Moscow World Youth Festival 1957

THE HIPPODROME AT OLYMPIA, in the National Agricultural Hall at Kensington 1887

From the Victoria and Albert Museum website:

During Barnum and Bailey's Circus at London's Olympia, there were at least ten displays including aquatic acts, aerialists, elephants and an equestrian act featuring 70 horses performing in the ring at once. A military band played before the performance, there were races and ballets, a menagerie and a spectacular re-enactment of a famous American sea battle with the Spanish fleet at Santiago.

Altogether the circus employed 1,200 people and 380 horses. Until his death in 1891, the highpoint of this circus for most of the audience was the personal appearance of Barnum himself. He was driven into the ring in a carriage, escorted by liveried footmen, telling the audience that he knew that they had really come to see him!

From the Victoria and Albert Museum website:

Albert Hengler claimed that the idea for a water pantomime came to him in a dream. He billed his novel show as 'An Entirely New and Original Grotesque Pantomime, entitled A Village Wedding or Tramps Abroad and introducing Hengler's Great WATER NOVELTY'.

Comic tramps got married and ran away from comic policemen who fell into the water. Ladies and gentlemen also found themselves stuck up trees, or their boats overturned, and the whole thing was a huge success.

Inevitably the front few rows of the audience were in danger of getting rather wet, and a disclaimer was added to the posters: 'The Management will not hold themselves responsible for any slight damage that might be caused by the splashing of water during the performance'.

The effect was so successful that it was soon copied at Astley's, and more recently at the London Hippodrome, the Yarmouth Hippodrome and the Tower Circus at Blackpool.

This clip above from 1957 is interesting in that it show's a "Pantomime" type stage setting first produced by Albert Hengler in 1891(it's all been done before, right John Milton?) What a massive, massive undertaking it must have been to flood the ring with a "water chute." At 6:51 is footage of an unusual liberty act in that it uses 5 grey's and a black. I think it is the same gentleman that produced a number of act's for the Moscow Circus, in which he and his wife "waltzed" with the horses. They did a unique waltz, not often seen called a "clock waltz" in which to horse's went to what theoretically were points or numbers on a clock ie 12 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 4 0'clock depending on the number of horse's used. On cue, the horse's all turned once and stopped. Then again, turned and stopped. Very beautiful, if done right and also very difficult to do right. If the animals don't all turn in unison and stop in unison it look's a mess. John Milton, of interest at 7:29 is a 6 horse hindleg walk!!!!! A few years ago Ian Garden copied one of this gentleman's last liberty act's with 8 black Arabians doing the "clock waltz", that later Jasmine Smart presented on Big Apple Circus. When the act was disbanded, 4 of the black's were used along with 4 white Dromedary camels to produce the act that is currently on Circo Aguilar.

Laslo, can you help me with the trainers name in this clip? Any idea why he would have used a black in the act, instead of 6 grey's?

At the tail end of the clip is a "swimming tiger" that wasn't much and was rather cheesy. Can anybody identify the female trainer in the dressing room and later in the water with the tiger?