Rites of Spring

In Manhattan, where elephants rather than robins mark the arrival of spring, Madison Square Garden was again playing host last week to the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey circus. This year there were no Stravinsky or Deems Taylor scores, no Balanchine ballets, no suggestion that the circus is a Fine Art. There was no need for the new wrinkles of the war years: there was once again an abundance of new blood. Forty acts--virtually everything but the animals and clowns--were labeled "First Time in America."

Most of the 40 acts, moreover, are good; the best of them are breathtaking. On terra firma, the Rachellis-Borgianas tumble with unusual style and precision; "Natal" looks and frisks for all the world like a monkey, but turns out to be a man; Equestrienne Claude Valois and others offer some beautiful dressage; and the clowns explode a crazy new contraption called The Adam Smasher.

There is a fine gaudy pageant called Once Upon a Time, in which Sinbad, Gulliver, Aladdin, Don Quixote, Rip van Winkle, Snow White, Hansel & Gretel walk, drive, or ride elephant-back to Cinderella's wedding. Then 52 girls in brilliant billowing pink, hanging by a wrist in midair, do a stylish cancan.

But it is what goes on right under the roof that makes this the most thrilling circus in years. There is black-haired Rose Gould who, roped by her ankles to two men hanging by their heels, plunges from a great height to within a foot of the tanbark. There are the Idalys, he riding--upside down--a monocycle suspended from the roof, while she hangs from his teeth and does acrobatics. And there is Harold Alzana, who climbs up a half-vertical taut wire to reach the high wire, and then (blithely scorning a net) skips rope upon it.

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