Welcome to CircusNews.com

We have a lot of work going on behind the scenes here. Not everything works right now, but we figured it was better to let you start with what we have.

Here is what is going on:

  • Working on a better back-end.  This new back end will allow us to have unified sign-on for all of our internet applications, and allow us to roll out a lot more services than we ever could have done before.  Its a lot of work, but in the end it will be very useful.  Unfortunately, this means that for the time being, you can’t register an account (it will be worth the wait, I promise)
  • We are populating the WP database with all of the old CircusNews.com stories
  • We are adding tutorials and tons of other content to the site
  • We are filling in stories that we missed while we were off-line
  • We are adding new stories and content weekly
  • We are filling in historical content (even the really old stuff)

If you have any questions, or if you want to help with this project, let me know!

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PINK accident

By now, I am sure all of you have heard about the PINK accident. I would like to take a few moments to talk about this. Lets start by looking at the video:

So was this a rigging failure, or an operator failure?

Lets start by looking at 0:42. You see her left hand goes up, and then at about 0:46 her left hand goes down This motion looks like it was the “GO” cue. A split second later, at 0:47 you see PINK look to the right and puts up her right hand, seemingly to say hold, followed by common crossed arms “E-STOP” sign. Moments later, Pink is moving, and at 0:51 the motion has stopped. You can see two people pulling two of the flying lines back towards the stage after her fall.

To my eye, this looks like Pink signaled a GO before she was properly clipped in, and then tried to abort. I would say she is very lucky that she wasn’t hurt a lot more seriously.

This view would seem to be supported by PINK’s tweet: “To all my nurnberg fans… I am embarrassed and very sorry. I’m in ambulance now but I will b fine. Didn’t get clipped in2 harness correctly, drug me off stage, fell in2 barricade. Getting x rays. I hope it at least looked cool!!!”

As a rigger, this didn’t look cool at all. I am glad PINK is OK, but let this be a lesson to all of us: Don’t give a “GO” signal until you really are ready to go!

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Star Drops

Single Star Drop (starts at 0:58)

Double Star Drop

Triple Star Drop

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Global Voices: Circus School

PBS Video giving a revealing look at the rigorous physical training endured by young Chinese acrobatic students.

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Circus on PBS

PBS has posted a two and one half minute preview of their new fall series CIRCUS on Youtube. The documentary follows Big Apple Circus during the entire 2008 – 2009 season.

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UniverSoul Rocks Roxbury


The Bay State Banner (MA) is running this story about UniverSoul Circus playing at the Northeastern Campus.

Looks like a great show!

Disclaimer #1: I used to work for the Banner, they are where I learned about the ethics of the news industry, and about digging for a story.

Disclaimer #2: I used to work for Northeastern University as a teacher in their EMS program. I learned a lot about teaching there.

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Last hurrah for the circus school

This is Kent (UK) is reporting that the Kent Circus School will be closing after 18 years of operation.

Sad day for a school that has done so much.

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School’s new degree: More fun than a carful of clowns

The (Myrtle Beach) Sun News is running this story about Coastal Carolina offering seniors a residency program at Circus Center of San Francisco.

Looks like an excellent program!

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Performers Fall During Aerial Stunt

Japan’s “first ladies of illusion” stars Ai and YuKi, two performers that have been amazing audiances in Japan for years. On Thursday, an aerial accident put them both in the hospital. KTNV and Fox 5 Vegas have stories on the fall. A video of the fall is also available

A quick review of the video looks like it was performer error. Thoughts?

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Circus tent collapse at Intl Circus Festival

During a Saturday night performance at the International Circus Festival in Indonesia, part of a tent collapsed, injuring two. The collapse is believed to have been caused by heavy rains and strong winds.

Various news services reported that a security officer had banned journalists from entering the scene. The security officer was quoted as saying “You can’t go there, that is an instruction from my boss”.

Today, the local organizer of Cirque Le Masque, Joko Pramulyo, apologized for an incident. “We are deeply sorry for the incident. We are responsible for this,” Joko Pramulyo, the director of PT. Nant Adi Pariwara – the organizer of the circus – said as quoted by detik.com here on Sunday.

He promised to cooperate with the police investigation.

Part of the tent covering a parking lot in Senayan, South Jakarta, suddenly collapsed during the show, injuring two people – Poltar, 37, a cleaning worker and Ilona, 20, a spectator. The two were taken to Mintoharjo Hospital in Central Jakarta with head injuries.

The police suspected the tent was not built strongly enough to withstand the additional weight of rain water delivered by a heavy downpour Saturday night, according to Tanah Abang Police sub-precinct chief Comr. Hendra Gunawan.

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Int’l Circus Festival to be Indonesia’s annual event

JAKARTA, July 3 (Xinhua) — Indonesia will make the International Circus Festival an annual event to commemorate the anniversary of the capital city Jakarta.

Muhammad Hananto, director of PT Nant Adi Pariwara, the organizer of the International Circus Festival 2010, said on Friday that next year, the company will invite more circus groups to make Jakarta’s anniversary more joyful.

“This year’s International Circus Festival scheduled on July 2 to 11 is the first time in Indonesia. Next year, more circus groups will be invited with more stages. We will re-arrange concept, improve things so that it will be better for Indonesia, for Jakarta,” said the 19-year-old director.

He added that circus will provide alternative amusement for people except music performances.

“In line with our theme of “See the World Beautifully”, we invite people to join us in this joyful moment,” he said.

Hananto said that the event would be also useful to promote tourism in the country.

Such an event is also a good effort to introduce other countries’ culture in Indonesia.

Xiao Junkong, 30, team manager of China’s New Shanghai Circus, told Xinhua that the team is happy to bring the Chinese traditional art to Indonesia.

“We are very glad to show our culture of acrobatics here, sharing with other performers all over the world. We hope that families in Jakarta could see us performing,” she said.

Hananto said that bringing circus groups in Indonesia is not an easy job.

“In circus, there are equipments that hard to find. We have to provide the equipments as best as we can so that they could make their best performance,” he said.

“European teams are from Russia, Italy, German and Turkey,” said Hananto.

More than 250 performances will be performed, involving thousands of people.

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