23th. January there was classic clown festival in Denmark. Made to honour this lovely figure. It’s not a secret that the European clown tradition is dieing. We have a lot of other clown traditions coming up but the old fashion kind of clowns, with the white face and the two stupid guys had become a rare experience.

In a positive attempt to promote those old figures, Mr. Jan Kierulf was the guy behind this festival. The festival was running over 3 days with a Grand galla show, with the best clowns in Denmark. In my opinion the absolute best clowns in Denmark was missing, Bonbon and Benny Schumann. Jan Kierulf did invite those guys but they couldn’t be there.

I can tell with no doubt, there will be no Danish clowns on the international scene the next many years. They were not bad but there was not much news in the acts and most of them were copies from old performances. We saw the mirror entrée it was okay but far from the standard we still can see performed by The Chicky’s and the Gotys. There was absolutely no original acts and everything was seen before but few of them was funny. Tonny Trifolikum and his French chair act was absolutely okay and it was maybe the only act there could be used in a International circus. All the other clowns were for kids, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that and we can always discuss who clowns are fore, adults or kids. Personally I prefer both but that wasn’t the case here.

A little bit more fantasy and new thinking would be nice because enthusiasm don’t do alone. Try to be a little bit more original, take a look around and find funny situations in the normal world, use them. Slapstick humour is good but there must be a story behind or take up old entrées and find out to do them better. A Nice example is Clown Fumagalli from Italy, he makes the old "Little honey bee give me honey" it’s an old and out of age entrée but Fumagalli manage to do this act so well that lots of international circus around the world waving with contracts.

But anyway the clown festival was very well organized and a success. Lots of children for the surrounding kindergartens enjoyed many different clowns. Six thousand tickets were given away and there were sold out in a few days. I’m sure that the kids had a good time and there were lots of fun. So please keep up the good work and continue clowning.

From a Childs view there was lots of fun and all the kids I saw did have a really nice time. Maybe they had a little difficult understanding the spoken words because of some unknown reason; lots of Danish clowns use a foreign dialect.

But anyway I think I was very nice imitative and I agree it would be a disaster if the old fashion European clown disappears. There isn’t lots of real clown troupes left in the world so lets us try to do something about it and that’s exactly what Jan Kierulf did.

Thanks

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