Video: Lax’s Friends, the Cristiani Circus Acrobats, in Action

“I knew right away that a big thing had happened.  I’ve never gotten over it.”

–Robert Lax on first meeting the Cristiani family of circus acrobats, who became his friends and inspired his thinking about life as pure act.  He later traveled with them through Western Canada, performing sometimes as a clown called Chesko.

 

Note from M. McGregor: Last week I stopped at the Ringling Brothers circus museum in Sarasota, Florida, where the Cristianis used to winter, and found this video of the Cristiani brothers performing back when Lax knew them in the 1940s: