Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® Launches 2013 North
American Tour With Built To Amaze!(SM)
VIENNA, Va., Dec. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Ringling
Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® proudly announces
Built To Amaze!SM, a new 90-city North American
tour. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® Presents
Built To Amaze!, is an extraordinarily engineered circus
experience where Children Of All Ages® find out what it
takes to build The Greatest Show On Earth®. The foundation
is set and the rising anticipation of high-energy, high-jinx and
hilarity is ready to be transported by colorful circus machinery
and unleashed from shipping crates right before the audience's
eyes!
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121219/PH32588LOGO
)
"Ringling Bros. Presents Built To Amaze! takes a
child's curiosity of how things all around us work by showcasing
the very best performers from around the world, both human and
animal," says Nicole Feld, producer.
"Ringling Bros. Presents Built To Amaze! is a blast
of excitement created in a fun way of girls versus boys that will
leave audiences cheering for their favorite performers!"
Built To Amaze! opens with the All-Access Pre-show
where everyone is invited to join the fun and meet the Built To
Amaze! international cast of performers as they prepare for the
show. The Ringling Bros.® Ringling Girls and Barnum B-Boys
encourage kids to participate in a tug-of- war and kick off what
will soon become an insane battle of girl power versus boy power in
Built To Amaze! Audiences also can pick up some hip dance
moves during the dance party, try on custom designed costumes,
learn circus skills like juggling from the famous Ringling
Bros. Clown Alley and even have the opportunity to witness and
win a one of a kind masterpiece created by Asia, Ringling Bros. very own painting
pachyderm!
"As producers of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey,
we love to challenge our creative teams and this year Rye Mullis is
leading the Built To Amaze! team as the youngest director in
Ringling Bros. history," says Alana
Feld, producer. "Rye is bringing to life an unforgettable
experience bursting with amazing performers, brightly colored
construction equipment with oversized power tools, fantastic
costumes, cool music, great choreography and brilliant
lighting."
Andre McClain, Ringmaster and
America's favorite cowboy takes the Ringling Bros. reins and
accompanied by his horse Comanche, leads his Built To Amaze!
funny and mischievous super circus supervisors, to construct The
Greatest Show On Earth. A fantastic design with more than 110
of the world's best performers representing 17 countries along with
95 exotic and domestic animals will be assembled, creating
never-before-seen heart pounding performances. Ringling
Bros. is thrilled to introduce nine-time international award
winning comedic animal presenting duo Alex
and Irina Emelin of Russia.
Also new to Ringling Bros. is the Tower Tumblers, a
troupe of competitive aerial athletes from the Ukraine who launch themselves from trampolines
to scale, repel and pass through a three-story high translucent
tower. Ringling Bros. brings a spirited and fiery
competition of basketball with the next generation of whirling
unicyclists, the legendary King Charles
Troupe hailing from New York
City!
Ringling Bros. Presents Built To Amaze! will
travel more than 30,000 miles over two years on the world's
longest, privately owned train to present audiences with riveting
acts and astonishing animal presentations including:
Builders in their own right, Alex and
Irina Emelin have spent years constructing unique acts
full of comedy, animals, magic and dynamic athleticism earning the
married couple nine international comedy awards. The result is a
custom built comedic duo with an eclectic animal menagerie,
including 16 black and white poodles. Hilarious mischief is
non-stop as they compete against one another to construct The
Greatest Show On Earth! In addition to their many Built To
Amaze! responsibilities, Alex and Irina perform an animal magic
transformation with an outcome so outrageous that it is guaranteed
to leave audiences speechless.
Tabayara, standing fearless inside the tiger arena, eye
to eye with 13 ferocious exotic big cats, creates a thrilling
display of absolute amazement between a man and his tigers. In
Built To Amaze, he presents a remarkable new element as four
tigers, each poised with just one razor sharp claw on a spindle and
using their hind legs rotate in perfect unison. Tabayara and these
mighty tigers jump, roar and dance, and have the audience on the
edge of their seats.
The King Charles Troupe
was first featured in 1969 by Ringling Bros. producer
Irvin Feld, grandfather of producers
Nicole Feld and Alana Feld. Now a new generation of producer and
performer has come together again. Twelve basketball players
present a continuous, whirling display of one-wheeled excitement
while perilously perched on unicycles, some teetering more than ten
feet in the air! Audiences will be astounded at the troupe's
agility and balance as each team dribbles, passes, shoots and
weaves their way with outrageous skill and high-speed comedic
antics in the wackiest game of b-ball ever played.
The Tower Tumblers, a troupe of ten competitive aerial
athletes that will leave audiences spell-bound by using an unusual
trampoline apparatus to perform rare acrobatic combinations of
calculated strength and daring precision to defy gravity. The
troupe uses two trampolines as spring boards to catapult their
bodies in a whimsical but harmonized, freestyle aerial tumble where
they dive over, around and even through a three-story high
translucent tower!
The Danguir Family dazzle as they raise the roof, looming
high above the arena floor, on a high-wire as thin a pencil, as
they execute difficult acrobatics and dangerous stunts. The
Danguir's construct two-man pyramids and intricate jumps, including
an incredible one man leap from one troupe member's shoulder to
another's. Audiences also will witness the inconceivable and
fearless high-wire attempt by troupe leader Mustafa when he jumps a
car length's distance over four troupe members balanced on the
high-wire.
Ringling Bros. beloved animal presentations will
delight all as Ringling Bros. constructs a mesmerizing
living carousel uniting powerful yet elegant Fijord,
Friesian and Arab horses that are remarkably
synchronized with beautiful aerialists suspended above the arena
floor. If that weren't enough, the most popular divas on the planet
will astound as Ringling Bros. epic Asian elephants
show off fresh and classic dance moves to contemporary music
reflecting each elephant's unique talent and personality.
The Human Canon Ball, Elliana
Grace demonstrates explosive girl power! Just 20 years old,
Elliana will amaze audiences as she slips down into the 24-foot
long cannon with a diameter measuring just 30 inches! Inside
the dark canon barrel, she will be elevated to a forty degree angle
where upon the Ringmaster's command she instantly becomes the Human
Canon Ball. Elliana will rocket through the arena sky
experiencing a G-force of 7, the same force felt by NASA's Apollo
16 upon reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, and land at an
incredible distance of 100 feet!
The dynamic Duo Fusion and Duo Solys
hand-balancers, demonstrate powerful passion and insane flexibility
in an exotic presentation of unbelievable symmetry where in a turn
of unexpected events the petite females, Virginia and Tatiana are supporting their male
partners, Giovanni and Hector. These very distinct yet
captivating couples maintain perfect synchronization even as
Virginia attempts to balance
Giovanni, upside down on her shoulders, poised in three inch heels
and Tatiana attempts to elevate Hector with only one arm.
The Wheel of Steel defies the forces of gravity as four
outrageous daredevils including Flavia
Costa, a 5'11" female acrobat, propel themselves with
cat-like ease in and out the spinning double wheel. Flavia will
demonstrate that there is no fear in this feminine feline as she
undertakes an unfathomable attempt balancing dangerously on her
partner's shoulders as they spin the wheel rising 40 feet in the
air.
The world-famous Ringling Bros.Clown Alley, are
the foundation of Built To Amaze! and will fabricate the
audiences' funny bones with hysterical silly antics and clownish
comedy.
CREATIVE TEAM: To produce Ringling Bros. and Barnum &
Bailey Presents Built To Amaze! the Feld
sister duo put together a creative team consisting of:
Rye Mullis (Director) – Returns to Ringling Bros. and
Barnum & Bailey as Director of Built To Amaze!
Previously he was Director for Ringling Bros. and Barnum &
Bailey Presents Barnum Bash, Associate Director for Ringling
Bros. and Barnum & Bailey productions of
BellobrationSM, Over the TopSM,
and Barnum's 200SM. Other notable production
credits include Disney's The Cheetah Girls, Yanni Voices
Tour, American Dance and Disney's Imagination Movers
Tour. Mullis' stage experiences include performances in
Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein
The Musical, Curtains, and Joseph and The Amazing
Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Grant Moran (Writer) –
Head Writer for PBS Kids' 2012 Emmy® Winning WordGirl
series, and currently the Story Editor on Umigo at WildBrain
Entertainment. His 20 year career includes developing works
for Warner Bros. Animation, award-winning shows as
Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Batman.
Moran's other works include Nickelodeon's Rugrats and The
Wild Thornberrys, Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius and Cartoon
Network's recently-premiered Pink Panther & Pals.
Greg Poplyk (Costume
Designer) – Emmy® nominated costume designer returns to design
Built To Amaze! following The Greatest Show On
Earth's hit DRAGONS SM. Poplyk
has designed for a variety of national shows and performances
across the United States including
Saving Aimee, Guys & Dolls, Yankee Doodle Dandy,
My Fair Lady, Land of Nod for
The New York City Ballet, A Christmas Carol, Grease,
Carousel and Show Boat.
James Youmans (Production
Designer) – Design veteran of several Feld Entertainment production
designs including Disney Live's Mickey's Magic Show and
Disney On Ice presents Treasure Trove, this is his
first Ringling Bros. production design. Youman's credits
also include designs for the Tony® Award nominated Broadway
revivals of West Side Story and Gypsy. He has also
worked on the Broadway dance musicals and in the themed
entertainment world he has designed live projects for Universal
Studios Hollywood and Six Flags Theme Parks.
Michael Picton (Score
Composer) – Award winner composer who also has written the music
for the 137th, 140th, 142nd
Editions of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. Picton
served as composer, orchestrator and music producer for Le Reve at
the Wynn Las Vegas; has composed for clients including VH1's I
Want to Work for Diddy, SyFy network series Flash
Gordon, and the PBS documentary POV. He is the Grand
Prize recipient at the Turner Classic Movies Young Film Composers
competition and scored Turner Classic Movie's DVD release of the
1926 Greta Barbo silent movie epic, The Temptress.
Michael Himelstein
(Lyricist) – Three time Emmy nominated songwriter
Mike Himelstein's television and
film credits include Shrek, The Sopranos,
Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show. Including
Built To Amaze!, Himelstein has written lyrics for seven
editions of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. He is
the Composer and Music Director of the hit Disney shows Mickey
Mouse Clubhouse and the upcoming Sheriff Callie's Wild
West. He's written all of the songs for the award winning
Jim Henson's Sid The Science
Kid and is a frequent contributor to Jim Henson's Dinosaur Train.
Kevin Wilson
(Choreographer) – Accomplished choreographer and performer with a
range of work including the highly anticipated feature film Rock
of Ages, as well as Dreamgirls, Austin Powers: Goldmember, and Blades of
Glory. Wilson's work has been seen in America's Got
Talent, So You Think You Can Dance, Your Chance To
Dance, 2010 Miss Universe pageant and the 2011
Nickelodeon Awards.
Richard Schoenfeld
(Lighting Designer) - Richard "Nook" Schoenfeld is a 30-year
veteran of the lighting profession, specializing in the
production design of live entertainment events of all caliber
including concert tours for American music sensation KID ROCK,
award show presentations as well as many televised events.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Presents Built
To Amaze! will open January 2,
2013 in Tampa, Florida at
the Times-Forum. For tour dates and ticket information, visit
www.Ringling.com.
Media can find more information on
http://feldmedia.com/mediaguides/ringlingbros Find Ringling
Bros. and Barnum & Bailey on Facebook and follow producer
Nicole Feld on Twitter at
@NicoleFeld
About Feld Entertainment: Feld Entertainment is the worldwide
leader in producing and presenting live touring family
entertainment experiences that lift the human spirit and create
indelible memories, with 30 million people in attendance at its
shows each year. Feld Entertainment's productions have appeared in
more than 70 countries on six continents and include Ringling
Bros. and Barnum & Bailey®, Monster Jam®, Monster
Energy Supercross, Nuclear Cowboyz®, Arenacross, IHRA
Drag Racing, Disney On Ice and Disney Live!
SOURCE Feld Entertainment, Inc.