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Comment by dcwca | Hacker News Reader

Step right up to one of the many amazing animal-free circuses. Cirque du Soleil in particular puts on an incredible show.

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/amazing-anima...

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I think the decision not to have animals in the Cirque du Soleil was also a business decision: animals are expensive and unreliable, so cutting them reduced expenses a lot. The downside was that there were no exotic animals to draw people to the show, so maybe less demand.

Times had changed though. Back when Barnum & Bailey got started, elephants were truly exotic: many people who went to the show had never seen them before. Even photographs were rare. When Cirque got started in the 1980s, elephants were not mysterious exotic creatures any more.

I always thought of Cirque de Soleil as a more of an adult show? No? Not that there is adult content, but I had the impression that they are marketed towards entertaining adults. Do they market to families as well?

Ringling Bros always were a thing to bring your kids to, they were always marketed primarily towards children. I can totally see an adult couple going to Cirque de Soleil, I can't really see an adult couple going to Ringling Bros without children.

I may be way off base here.

Wild animals appeal mostly to children. I gotta agree though, animal acts are totally outdated. Especially now.

For Cirque, I think it was a business decision but also a different market than Ringling Bros.

There's a Cirque du Soleil show with more adult content: https://www.cirquedusoleil.com/zumanity

I would say that cirque markets itself to both adults and families, while Ringling Bros. and traditional circuses market themselves solely to families. We took our 3 year old to Cirque and he was talking about it for days. There's plenty of packages / concessions / etc. when you go to a Cirque show that are obviously targeted at kids.

That's awesome they do both. I only ever even heard of them as an adult so I didn't know.

(I wanted to go to a show but my other half vetoed....)

Cirque du Soleil does put on an amazing show, but their medium is much closer to modern dance, ballet, opera, or musical theater than to the historical Ringling Bros. If you're in an IATSA hall on Broadway or at a casino, you're not the circus.

Couldn't agree more.

There's still shit like Cavalia, capitalizing on the chic of Soleil while still forcing animals to perform.

Queue complaints about how acrobats' living/working conditions are just as poor in 3.. 2.. 1..

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