Mongolia’s performers fight to revive circuses
Ulaanbaatar – Mongolian circus performers fly through a cavernous hall inspectors have warned could collapse any time, one of the few places left to train if they hope to travel the world with their country’s spectacular big top shows.
The decaying, more than a 100-year-old venue at the Mongolian Circus School is where hundreds of young artists, many now performing at celebrated outfits like Cirque du Soleil, started their careers.
Defying gravity in a building shaped like a traditional Mongolian ger, the performers practise acrobatics and trapeze, suspended on ropes lashed to the building’s dilapidated rafters.
One performer, 18-year-old Uuganbayar Nerguibaatar, said he hopes to follow in his sister’s footsteps and take part in international competitions.
With paint peeling off the walls and rusty equipment, the building where the artists practise is simply not safe, authorities have warned.
But for the performers, the high-vaulted ceilings provide an ideal space to perfect the daredevil feats that made the Mongolian circus world famous. “The circus was so popular. We all want to revive it,” Gerelbaatar Yunden, a former circus art director, said.
The circus was long one of Mongolia’s most popular forms of entertainment, bringing crowds from across the country to see breathtaking shows packed with extreme gymnastics, aerial stunts – and even wild animals.
Its contortionists – known as Uran Nugaralt, a practice dating back centuries – were particularly renowned.
But faced with meagre prospects at home, hundreds of the country’s top talents have gone overseas in recent years.
“When we go to international competitions and festivals, we’re always asked to train international students,” Bolortuya Purevdorj, Dean of the Circus Faculty of the Mongolian Conservatory, said.
“But we politely say we don’t have enough teachers or human resources,” she said. “We don’t have training facilities.”
Performers said about 85% of their colleagues live and work abroad, with at least 400 artists in Türkiye and 500 contortionists in the US and Europe. “Antarctica is perhaps the only place that Mongolian circus performers have not performed,” Gerelbaatar said. –