Gérard Borg was 4 years old when he discovered his first circus. It was in 1952, in Bône (now Annaba) in Algeria, his father had taken him to see the landing in the port and then the Amar circus show, on a winter tour. ” There were zebras, elephants, twenty-five horses and three groups of wild animals », He says, still amazed. At the age of 9, he manages to slip behind the scenes of Pinder, guided by Monsieur Loyal, alias Roger Lanzac. And at 18, he began to buy his first circus posters in Drouot, before gradually collecting everything that revolves around the track to the stars.
→ SELECTION. For the holidays, make way for the circus!
With his wife, Jeanne-Yvonne, a doctor like him, Gérard Borg befriended several great acrobats, sometimes looked after them or welcomed them in his house in the suburbs of Rouen. And the couple have collected thousands of memories drawing a true history of the circus, which extends to the United States and Japan. An abundant collection unveiled today by four museums in their region.
From 1850, hard circuses flourished throughout France
The Rouen Museum of Fine Arts goes back to its origins, with an etching from 1742 showing a Theater of strength and flexibility exercises dedicated to Monsignor the Duke of Villeroy, then orchestrated in the open air. A quarter of a century later, here appear the equestrian shows of the Englishman Philip Astley, the inventor of the modern circus with his circular track of 13 and a half meters. Invited to Paris, the former cavalry officer opened an “English amphitheater” there and made his followers. Evoked by a watercolor, the Cirque d’été (disappeared) designed by Hittorff in 1841 on the Champs-Élysées, sparked a wave of solid polygonal constructions throughout France, sometimes in competition with racetracks like the one on Boulevard Clichy painted by James Tissot.
From the middle of the 19th century, their shows were enriched with acrobatic and gymnast numbers. The crowd comes to distract as much as to rinse the eye, ironically Jean-Richard Goubie, in his tondo showing a horsewoman surrounded by pigs. With more tenderness, Mabel May Woodward or Lucien Simon depict the colorful irruption of acrobats in Brittany in front of peasant women in headdresses and strict black dresses. While the pathetic Saltimbanques by Gustave Doré (superb loan from the Clermont-Ferrand museum) recount the fascination of painters for these marginalized people who resemble them. Later, the Medrano circus in Montmartre even became a landmark for all the avant-garde, as works by Fernand Léger, Max Jacob and Pierre Bonnard recall.
The excessiveness of American shows
A highlight of the Borg collection, striking posters, including those uncluttered by the printer Friedländer in Hamburg, recount the height of the great American circuses of the interwar period, such as the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey. Photographs of Edward J. Kelty then immortalize his considerable troop whose tour involves several trains.
This golden age of the traditional circus explodes in the splendor of the costumes assembled at the former Vallois rope factory, a fascinating industrial museum of Notre-Dame de Bondeville. The boots and frac of the famous Tom Pouce, Barnum’s star in the 19th century, get the ball rolling. The party culminates in the years 1960 to 1980 when the “bags” of clowns are covered with sequins, while a rider turns into a Mongolian archer (costume of Jean Eden for Stephan Gruss) and the tamers into Roman gladiators or Cleopatra ( set signed by the American Don Foote).
Japanese jugglers
Change of scenery at the Rouen Natural History Museum where a very original set of Japanese prints – the last tocade of the Borg – testifies to the Japanese tradition of street acrobats, jugglers and other antipodists spinning umbrellas, vases and spinning tops, not to mention scale virtuoso firefighter festivals. These numbers will be shaken up at the end of the 19th century by the arrival in the archipelago of Western circuses which will in turn take Japanese troops on tour …
In apotheosis, do not miss at the Fabrique des savoirs d’Elbeuf, the section of the Borg collection dedicated to Wild West Show by Buffalo Bill! In 1905, this industrious textile city saw the landing, like 110 cities of France, of the hallucinatory tour of Captain Cody with his 800 technicians and actors, white or Sioux (including women snipers), not to mention nearly 500 horses and bison. ! The giant posters, photographs, films and memorabilia in the exhibition tell the story of this epic that was to impress the whole of Europe. And convince thousands of kids to play cowboys and Indians for a few decades …
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Spring, Norman festival for new circus artists
There are only 9 permanent circuses in France in Amiens, Besançon, Douai, Elbeuf, Reims, Troyes, Valenciennes (now a covered market), Paris (the Winter Circus) and Châlons-en-Champagne (today the National Circus Arts Center).
Saved from destruction in 1975 thanks to enthusiasts, that of Elbeuf-sur-Seine, which has become a national center of contemporary circus, organizes every year with La Brèche à Cherbourg, a Spring festival.
From March 3 to April 10, 2022, the edition will be plentiful with 68 shows including 16 premieres, throughout the region.
Clean. : festival-spring.eu
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