“When the jubilee premiere of the performance by the New Circus (1981, The Big Moscow Circus on Vernandsky avenue) took place, it received a response from media… Three months after the premiere the enthusiastic responses kept coming. But it was another thing that I remember all my life – the way the spectacle was perceived from the inside, by the circus bosses”, recollected stage director of this show. “…After the evening dress rehearsal a discussion took place. The commission was sent in by the “Soyuzgostcirk” (“The Union of State Circuses of Soviet Union”), and it was led by a party organizer – a person with eastern last name and shifty eyes. It was an overall heavy criticism of the spectacle, and it was loud, circus-like. Those who spoke have not been fastidious in their choice of words: the power and variety of expressions in the Russian language have been demonstrated here quite well. The loudest speakers were some strange old people with sclerosis crawfish-like eyes. As I was told later, they were the directors of “Soyuzgostcirk” – mostly retired, the original genre artists. They did not put out shows themselves, but their “directing” was in accepting programs and numbers. These “directors” shouted louder them all explaining that all of the circus traditions have been broken. The only thing that our “angry” commission did like was a “positive” clown reprise based on “The Friendship of the Peoples” theme, which was put out by the government order. During the reprise, a clown stood in the middle of the arena and other clowns wearing national clothes like a felt cloak, a Bokharan robe, Russian traditional shirt, ran to him from different directions. They said something which was hardly understood and then they fraternized by exchanging their clothes and then left the arena in a group dance. The management liked the “positive” interlude very much and someone had even said with a sigh: “I wish that all the program was performed on this kind of level!"