ANSAN, South Korea — No extra elephant and monkey acts. No extra death-defying motorcycle stunts. No extra singing or appearing on stage.
A number of hundred spectators nonetheless clapped continually when acrobats with Dongchoon Circus Troupe, South Korea’s final and 100-year-old circus, twirled on an extended suspended cloth, juggled golf equipment on a big, rotating wheel and rode a unicycle on a tightrope beneath the large prime.
“As I recall the hardship that I’ve gone by way of, I feel I’ve performed one thing vital,” Park Sae-hwan, the top of the circus, stated in a latest Related Press interview. “However I additionally really feel heavy accountability as a result of if Dongchoon stops, our nation’s circus, one style in our performing arts, will disappear. That’s the issue.”
Based in 1925, Dongchoon is Korea’s oldest circus. Within the golden ages of South Korean circuses within the Nineteen Sixties when most households nonetheless had no TVs, Dongchoon travelled throughout the nation, wowing audiences with then unique animals like an elephant and a giraffe and quite a lot of exhibits together with skits, comedian talks, singing, dancing and magic exhibits. At its peak years, it had greater than 200 artists, acrobats and different employees, in keeping with Park.
Like in lots of different international locations, TVs and flicks later syphoned off the audiences of Dongchoon and different circuses in South Korea. Their actors, singers and comedians moved to TV stations, and a few turned larger stars. The arrival of the web, video video games {and professional} sports activities have been one other blow. South Korean circuses additionally dropped animal exhibits that confronted protests by animal rights campaigners.
Now, Dongchoon is the one circus in South Korea in spite of everything its rivals went out of enterprise.
Park, who joined Dongchoon in 1963, served as a present host and typically sang and acted within the circus’s drama applications. He left the circus in 1973 and ran a profitable grocery store enterprise. In 1978, he returned to the circus business by taking up Dongchoon, which was put up on the market after devastating hurricane harm.
Park, now 80, stated he apprehensive Dongchoon might disappear into historical past after seeing newspaper studies that its property can be cut up into components and bought.
“I assumed Dongchoon should not disappear. Once we need to research the roots of our nation’s dramas, we must always look again on the traces of Dongchoon. The identical goes for the historical past of our different exhibits, conventional music performances and magic exhibits in addition to circuses themselves,” Park stated.
Heo Jeong Joo, an knowledgeable on the All That Heritage Analysis Institute, additionally values extremely the legacy of Dongchoon, which she stated integrated many conventional performers and artists who operated earlier than its 1925 founding.
“Its basis exceeds 100 years. In a historic perspective, I feel it must be designated as an intangible cultural asset,” Heo stated.
Park stated he nearly closed the circus in 2009 after his exhibits drew solely 10-20 spectators every for a number of months throughout a widespread flu outbreak. It survived after native media studies sympathizing with the plight of Dongchoon prompted many individuals to flock and absolutely pack exhibits for weeks, he stated.
Since 2011, Dongchoon has been acting at a giant prime at a seaside vacationer space in Ansan, simply south of Seoul. Its circus staff additionally incessantly journey to different areas for momentary exhibits. Dongchoon officers stated their enterprise is doing comparatively nicely, drawing a number of hundred spectators on weekdays and as much as 2,000 on weekends at Ansan alone.
Ansan official Sharon Ham stated native tourism has been boosted by Dongchoon’s presence. She stated Dongchoon exhibits are well-liked with each older generations desirous to recall childhood recollections of circuses and youthful generations looking for one thing new.
“It was a really spectacular and significant circus,” Sim Chung-yong, a 61-year-old spectator, stated after one present final week. “However I additionally thought of how a lot massive pains and hardships these circus acrobats underwent to carry out like this.”
Dongchoon officers say they now provide solely acrobatic performances and chorus from too-risky acts as a result of many individuals do not like them any longer.
Its all 35 acrobats at the moment are Chinese language, as a circus job is mostly shunned by extra prosperous South Koreans who think about it too harmful and low-paying. Park stated he purchased land at Ansan the place he hopes to construct a circus faculty to nurture South Korean circus artists.
Xing Jiangtao, 37, has been working for Dongchoon since 2002 — initially as an acrobat and now as its efficiency director. He recalled that when he first got here to South Korea, he and his Chinese language colleagues all labored as assistants to Dongchoon’s 50 South Korean acrobats however they’ve all left one after the other.
“Now, it is the one circus in South Korea, and I hope we’ll create good circus performances to point out to spectators in order that we will help Dongchoon exist for one more 100 years,” Xing stated in fluent Korean.
