Difference between revisions of "Elsane"

Aerialist

By Dominique Jando

The remarkable German trapezist Elsane (1906-1997) had a meteoric circus career: After only ten years performing high under the cupola, a bad fall obliged her to abandon her trapeze; she had been until then a true circus star whose ballet training and her past as an acrobatic dancer had made her a headliner in circuses and on variety stages all over Europe, North Africa, and even the Middle East (at a time when performing there—sometimes in prestigious venues—was still a common occurrence).

From Else Jaekel…

She was born Else Jaekel on October 26, 1906, in Kossakau in Pomerania, near Danzig (today Gdansk), in what was then Eastern Prussia (Kossakau is today Kosakowo, in Poland). She didn't belong to a circus family, but she was attracted at an early age to ballet and studied it, before meeting Rudolf von Laban (1879-1958), an Austro-Hungarian pioneer of modern dance considered to be the "founding father of expressionist dance." This led Else to evolve toward acrobatic dance—a specialty that was very popular between the two World Wars.

When she began performing in the early 1920s, right after WWI, German names were not always well received in Europe, so Else gave a French flavor to hers: Else Jaekel became Jacqueline Elsane. Very attractive, with a beautiful figure and a natural grace that came from her ballet training, she had no difficulty finding engagements in the variety circuit, either in dancing companies or as a solo performer. She eventually made a name for herself and worked in many of Europe’s major variety theaters. In 1932, to promote her act, she ordered a personal poster to the trendy Spanish designer Tito-Livio de Madrazo (1899-1979), which is still very much sought after by collectors today.

With her French name, Jacqueline Elsane became quite popular in Paris, where she performed her acrobatic dance act in such prestigious venues of the time as the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, the Palace, and the Casino de Paris. In 1936 at the famous Empire Music-Hall Cirque, which was managed then by the brothers Amar, owners of the Cirque Amar—France's largest and most successful traveling circus—she was surrounded by the dancers of the Empire ballet in a piece titled Symphonie en Bleu ("Symphony in Blue"), choreographed by the Ballet Master of the Paris Opera, Léo Staats (1877-1952).

During WWII and the Nazi occupation of Paris, Jacqueline Elsane, the German dancer with a French name, continued to appear successfully in the French capital. There, in 1943, she had an experience that was to change the course of her career: Henri Varna (1887-1969), owner of several Parisian theaters and director of the legendary Casino de Paris (he had also created, in 1924, the Empire Music-Hall Cirque) decided to revive for his new show a tableau that had had a great success in the 1930s, La toile d'arraignée ("The Spiderweb"). The French economy was in a very bad shape during the German occupation, and instead of new revues, Varna had to rehash old productions numbers that he interspersed in traditional variety shows.

In this nonetheless spectacular tableau, the stage was occupied by a vertical net of ropes disposed in the shape of a spiderweb on which a bevy of pretty dancers known as "The Diamond Beauties" impersonated the spider's captured preys. The soloist who played the spider was none other than Jacqueline Elsane. In that role, besides some dancing on the ground, she had to do basic aerial work since she was climbing at various heights, often suspended from the spiderweb's ropes. Audiences loved her, but for Jacqueline Elsane, it was nothing less than a revelation. She had discovered that she was attracted to that kind of work, and she decided to train for a trapeze act.

…To Elsane

The only existing circus school at the time was in Moscow, in the Soviet Union; in the West, one had to find a gymnasium where a retired performer was teaching his specialty. In 1945, she found Edmond Rainat (1877-1957), the legendary flying trapezeAerial act in which an acrobat is propelled from a trapeze to a catcher, or to another trapeze. (See also: Short-distance Flying Trapeze) artist who had successfully achieved a triple somersault from bar to bar (instead of bar to catcherIn an acrobatic or a flying act, the person whose role is to catch acrobats that have been propelled in the air.), a nearly impossible exploit that has remained extremely rare to this day. Rainat trained aerialists at the Gymnase" of the Cité du Midi, a short private alley that opened on the boulevard de Clichy. It was a popular gymnasium among circus performers due to its proximity to the Cirque Medrano. Rainat's teaching methods were known to be particularly harsh but so was at the time circus training in general, and Jacqueline Elsane, who came from ballet and acrobatic dance, was used to hard and rigorous training.

Under the simple name of Elsane (or Miss Elsane), which she will use during all her circus career, she began by honing her skills in 1948 in the circus of the eccentric "Professeur Malladoli" (the name was a phonetic French pun that sounds like malade au lit, or "sick in bed"), whose real name was Albert Raphaël (1871-1970), scion of a rich banking family. "Cincinnatus Malladoli" created, alone or in association with genuine circus people, an improbable series of short-lived circuses—some of which actually offered programs of remarkable quality. With Malladoli, not only did Elsane do her trapeze act, but she also presented a couple of ponies, and two pigeons that were included in her aerial act! She would return to her friend Malladoli several times during her career.

The Malladoli experience was in fact a good circus apprenticeship, which gave her time to finish her act and find her marks. She made her true professional debut the following year (1949), when she toured Spain with The Netherlands' Circus Mikkenie; at forty-two, she just began a new circus career! From there, she appeared at the prestigious Circo Price in Madrid, then under the management of Juan Carcellé (1895-1978), in an all-female production titled Circo Femina. She was already billed as "The most graceful gymnast of all times," and the press called her "The Manolete of the Trapeze," in reference to the amazing elegance of the legendary matador Manolete (1917-1947).

Next, Elsane appeared in another prestigious circus venue, the Coliseu dos Recreios in Lisbon, Portugal, and then returned to France to tour with the Cirque Hippodrome that Malladoli had launched with the Danglades, an old traveling circus family who used to tour in the French provinces. Then, in November 1951, she made the first of several appearances at the legendary Cirque Medrano in Paris. Her act was fully developed then: She entered the ring with a large feather fan and a long skirt, with which she climbed up to her trapeze before releasing it. Her work was a mixture of swinging and static trapeze, and included slides to ankle hangs, and bare-heel hangs. But what made her act outstanding was her grace and her elegance, which made her surpass in style all her competitors.

She went on to perform in major circuses in France, Germany, Belgium, and, with the French Cirque Zerbini, in North Africa and Turkey. Crossing the Mediterranean on a ship that took her to the prestigious Casino du Liban in Beirut, Lebanon, Elsane performed for the captain suspended sixteen meters above the deck between the two masts of the ship. In 1956, billed as "La Elsana", she performed at Paris's Cirque d'Hiver in a water pantomimeA circus play, not necessarily mute, with a dramatic story-line (a regular feature in 18th and 19th century circus performances)., the program of which announced her as La Sirène de la Baltique ("The Baltic Mermaid": Gdansk is on the Baltic Sea). She ended the season in the annual Christmas production of Tom Arnold's Circus at Harringay, the vast London arena in which she performed twice daily twenty meters above the ground without any protection.

After a tour in the French West Indies, she went to perform in 1957 with Fritz Mey's Circus Sarrasani, where she presented for the first time her hand-balancing on the trapeze bar, a rare exercise that had been created Miss Fillis (Aimée Marcoud), and was performed only by Maryse Bégary. (Aimée's and Maryse's teacher was Nicolas Marcoud, Aimée Marcoud's uncle.) When the show was in Berlin, Elsane, who was then fifty-one, filmed a promotional clip in which she performed with her trapeze hanging from a giant crane, fifty meters in the air! It happens to be Elsane's only known filmed document. She had also created by then a corde lisse(French) A vertical rope used in aerial acts, either for the act itself, or to climb up to an apparatus. Called Spanish Web when covered with fabric. (Spanish web) act that had the same quality of elegance as her trapeze act—but was certainly less demanding.

Epilogue

After an engagement at Paris's Cirque d'Hiver in 1958, the French impresario Hubert de Malafosse offered her a contract to participate in a show that he had concocted for Algiers, the Festival International de Cirque d'Alger ("international Circus Festival of Algiers"); it just pretended to be a real festival, and Elsane was supposed to represent the State Circus of Poland—a sly attempt at stressing the "international" flavor of the event—and taking advantage of the fact that the German Else Jaekel was born in what was now Kosokowo in Poland. Then, during a rehearsal, she fell from her trapeze and was badly injured. She was fifty-two years old and, sadly, her circus career was over.

At a time when insurances and Social Security rarely covered traveling circus performers, Elsane started a lengthy lawsuit to have her misfortune recognized as a workplace accident. Tenacious, she eventually won a disability pension, and retired in Solesmes in the Sarthe department, not far from Le Mans. It was a long, uneventful retirement, although she eventually lost her eyesight. She passed away in Solesmes on April 16, 1997, at age ninety. Her short circus career, followed by her long absence from any sort of public life, resulted in that she is often overseen in circus history books, which it is unfortunate since she was indeed one of the most talented and beautiful trapeze artists of the second half of the Twentieth Century.

Suggested Reading

• Denis Granai, Elsane, Une vie de Roman… du Music-Hall au Cirque (Malensac, Editions de Matignon, 2024) — ISBN 9782911-932830

Image Gallery

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  Jacqueline Elsane (1934)

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  Cirque Bureau (1953)

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  Elsane (c.1955)