however, that the number and variety of animal acts in circuses has declined in recent years.

While hard statistics do not exist, Fred Dahlinger of the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wis., said he thinks significantly fewer animals perform in circuses today than in the past for three basic reasons: economics and the high cost of maintaining animals, compared to employing people; the increasing number of national, state and local laws regulating the maintenance and treatment of performing animals; and reaction to the frequent animal rights protests, which have discouraged would-be animal trainers from entering the field.

“You still see the traditional elephants, cat acts and horses,” Dahlinger said, “but you’re seeing very few exotic animal acts.”

Those have been a big draw for American circuses in this century, though they developed from earlier productions in which people were paramount.

Historians generally agree that the modern circus has its roots in 18th century England and France, and that its early growth was shaped by the political and social climate of that era.

Annoyed at being lampooned regularly in the popular drama of the day, the aristocracy sought to stifle satire by dictating what could be performed. But popular culture would not be repressed, and two branches of European theater evolved: subsidized, state-sanctioned drama and so-called “sub-dramatic” entertainment that embraced, according to a handbill of the period, “pantomimes and ballets of action, rope dancing, acrobatics, trick riding, pony races, displays of swordsmanship, fireworks and Chinese shadows.”

The first modern circus performance was in England in 1768, when Philip Astley, a former soldier turned equestrian, discovered that, if his horse galloped in a circle, the resulting centrifugal force helped him keep his balance while doing acrobatics on the animal’s back. The resulting show--rounded out with jugglers and tightrope walkers--became known as the “circus,” Latin for “circle.”

A century later in the United States, Barnum & Bailey came up with the idea of the three-ring circus: a typically American more-is-better approach that generally included animal acts, tumblers and clowns. With the advent of coast-to-coast rail travel in 1872, owners had a way to transport big shows and large animals quickly and efficiently.

“Bigger became better,” said Greg Parkinson of the Circus World Museum. “Not one giraffe but four; not 20 elephants but 40.”

Such extravaganzas under huge, striped tents were the American standard for more than a century until a group emerged in 1984 with what audiences came to see as a dazzling new concept. But it was, in fact, a throwback to the earliest European tradition--a critterless troupe of 20 French Canadian street performers known as Cirque du Soleil.

While they were hailed as innovators who helped bring about a circus renaissance, their aim was not to make a statement about animal acts but to make a living. Many in the first show’s cast had been unemployed performers on welfare.

“It was more important to employ 20 young acrobats than four big elephants,” said Jean David, one of Cirque du Soleil’s founders.

After a modest first year in Montreal, the ensemble was booked in Toronto and, bowing to that city’s English-speaking populace, billed itself as Sun Circus. “It was the biggest mistake of our lives,” David recalled. Many in the audience, expecting an American-style show, demanded their money back.

“Thirty minutes after the show started, they were leaving the tent asking for reimbursement because there were no animals,” David said. “What we discovered was that, for English-speaking people, the word ‘circus’ meant animals.”

The third year, the company took back its French name and was well received at several Canadian venues. And at its 1987 U.S. debut in Los Angeles, the troupe was stunned to find activists distributing leaflets commending the audience for choosing an animal-free circus.

A West Coast Thing

“Cirque du Soleil definitely forced the issue of people being willing to accept circus fare without animals,” said Nancy Akers of Cirque Ingenieux, which, she says, was partly inspired by the famous French Canadian troupe. “In the beginning,” Akers said, the new American circus “found a heavier response on the West Coast where people are a little more socially progressive.” But big crowds now are turning out in the East and the Midwest as well, despite admission prices that are considerably higher than those of traditional circuses.

“Generally,” Dahlinger said, “the new-wave shows are priced substantially higher, probably because they appeal to a different segment of the market: theatergoers, opera attendees and people interested in culture.”

While tickets to regular circuses generally cost $10 to $18, he said, admission to the newer shows typically starts at $20 and can go as high as $100 for Cirque du Soleil’s glitzy Las Vegas revue.

“It’s a different audience that’s used to paying higher-end prices for higher-end art forms,” Dahlinger said. “It’s a recognition by these people that this is an art form and the pricing is commensurate with entertainment of that quality.”

Public concern about animal treatment is also clearly a factor in the popularity of such shows, industry officials say.

“At least three times a week I get calls from people asking if we use animals,” said Greg Angelo, founder of the 10-month-old Velocity Circus Troupe of San Francisco. “When I say no, they seem very delighted.”

Managing director Dan Mankin of Make a Circus, an older group also based in San Francisco, said he has had similar calls and responses. “There’s definitely political pressure to do this,” he said.

Popular sentiment, too, is shifting.

“I think it’s marvelous,” Kay Maisky, a former Southern California resident visiting from Brussels, said after a recent performance of Barnum’s Kaleidoscape that she attended with her 11-year-old daughter. “I don’t like seeing a magnificent animal caged.”

Judy MacFarland of Anaheim Hills agreed. “It’s almost like the 1800s,” she said of the show. “I don’t miss the big animals at all.”

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Big Top Boom

The number of animal-free circuses has grown steadily for more than two decades but has exploded in the past two years, fueled in part by international acclaim for Canada’s Cirque du Soleil. A list of no-animal shows by founding date:

1999

Velocity Circus Troupe, San Francisco

Barnum’s Kaleidoscape, Vienna, Va.*

1998

Circus Millennia, Arlington, Va.

Circus Chimera, Hugo, Okla.

1997

Cirque Ingenieux, Washington, D.C.

1989

Earth Circus, San Francisco

1988

Cirque Eloize, Montreal