Sunday, October 17, 2010

Boris Biriukov--1992



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

He presented in 1980 Irina Bugrimova's lions. she was the first Russian woman to train wild animals. She was born in 1910 and died in 2001. Her carreer ended in 1971 when she was attacked by lion Nero. She had also trained tigers and a liger. She started with wild animals in 1939, before she was an acrobat and bareback rider. They say she was one of the first to teach a high wire walk to a male lion and that she was an animal friendly trainer who never hit her animals. She was always at the Moscow state circus except in the middle of the 50ies she was in Circus Humberto and later in the 60ies at the East German State Circus.

This is a site with a lot of pics of her:
http://visualrian.com/images?text=irina+bugrimova&section=photo&biw=1190&bih=686

Wade G. Burck said...

Thomas,
Thank you, that is great stuff. Keep up the good research work.
Wade

Anonymous said...

Can it be that she was really the first to do a high wire trick with wild animals? Or do you know people to do this before 1939?

Wade G. Burck said...

Thomas,
I would reserve "swearing as gospel" most statements made by the circus, but especially the "first time" or "only one" statement. I don't know if it was done before, as I have never liked the wire walk(way to slow for my tastes) and have never looked into it. It is a trick like the cage run. You will have an easier time of it with a show owned act, that will handle the extra equipment, plus permit the "guying" out of the apparatus. Like a barrel or pyramid, I don't feel that the effort of loading and unloading a ton of steel is worth the effect of the behavior. The wire was one of the very few "tricks" that Terrell Jacobs had in his big lion act, besides a roll over and sit up by a hermaphrodite lion, and a couple of jumps. That should give you an idea of how difficult of a behavior it is. The grief of hauling the equipment, the time required to do the behavior is why you don't see it much, nothing to do with it's difficulty. Leopards doing it are the only one's who look good and natural, especially if a number of them jump over each other.
Wade