Arena of Daily Wonders

“LAW ENFORCEMENT” ADDRESSES OF THE CIRCUS

In 1883, the Nikitin brothers, founders of the stationary Moscow Circus, erected a wooden circus in Kharkiv, on a square meaningfully known as Gendarme Square. It was the city’s first stationary circus and its first performance took place that same year. Three years later, a local industrialist millionaire paid for a hard wall structure for the circus, which is still there. Remarkably, the name of the square has also remained basically the same. It is now Red Militiaman Square.

Kharkiv’s first circus was in a structure built very much like that of the Franconi brothers in Paris, considered the best standard design in the late nineteenth century. Its interior architecture allows to stage big circus shows and drama performances. The arena can be quickly transformed into an audience as an addition to the amphitheater. That is why both circus and drama performers favored the Kharkiv Circus. Interestingly, the latter is most closely connected with the history of the Ukrainian theater (e.g., the Tobilevych brothers — P. Saksahansky and M. Sadovsky — with their troupes and the noted playwright and stage director Marko Kropyvnytsky in the nineteenth century).

At that period, circus performances were extremely popular. For many residents they were like a cool breeze on a hot day, although the low- income strata had to make do with the cheap, cramped, and stuffy gallery (the highest row of seats under the big top). Here no seats were numbered, so the last spectators in had to remain standing throughout the performance. Despite rigid censorship and constant police supervision, the circus was where stand-up comedians appeared with their political burlesques. The circus remained very popular till the 1950s, being the only place (save the soccer stadium) where people could truly relax and laugh off the severe suffocating daily realities.

Twenty-five years after the opening of the first circus, the well-known Greek theatrical entrepreneur Mussuri decided to build another circus in Kharkiv, not far from the original one in 1911. It turned out the world’s largest, seating 5,750.

Guest performers from America, Germany, and France shook their heads in bewilderment. Two circuses in one city! Extravagant!

Indeed, not even every capital had a stationary circus then. As a matter of fact, the other circus was not revived under the Soviets, but the first one had survived and continued to gladden people’s hearts.

The state built new premises for the circus only in 1974. It is still there, although with half the seating capacity compared to Mussuri’s. Instead, the audience was now more comfortable, with the seats placed in amphitheater, without a gallery, and with more space, utility rooms, and a large foyer.

Also, the circus seemed constantly to be allocated repressive addresses. For a long time the square facing the circus bore Uritsky’s name (the man had been at the head of the Cheka in Petrograd) and was renamed Bugrimova Square only this June (for Irina Bugrimova, a legendary Soviet animal tamer born in Kharkiv; she was the country’s first female tamer handling lions, thus refuting the myth that it was the province of male tamers).

CIRCUS STARS AND LEGENDS

For us spectators the circus is always a holiday. It has no right to be otherwise. That is why circus stars remain in our hearts long after fading from the sky. Circus lovers are fond of sharing stories about their favorite performers.

Oleg Popov, the most popular clown in the Soviet Union in the second half of the twentieth century, made his name at the Kharkiv circus in the 1950s. Graduate of the Moscow Circus School, he joined the circus as an eccentric tightrope walker. It happened in Kharkiv. The regular clown reported sick and the circus manager asked Oleg to fill in. The young actor liked it so much he decided to make it his regular part, sporting his unique checkered cap. When touring Belgium, his performance was admired by the queen and she called him the Sunny Clown, a byname he would retain for the rest of his life.

Another circus star was Pёtr Mayatsky, Meritorious Artiste of the Russian Soviet Republic who in his daring numbers combined attainments of science and engineering with performing feats. He was especially famous for a number he invented himself and called the Ball of Courage.

Two steel mesh hemispheres, with one suspended over the other, fit to be lowered to join the other precisely at the edges, looking like halves of the English walnut. Two motorcyclist would ride inside. The halves would join. The motorcyclists would start riding inside, circling the sphere chaotically, accelerating, reaching a head-spinning speed, then the sphere would be lifted to the big top, with the motorcyclists now racing in a rehearsed centrifugal pattern. The rider racing in the upper hemisphere was the author of the number himself. The one below was first his wife, then their daughter. Then the band would suddenly stop playing, the audience filled only with the sound of roaring engines. And then the hemispheres would begin to separate, the gap reaching over a meter, with the riders still racing inside each, the audience holding its breath, afraid to think what would happen should either of them make the wrong move. Then the hemispheres would join again and the structure would make a soft landing. What made the number especially dangerous was the sheer impossibility of any safety arrangements. The performers’ life depended on timing, precise calculation, and personal mastery.

The great high-wire artist died in an accident, and his daring number was never repeated anywhere in the world.

UNINSPIRING ASPECTS

Unlike drama companies, state- run circuses receive no budget subsidies. They are financed by Kyiv, on what is supposed to be a self-accounting basis, pro rata their revenues.

“Our economists believe that a circus ticket has to sell at UAH 20, so we can at least run without loss,” says L. Spektor, deputy manager of the Kharkiv Circus. “This would include payments under contracts with visiting performers and maintenance costs... The good thing is that our partners in the agrarian sector keep supplying us with food for the animals at cut rates.

“The circus is in a vicious financial circle; if we increase admittance costs, we can’t expect daily packed houses. Even tours by such stars as [the magician] Igor Kio are not held in packed audiences. A man in the street can’t afford three tickets, so he can take his family. At the same time, we can’t lower the prices, for we aren’t sure that people will come running to fill the audience.”

Mr. Spektor is convinced that the Ukrainian circus is falling into decay also because most domestic performers have no choice but to tour Ukraine only, meaning repeated appearances, whereas in the Soviet Union they could visit the same place again in five or six years. And so the Ukrainian show people are closely following the process of forming that single economic space.

Those fortunate enough to have won international contests — among them trapeze artists and tightrope walkers Serhiy Shatalov and Serhiy Manchuk with their teams, graduates of the Kharkiv school — make long- term contracts abroad and perform before well-to-do audiences. Yet when they return home they receive the usual circus pay, within the limits of the official living wage.

Naturally, the circus performer’s prestige has faded somewhat under the circumstances, so that gifted young people no longer dream of making such careers. That is why there seem no successors to Oleg Popov who has lived in Germany for the past six years, or to Pёtr Mayatsky or Irina Bugrimova, all those childhood idols of several generations.

Still, on that day marking the Kharkiv Circus’s anniversary, one wanted to hope that the circus would live forever, as all the arts are supposed to do; that a miracle would be worked the way it happens in the ring and the lights of the circus would shine even brighter than before, and that the circus would have countless happy returns of the day.