The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus is returning after shutting down for six years amid low ticket sales and animal rights lawsuits.
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The self-proclaimed “Greatest Show on Earth” is back. Only without the snarling and trumpeting beasts that made the 152-year-old American circus famous. Which begs a few existential cultural questions. Is a circus a circus without the indelible spectacle of a lion leaping through fire or an elephant pirouetting on a ball? And is the circus a circus when, technically, it’s no longer even called a circus?
Juliette Feld Grossman, daughter of longtime Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey owner Kenneth Feld, is banking on the answer coming in the form of an elated crowd’s roar, despite the show’s six-year hiatus.
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