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==In The Spotlight==
 
==In The Spotlight==
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===COCO===
 
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[[File:Coco-Nat%27l_Portrait_Gallery,_Photographs_Coll-Humphrey_Spender_1935.jpg|right|160px]]
 
  
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The clown Coco (1900–1974) was arguably, in the middle of the twentieth century (roughly from 1930 to 1970), the most recognizable auguste in the British circus world, and for most of the same period, an iconic figure of Britain’s premier circus at the time, Bertram Mills Circus. In addition to his professional work, he was also noted for his charitable activities and his commitment to children’s wellbeing, for which he was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE).
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===WALTER HOUC===
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Walter Houc was born Walter Hauck on February 9, 1911 in Breslau, Germany (today Wroclaw, in Poland) in a family of performers.His father, Ernst, was an acrobat who worked in open-air arenas. Ernst and his wife, Anna, had two other children: Frederick (Fritz, 1908-1939), and Alfrieda (1912-1984). [[File:Gebruder_Hauck.jpeg|thumb|left|150px|Fritz & Walter Hauck (c.1920)]]Ernst began to train his children in acrobatics as soon as they were able to learn; when he was eight years old, Walter started working as an acrobat with his father, who then built a trapeze act for his two sons.
  
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His legal English name was Nicholai Polakovs (sometimes rendered as Poliakoff or Poliakov), but his original Russian name was in all probability Nikolai Polyakov—or Nikolai Petrovich Polyakov, to be complete, adding his father’s name in a patronymic form according to Russian practice. He was born on 5th October 1900 in a poor Jewish family in Dvinsk (today Daugavpils), in southwestern Latvia, which was then part of the Russian Empire. He had seven brothers and sisters.
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Walter remembered that he was very slim when he started his trapeze act. The brothers were working very high, and their father was standing underneath, watching them. Fritz and Walter used safety straps on their wrists and ankles, which were designed to stop them before hitting the ground in case of a fall. One time, Walter fell and he heard a loud crack: it was the sound of his safety breaking. His father was a very strong man, and he somehow was able to catch Walter before he hit the ground; he had saved his son’s life.... ([[Walter Houc|more...]])
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Nicholai’s father, Piotr, was a cobbler who supplemented his scanty income by working as a property master in a local theatre. The family lived in a state of constant poverty, which surely didn’t improve when Piotr was drafted in the Imperial army during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. To help perk up his family’s miserable condition, five-year-old Nicholai took to singing in cafés, begging for a few scraps of food. It was a debut of sorts in show business—and indeed, Nicholai liked the attention it gave him.... ([[Coco|more...]])
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==New Biographies==  
 
==New Biographies==  

Revision as of 00:00, 1 September 2013

Welcome to Circopedia,
the free encyclopedia of the international circus.
A project of the Big Apple Circus,
inspired and funded by the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation.


In The Spotlight

WALTER HOUC

Walter Houc was born Walter Hauck on February 9, 1911 in Breslau, Germany (today Wroclaw, in Poland) in a family of performers.His father, Ernst, was an acrobat who worked in open-air arenas. Ernst and his wife, Anna, had two other children: Frederick (Fritz, 1908-1939), and Alfrieda (1912-1984).
Fritz & Walter Hauck (c.1920)
Ernst began to train his children in acrobatics as soon as they were able to learn; when he was eight years old, Walter started working as an acrobat with his father, who then built a trapeze act for his two sons.

Walter remembered that he was very slim when he started his trapeze act. The brothers were working very high, and their father was standing underneath, watching them. Fritz and Walter used safety straps on their wrists and ankles, which were designed to stop them before hitting the ground in case of a fall. One time, Walter fell and he heard a loud crack: it was the sound of his safety breaking. His father was a very strong man, and he somehow was able to catch Walter before he hit the ground; he had saved his son’s life.... (more...)

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