Moscow Circus Experience

I have never been one to want to go to the circus. For starters, I have a phobia of clowns. Yet I found myself attending the Moscow circus, and wondering if my opinion would be changed.

I went along to a Sunday afternoon show, and after paying $44 for the cheapest ticket available. To my relief, the clowns were not your traditional variety, and looked much more like normal people, with no big red noses or large shoes, and no cackling laughs.

The clowns started the show by getting the audience to chant, each trying to have their side louder.

The rest of the show is a variety of acrobatics and funny antics.

Where I was sitting, there was a big fan to allow airflow into the tent, which made a lot of the comments very hard to hear and cut me off from the action. This wasn’t helped by the storyline that was introduced at the start, and strangely referred to throughout the show, something to do with Motherland Russia. It was a very inconsistent plot line, only referred to a handful of times during the two hour show.

The acrobatics were incredible. I found myself constantly grimacing, as it seemed that stunts could go wrong so easily. It really was edge of the seat stuff.

Audience member Sarah Withers, a  University of Canberra graduate and now teacher, was impressed by the spectacle of the show.

“It was very exciting, with some outstanding and breathtaking acts,” she said.

Another audience member was Peter Ford, a student from Australian National University and he believed that while the stunts were impressive, the length of many of the acts were out.

“A few acts could have gone longer and some of them were stretched out to long,” he told me.

Personally, I too found myself enjoying the event though. There is something strangely appealing about watching knives being thrown at someone who is blind folded, or miniature ponies doing tricks.

As for the five motorbikes in the sphere shaped cage, how one has the guts to do that is beyond me!