Calder's Circus
1926–1931

Narrator: You should be looking at the trapeze. Calder put hooks on the acrobats’ hands and feet. He made the trapezes swing at the same time, so the acrobats traveled from one to the other on their own.

Real circus performers must build these routines into their muscle memory, until they can do them without fear. Sarah Schwarz tells us how.

Sarah Schwartz: Well, my first advice is, “Practice, practice, practice!” [Laughs] You just gotta do it and do it and do it and do it. It’s an exercise of concentration, really. And I tell my students that it’s going to help them in school, too, because it’s really great exercise on your concentration.

And you always have the risk to fall. The public always wait for that. Always. Most of us, the circus artists, we like to show very difficult things to look very easy. So people will never get an idea how difficult it is, what I’m doing.

Narrator: Do you see the tightrope walkers? Look for two figures on a low wire.

Sarah Schwartz: My name is Sarah Schwarz. I am a company member; this is my third season with the Big Apple Circus. And as a company member, we do different acts every year. I am doing the wire, this is my main act, so this year I can present my tightrope act in the Big Apple Circus.

Narrator: Sarah Schwarz learned to walk a tightrope in Germany, where she was born. Calder used his fingers to manipulate the string, coaxing the acrobats across the tightrope. What goes through a real performer’s mind as she’s walking the tightrope?

Sarah Schwartz: You want details? [Laughs] All the details: you look at the end of the wire, you keep your arms up, you put your feet straight, not like a duck, and not like the ballerinas in the beginning: you just put them straight. A wire is about twelve millimeters thick; it’s more or less like the little finger. It’s about 7 meters long—I’m sorry I don’t speak in feet and inches. What else is to tell about the wire? It is for me the most beautiful instrument in the circus. You become light, you get this feeling of flying, dancing in the air. Mm-hm!

Andrey Mantchev: Hi, my name is Andrey Mantchev. I’m a company member for the Big Apple Circus; I stay every year in the circus and create different acts every single year. My specialty is being an acrobat. I started off as doing a teeterboard act.

Narrator: Andrey Mantchev learned to do tricks on a teeterboard in Bulgaria, where he grew up. A teeterboard looks something like a seesaw. Calder’s Circus features a teeterboard act, too. Can you find it? I’ll give you a sec.

Here’s how it worked: One acrobat stood on one end of the teeterboard. Calder made another acrobat climb up onto the platform⎯drumroll please!⎯and then made the acrobat launch himself from a catapult. He landed on the other end of the teeterboard, launching the first acrobat up into the air.

Andrey Mantchev trained for a year to do a trick like this one.

Andrey Mantchev: It all happens so quick. You don’t really have that much time to think about things. But as I’m stepping on top of the teeterboard, my initial thoughts are how to do my trick; I just remember, step by step, what I’m supposed to do so I can be able to do the trick.. . . First is as I put my arms down, which is a signal for the people on the platform to jump, so they can catapult me. My first thoughts are doing the tempo to be able to jump off the teeterboard; then bringing my legs to my chest in order to make a somersault; and opening and seeing the person underneath me, and trying to land softly.

Narrator: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, Mesdames et messieurs, to the circus!

Alexander Calder built this tiny circus during his years in Paris. He created a complete troupe of performers—from acrobats and animals to clowns and tightrope walkers—using ordinary household materials. Look closely and you’ll see everything from bits of cloth, yarn, and paper to rubber tubes, buttons, and bottle caps.

Calder didn’t design his circus as a three-ring spectacle. It’s more like the intimate, one-ring circuses he saw in France. Now I’d like to introduce two guys who started a traditional, one-ring circus here in New York City. Here’s Michael Christensen, Cofounder and Creative Director of the Big Apple Circus, remembering his circus days in Paris with Founder and Artistic Director Paul Binder.

Michael Christensen: We were a juggling act, a comedy-juggling act. We threw juggling clubs, our hats, our shoes, a rubber chicken, and from time to time a squirting fish named Ronald. Do you remember Ronald?

Paul Binder: I do. And what was funniest about our act is we started where everybody else left off. We started by dropping things.

Michael Christensen: Then once we dropped them—then we had to pick them up.

Paul Binder: Yeah.

Michael Christensen: And that wasn't always easy, and there was a lot of comedy to be had in just picking up one club.

Paul Binder: Or one squirting fish.

Michael Christensen: Named Ronald. Anyway, we found our home in the Nouveau Cirque de Paris. We walked into that ring and felt like home.

And there's an image that always stays with me, Paul and I, behind the curtain, Nouveau Cirque de Paris, looking into this wonderful world of the circus, and we look at each other as if we're nine years old, and we say, “Do you believe it?"

Michael Christensen and Paul Binder: We're in the circus! 

Narrator: We asked some more stars of the Big Apple Circus to explain what Calder’s performers are up to.

Bill Irwin: Damas y caballeros, mesdames et messieurs, les damos la bienvenida al circo. A partir de 1926, Calder combinó su fascinación por el movimiento, los animales y la caricatura en Le Cirque Calder. 

Narrador: El actor Bill Irwin.

Bill Irwin: Lo que ven aquí es una serie de actos, cada uno compuesto por diferentes personajes: los acróbatas, una mujer barbuda, un domador de leones y su león. En cada función, Calder operaba las piezas y figuras ante el público, en la misma pista, un acto a la vez. 

Hacía las gradas con cajones y tablones de madera; alzaba dos postes altos para la cuerda floja y el trapecio; repartía platillos, matracas y otros objetos ruidosos; reproducía discos en el gramófono y brindaba a los invitados un espectáculo nocturno completo. Es lo que podría describirse como la primera instancia de arte interpretativo. 

A través de Circus, Calder entabló buena amistad con una impresionante lista de artistas, como Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró, Fernand Léger, Edgar Varèse, Le Corbusier y Piet Mondrian. Estos miembros del vanguardismo parisino, el avant-garde, valoraban el amor de Calder por la interpretación y el espectáculo: una función de Circus era garantía de pasarse un muy buen rato. Pero los artistas también se veían atraídos por el lado serio de Circus. Una combinación de diversión con muerte y peligro: el lanzador de cuchillos apuntaba a un blanco peligrosamente cerca de su asistente preferida y a veces fallaba; con consecuencias trágicas. Pero Calder acudía a la misma figura femenina en el acto siguiente, un ingenioso toque que el público apreciaba.

Durante las primeras décadas del siglo veinte, los artistas modernistas en toda Europa buscaron maneras de fusionar el arte y la vida, la tecnología y el diseño. Por lúdico que el espectáculo de Calder pueda parecer, ejemplifica estupendamente estos impulsos del vanguardismo. El hecho de que pusiera los objetos en movimiento, el estado característico de la modernidad, no era un detalle menor para ninguno de sus espectadores. Y cada acto individual estaba diseñado con una gran destreza técnica.

Narrator: Actor Bill Irwin.

Bill Irwin: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, mes dames et messieurs, to the circus. Beginning in 1926, Calder combined his fascination with movement, animals, and caricature into Le Cirque Calder. 

What you see here are a number of acts, each consisting of different characters—acrobats, a bearded lady, a lion tamer and his lion. When performed, Calder would manipulate the parts and figures before you—in one ring, one act at a time. 

He would make bleachers from wood crates and planks; erect two tall poles for the high wire and trapeze; hand out cymbals and other noisemakers; cue up records on his gramophone and give his guests a full evening’s entertainment. It was what could be described as the first instance of performance art. 

Through the Circus, Calder became good friends with an impressive list of artists, including Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró, Fernand Léger, Edgar Varèse, Le Corbusier, and Piet Mondrian. These members of the Parisian avant-garde appreciated Calder’s love of play and spectacle—a performance of the Circus meant a very good time. But the artists were also drawn to the serious side of the Circus. Fun mixed with death and danger: the knife thrower aiming to hit a target perilously close to his favorite assistant sometimes missed—with tragic results. But Calder would use the same female figure in the next act, a clever touch his audiences appreciated.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, modernist artists across Europe were searching for ways to merge art and life, technology and design. As playful as Calder’s performance may seem, it beautifully exemplifies these avant-garde impulses. The fact that he put his objects in motion, the characteristic state of modernity, wouldn’t have been lost on any of his observers. And the individual acts were engineered with a great deal of technical skill.