Circus in Cuba A Contagious Passion

A few metres from Havana′s western beaches and busy Fifth Avenue, stands the Trompoloco big top, bearing the name of a popular Cuban clown from the 1960s and 70s, and the entrance and complement to the Isla del Coco (Coconut Island) Amusement Park.
The big top, long a desire of Cuba′s National Circus, opened in 2005 with the show Ritmo, Color y Fantasía (Rhythm, Color and Fantasy) and since then has become the place for a large audience to experience that most popular and ancient of performing arts.
The circus in Cuba, as elsewhere, is an art that is inherited and passed on. So much so that several generations: parents, sons and siblings, unite in a single act. All of them needing no convincing of the famous sentence of Ernest Hemingway: "The circus is the only show that, while you are watching, gives the impression of living in a dream."

A bit of history
The first references of the circus in the island were in the late eighteenth century. The official records of 1783 mentioned the existence of jugglers, acrobats, mimes and prestidigitators in parks, squares and empty lots during the Corpus Christi festivities.
With the passing of time this cultural expression became rooted in several Cuban families. In the early 20th Century in Managüises, Matanzas, some 100 kilometres east of the capital, the Montalvo Brothers Circus made itself a name built on tradition.

The turning point for Cuban circus came in 1962 with the formation of the INIT Circus, when a blue four-mast tent was setup in the very center of Havana with space for all kinds of apparatus to dazzle the public and answer...