Cossacks And Tigers And Bears, Oh, My!

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan/Toronto

Corn and kitsch mesh seamlessly with art and virtuosity. Suspended from a swinging chandelier, a voluptuous houri, trailing clouds of veils, undulates to the music of the Ave Maria -- with a disco tom-tom backbeat. Down in the ring, a dozen brown bears juggle, jog and tumble, saucily hugging floral bouquets. Eighteen tigers dance in a chorus line, and a wild horde of horsemen charge around the ring. If this were Oz, Dorothy would certainly say, "Cossacks and tigers and bears, oh, my!" The wizards of the Moscow Circus have finally returned to the U.S.

Frozen out by a decade of superpower bickering, the circus has fielded a 109-person, 42-animal all-star contingent for its current four-month, 14-city American tour, which opened last week in Worcester, Mass. This week it will come to Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall before heading for Philadelphia, Washington and onward, to a finale in San Francisco. Rarely do these performers appear under the same big top in the Soviet Union, where the government makes sure that stars are treated to equal but separate venues. "This is like having several headliners in one show," says Rock Impresario Steve Leber, co-producer of the tour, which is backed by Lever Brothers, home of Snuggle, the fabric-softener teddy. It is the first time a U.S. corporation has sponsored a Soviet act. Call it bear-estroika.

Of all the beasts in the Moscow menagerie, the bears are the most beloved. The animals share equal billing with their trainer, Vladislav Zolkin, and his wife Svetlana Mikityuk, the premier foot juggler in the Soviet Union. In fact, anything chimps can do, the bears perform with greater charm. Shushtrik (from the Russian for "quick") proves as fast on his paws twirling gaudy balls and large columns as Mikityuk is nimble with her feet. During each performance, Foma, who is eight, gives Zolkin a few percussion-synchronize d kicks to put the trainer in his place. Three-hundred-pound Knopa (Button) fancies herself the ursa major of the team. Lying on his back, Trainer Zolkin lifts her into the air with his feet to form a juggling totem pole. Knopa then passes off medicine balls with the ease of a basketball player in round-robin exercise.

Knopa also does groundwork for the most complex piece in the act. She pushes a lever in circles, working gears that rotate a platform on which Shushtrik lies holding a huge basket between his legs. On both sides of the revolving bears, Mikityuk and her daughter Kristina, also on their backs, kick balls to each other over and through the shifting hoop of the basket handle. "Svetlana and Kristina are excellent performers," says Zolkin, "but it took three years to put this together."

However, the bears may bother some Americans. Sensitive to the burgeoning animal rights movement, local audiences may see cruelty in the muzzling of the bears, who sometimes emit groanlike cries. Zolkin, who raises cubs in his Moscow apartment, says he muzzles the bears only to protect the audience. He explains, "We don't work behind a cage, and they are dangerous animals."

While nouvelle circuses like Montreal's celebrated Cirque du Soleil have forsworn animals, the Muscovites continue to revel in bestial companionship. "Circuses have always had, and must always have, animals," says Tiger Trainer Nikolai Pavlenko. Choosing a baton over a whip, he conducts his Sumatran tigers through precision dance steps, hoops and rings of fire. Animals are not human, he admits, but there are similarities. Explaining why he trains Sumatran tigers, which are native to Indonesia, and not those from Siberia, Pavlenko says, "Siberian tigers are like the people of Siberia -- strong, powerful, but gloomy. Sumatran tigers are like the people of the Caucasus, lively and temperamental. Only such emotions can make up this act."

The circus' most spectacular interspecies joint venture is Tamerlan Nugzarov's Cossack Riders of the Caucasus, the most jaw-gritting excitement since Indiana Jones took on a Nazi truck convoy in search of the lost ark. The act opens with a princess on a white steed prancing about the ring. Suddenly, burnoosed cossacks on horseback rush in, racing at breakneck speed around the circus' single 39-ft.-diameter circle. As swords flash in the air, the men slip down and cling to the bellies of their speeding mounts. A metal hoop pierced with daggers is raised, and a horse, its rider slung underneath, leaps through, coming painfully close to the blades. One horseman allows himself to be dragged, and his metal bangles scrape the floor. A single misstep, and it's a fatal case of hoof-in-mouth.

The artistic high point of the circus quite literally comes with the Cranes, an aerial ballet involving not birds but daring young men, and one young woman, on flying trapezes. The act, based on a song describing how fallen soldiers are transformed into cranes, is nothing short of Wagnerian. In fact, as the artists are swept into the heights and the safety net is transformed into a canopy of clouds, the thunder of the Ride of the Valkyries floods the arena.

The show may play best away from the biggest arenas. The tent in Toronto, where the circus appeared in mid-August, brought the audience within a hop, skip and jump of the circus' single ring and its cossacks, tigers and bears. Still, it will be hard to mask the energy of Grigori Popovich's juggling crystalline clubs atop a completely vertical ladder or to suppress the folksy cheer of the somersaulting teeterboarders from the Ukraine. And it will be difficult to keep from smiling when the bear cubs Masha and Motya, dressed in peasant costumes, dance a jig around Zolkin.

In the late 19th century, Russian circus clowns launched some of the first political satires against the ruling elite, actions that gave impetus to revolutionary movements. "It was the beginning of the big bang," says Albert Makhtsier, the circus' assistant ringmaster. Back in the U.S. after ten years, the Moscow Circus will be setting off friendlier fireworks. So give a cheer: the Russians are here!