Circus in Caucasus: tightrope-walkers

By Pavel Tsoroyev, Nazran. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza

The art of tightrope-walking is the most wide-spread type of circus performances, the oldest one in the Caucasus. The national tradition has been preserved because it was passed from generation to generation.

Before the Chechen War, in Grozny, the coast of Sunzha had a circus, the only one in the North Caucasus, not to mention one in Kislovodsk. The Grozny Circus was notable for its horse-riders, the jigits, who were famous both in the Soviet Union and foreign states too. They can now be found all over the world.

I heard about tightrope-walker Usman Dadayev for the first time from one of the tourists at the central districts of Russia. They visited Ingushetia and went to see the circus in Malgobek. Dadayev was dancing the Lezginka on a rope without any safety wire and with a bag on his head. The chief of the Malgobek Circus Studio does those tricks only in windless closed halls. The Vestnik Kavkaza correspondent tried stepping on the rope and fell before taking even the smallest step.

Artists at the Malgobek Circus Studio have different genres of performances, but tightrope-walkers are the rarest. Usman Dadayev is a many-sided artist. He juggles, engages in acrobatics and other activities. Dadayev uses the a balancing tool because a tightrope-walker is always at risk, many have become handicapped. The profession requires the ability to stay on the tightrope and demonstrate skill, plastique and beauty of movement. “I have been practicing this art since childhood and after graduation at the Moscow Estrade and Circus School of Rumyantsev, equilibristics have become my profession. Mastery in our genre can only be achieved through everyday exhausting training. One must always stay fit. Hard work remains the main condition of this art, which is why few people dedicate their lives to the circus,” says the tightrope-walker.

As a student in the early 1990s, Usman was working at the cinema. He was a stunt for Jean Louis in the French comedy “Happiness.” It needed a stunt who would fall to the middle of a tightrope, turn over and fall without a safety wire into a cannon 8m down. It was a big risk.

Usman Dudauev is proud to be friends with Mahmoud Esambayev who directed his dance on a rope in 1993. Dadayev says that it is hard to find circus enthusiasts these days. The circus is back-breaking work.