[NYPOST] Ah, the circus. It’s a time-honored tradition, but the practice of training animals to do silly things for the amusement of youngsters is definitely old-fashioned and there are many reasons why it’s not a popular as it once was.Most notably a rise in ticket prices well beyond affordability, and an all-out assault by PETA.
The treatment of circus animals is one of the biggest criticisms of modern circus companies and many people don’t feel that animals should be forced to perform for our entertainment.
I took my wife and daughter to see the Moscow Circus, many years ago, in a saner age. It was a cultural exchange group made up of regional circuses in the Soviet Union, and it played the Kennedy Center. They had one guy who had trained cats (as in house cats) to do handstands. But, really, the kitties shouldn't have been forced to perform for our entertainment. What the hell is a four-year-old girl's smile worth, anyway?
Germany’s Circus Roncalli has heard those criticisms and taken them to heart. You can still go to a Roncalli performance and see animals like elephants and horses, only now the animals won’t actually be real, they’ll be high-definition holograms.
My attendance will be pretend, too.
The company phased out using live animals in its shows back in 2017, but the addition of holograms is a relatively new development.
Stupid, but new.
Roncalli partnered with a company called Bluebox to install a holographic display system built by Optoma. A total of 11 Optoma devices make up the system and the results are truly something to behold.
But I won't behold them, and my daughter's daughter will never see a house cat do a hand stand.