Luisita Leers

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Aerialist

By Dominique Jando

Luisita Leers

Luisita Leers (Luise Krökel) was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, on October 14, 1909. Her mother, Gertrude, was a member of the Reichenbach family: Quite a strong woman, she acquired fame with an elegant and unusual acrobatic act, Les Leandros, in which she was the . Luisita never knew her biological father, who left the family when she was only two years old. Her mother remarried with Guido Krökel, an aerial contortionist who worked with the Leers-Arvello Troupe; their act combined Roman Rings and acrobatic pyramids, and was mostly an aerial display of strength. Guido took care of Luisita's artistic education without too much tenderness, and made of her an amazingly strong female athlete (obviously the product of her mother's genes) able to hold her own in the Leers-Arvellos's various exhibitions of strength. Luisita made her professional debut at age 11, on March 8, 1920 in Cologne (Köln), working with the troupe on the Roman Rings. Soon, she was able to accomplish one-arm "planges" and an "iron cross" (which were then supposed to belong exclusively to a male repertoire), and to hold with one arm her hanging stepfather. Meanwhile, she was building a solo trapeze act in which she could display her unusual strength, and with which she began a solo career in 1926.

Luisita Leers Trap

Her remarkable trapeze act quickly became a headliner and took her to some of the world's most prestigious circuses and variety theaters—from the Wintergarten and the Scala in Berlin to the Roxy in New York—with a four-year stint with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey from 1928-33. There, she occupied center ring in a program often particularly rich in stellar aerialists—such as Lillian Leitzel, who was the undisputed star of the show, Winnie Colleano, the Codonas, and the Siegrist-Silbons. Her act included a neck-hang on the trapeze bar while doing a "side leg scale," (vertical split holding one leg up), a one-arm "plange(American, From the French, ''planche'') Acrobatic figure in which one's body is held in a straight horizontal position." (or "planche(French) Acrobatic figure in which one's body is held in a straight horizontal position."), and a spectacular series of back rotations around the trapeze bar. The most she did in performance was 139 rotations, but she believed she was able to do up to 180 without any major stress. When she appeared for the first time at Paris' legendary Cirque Medrano in March 1935, the Paris correspondent of Variety, the top American trade paper, described her thus: "Luisita Leers stops the show at Medrano this fortnight… [She] is not only a remarkable performer, from a purely acrobatic viewpoint, but has one of those smiles that knocks 'em over and a body that remains beautiful in spite of its extraordinary muscles. She works high without a net. Muscular control is so perfect that her stuff looks easy, but when she hangs by the back of her neck, apparently just as easily as she did her simpler introductory turns, audience realizes there was something to it all along." (Variety, 20 March 1935)

Luisita continued working intermittently in the U.S. until 1936, appearing in other circus shows and in vaudeville, and then returned definitely to Germany—where the Nazi had seized power, paving the way to World War II. At which point she found herself trapped in her own country; she was eventually unable to work (or train for that matter), and to make matters worse, the family house was destroyed during the Allies' bombing, along with her props and costumes. At age 36, out of shape, and without equipment or money, Luisita was unable to resume her career once the war over. She settled in Braunschweig, in Lower Saxony, where she met her husband, Gerhard Glage (whom she married on August 30, 1952), found employment as a translator, and eventually created her own translating agency. An artist to the end, she also took an interest in sculpture, for which she showed an evident talent.