Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
The Great Moscow Circus
Can you recall it? The dimming of the lights, an electric air? The hush, then the roar of applause? The excitement at the entrance of the ringmaster, theatre resplendent. Lit by a big spot of crisp white light?
Hundreds of thousands of children world over, clutching crisps/popcorn/grass derived snack, entertained by an exotic mix of animals, garishly painted sets, daring do feats and simple slapstick comedy by some of the worlds most talented athletes all under one roof. A Big Top no less.
The Great Moscow Circus.
From the USSR it sprang forth to entertain generations. Itself an icon of perfection in the circus industry. Who can ever forget its most famous assets Yuri Vladimirovich Nikulinor or Oleg Konstantinovich Popov.
Perhaps better remembered as Nikulin and Popov the clowns.
Definers of the clowning medium on the world stage and both Heroes of the Soviet Union.
On the Metro between Mendeleyevskaya and Chekhovskaya lies Tsvetnoy Bulvar, the station from which I have just exited to stand in the warm twilight of a lovely Moscow evening.
I cant find words to describe just how purple the sky is.
My destination is………yes you guessed it, the Great Moscow Circus.
I wander along the boulevard, past facades of Italian drawn houses with cute boutiques on the ground floor to arrive at a rather unimposing and artless building with a faded and part broken sign and…
Its closed.
All this way from Sheremetyevo, via the Bolshoi Ballet, Lenin’s Library, The Arborium, St Basils cathedral, GUM department store on Red Square, Comrade Lenin’s mausoleum, the Kremlin with the changing of the guards at the eternal flame (women old and young weeping while the guards march to a mechanical doll precision goose step), the Arbats Old and New, Gorky’s house, the Lubyanka and Gastronom Number One with its amazing ceilings.
And damn. It’s closed.
Might as well have stayed home.
I amble over to a guy dressed in rather old fashioned and badly tailored military garb sitting in a small guardhouse and casually enquire as to when it will be open.
His English is great, he tells me to “piss off”.
Maybe he was a also a Hero of the Soviet Union and is offended at the fact that I failed to recognise such a high status.
My mistake, Russians are not generally so offensive but they do have a certain officiousness about them given a uniform. However they also have an inbuilt rebelliousness to authority.
Its hard to imagine how those two traits combine, but once you’ve got it, there my friend, is Russia. No wonder hardly anyone smiles. Its as though the world owes them a favour, and life is an unfolding drama ever increasing in hardship.
The sorrow. Makes for great literature over the centuries.
And yet, the world can rightly thank them for some great contribution to Art and Science and of course the Circus.
A circus is commonly a traveling company of performers that may include acrobats, clowns, trained animals, trapeze acts, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other stunt-oriented artists. The word also describes the performance that they give, which is usually a series of acts that are choreographed to music.
A circus is held in an oval or circular arena with tiered seating around its edge.
Moscow is built in three rings. The Sadovayer ring road surrounds the center of the arena. Its within this loop that one sees the true circus which Moscow always was and very much still is.
Anyone who is anyone lives in the inner ring. It was built by mainly Italian masons several hundred years ago and looks very very Milan like.
The heathen others live outside of the purple circle (that’s the colour of the tram signage).
And from the Purple Circle to the next ring is well…….ummm, very soviet. As in startlingly lacking any form of art in architecture and more than a little rundown/seedy looking. Except for the amazing sculptures exhorting the masses to work harder in the struggle (against what I think no one really has any firm idea).
So given 200 years, what has the inner facades of downtown Moscow witnessed?
First was the Boyer. The merchants surrounding the court of the Kremlin.
Second was the KGB. The merchants surrounding the court of the Kremlin.
Third is the Biznizmen or “new” Russians, merchants surrounding the court of the Kremlin.
Most of these Biznizmen are from old Boyer families and ex KGB.
Remarkable. A Circus by any definition.
So the act never stopped, the jugglers continued to juggle and there is no shortage of acrobats or conjurors in the new Souvenirgrad. It’s business as usual.
Except old people don’t get pensions anymore.
Capitalism was always a much better proposition for the Boyer, how many communists drove Mercedes Benz’s?
Who the hell wants to read Bulgakov or Gorky or Pushkin when Fox TV is at hand?
I sigh, and get back onto the Metro and head to Gastronom, at least it serves a decent espresso.
The original Great Moscow Circus moved to the “West” years ago, its now a franchise. Perhaps its owners read the writing on the wall. They were Heroes of the Soviet Union after all.
A crisp white light shines on the Kremlin as I goose step past heading up Tverskaya, the music is martial.
"Engineering is my lawful wife," he once said, "and photography is my mistress." And with that, Gorky rolls over.
Hundreds of thousands of children world over, clutching crisps/popcorn/grass derived snack, entertained by an exotic mix of animals, garishly painted sets, daring do feats and simple slapstick comedy by some of the worlds most talented athletes all under one roof. A Big Top no less.
The Great Moscow Circus.
From the USSR it sprang forth to entertain generations. Itself an icon of perfection in the circus industry. Who can ever forget its most famous assets Yuri Vladimirovich Nikulinor or Oleg Konstantinovich Popov.
Perhaps better remembered as Nikulin and Popov the clowns.
Definers of the clowning medium on the world stage and both Heroes of the Soviet Union.
On the Metro between Mendeleyevskaya and Chekhovskaya lies Tsvetnoy Bulvar, the station from which I have just exited to stand in the warm twilight of a lovely Moscow evening.
I cant find words to describe just how purple the sky is.
My destination is………yes you guessed it, the Great Moscow Circus.
I wander along the boulevard, past facades of Italian drawn houses with cute boutiques on the ground floor to arrive at a rather unimposing and artless building with a faded and part broken sign and…
Its closed.
All this way from Sheremetyevo, via the Bolshoi Ballet, Lenin’s Library, The Arborium, St Basils cathedral, GUM department store on Red Square, Comrade Lenin’s mausoleum, the Kremlin with the changing of the guards at the eternal flame (women old and young weeping while the guards march to a mechanical doll precision goose step), the Arbats Old and New, Gorky’s house, the Lubyanka and Gastronom Number One with its amazing ceilings.
And damn. It’s closed.
Might as well have stayed home.
I amble over to a guy dressed in rather old fashioned and badly tailored military garb sitting in a small guardhouse and casually enquire as to when it will be open.
His English is great, he tells me to “piss off”.
Maybe he was a also a Hero of the Soviet Union and is offended at the fact that I failed to recognise such a high status.
My mistake, Russians are not generally so offensive but they do have a certain officiousness about them given a uniform. However they also have an inbuilt rebelliousness to authority.
Its hard to imagine how those two traits combine, but once you’ve got it, there my friend, is Russia. No wonder hardly anyone smiles. Its as though the world owes them a favour, and life is an unfolding drama ever increasing in hardship.
The sorrow. Makes for great literature over the centuries.
And yet, the world can rightly thank them for some great contribution to Art and Science and of course the Circus.
A circus is commonly a traveling company of performers that may include acrobats, clowns, trained animals, trapeze acts, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other stunt-oriented artists. The word also describes the performance that they give, which is usually a series of acts that are choreographed to music.
A circus is held in an oval or circular arena with tiered seating around its edge.
Moscow is built in three rings. The Sadovayer ring road surrounds the center of the arena. Its within this loop that one sees the true circus which Moscow always was and very much still is.
Anyone who is anyone lives in the inner ring. It was built by mainly Italian masons several hundred years ago and looks very very Milan like.
The heathen others live outside of the purple circle (that’s the colour of the tram signage).
And from the Purple Circle to the next ring is well…….ummm, very soviet. As in startlingly lacking any form of art in architecture and more than a little rundown/seedy looking. Except for the amazing sculptures exhorting the masses to work harder in the struggle (against what I think no one really has any firm idea).
So given 200 years, what has the inner facades of downtown Moscow witnessed?
First was the Boyer. The merchants surrounding the court of the Kremlin.
Second was the KGB. The merchants surrounding the court of the Kremlin.
Third is the Biznizmen or “new” Russians, merchants surrounding the court of the Kremlin.
Most of these Biznizmen are from old Boyer families and ex KGB.
Remarkable. A Circus by any definition.
So the act never stopped, the jugglers continued to juggle and there is no shortage of acrobats or conjurors in the new Souvenirgrad. It’s business as usual.
Except old people don’t get pensions anymore.
Capitalism was always a much better proposition for the Boyer, how many communists drove Mercedes Benz’s?
Who the hell wants to read Bulgakov or Gorky or Pushkin when Fox TV is at hand?
I sigh, and get back onto the Metro and head to Gastronom, at least it serves a decent espresso.
The original Great Moscow Circus moved to the “West” years ago, its now a franchise. Perhaps its owners read the writing on the wall. They were Heroes of the Soviet Union after all.
A crisp white light shines on the Kremlin as I goose step past heading up Tverskaya, the music is martial.
"Engineering is my lawful wife," he once said, "and photography is my mistress." And with that, Gorky rolls over.
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