2013 WORLD CIRCUS IN MONGOLIA
The National Circus of Mongolia in association with "Development Center of Mongol Circus" NGO and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is organizing the "World Circus in Mongolia" event at the ASA Circus, Ulaanbaatar between March 25 and April 07, 2013. At the attractions, over 60 circus artistes from 14 countries are invited to take part, including fabulous troupes from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Canada, China, Finland, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary, Russia, Spain, Ukraine, United State, Viet Nam and Mongolia.
This is a largest scale event ever organized in 30 years, particularly an International Circus performance was organized in the frames of “Friendship of Brotherhood Socialist Countries” in Ulaanbaatar back in 1983.
Mongol Circus is famous for its Mongolian traditional contortion, which is one of precious and rare heritage elements created and practiced by Mongolians, moreover it is the cultural heritage of Mongolians that they developed, trained, transmitted and distributed for generations. Contortionism is an acrobatic dance mixing acrobatics and circus acts which involve dramatic bending and flexing of the human body. Contortion is a form of traditional art to display beauty of the human body based on flexibility of women through various breathtakingly dramatic bending, folding and flexing positions which involve Mongolian traditional dance elements. In any period in the history of Mongolian traditional contortion, the transmitters of this school were few individuals.
The main location of Mongolian contortion school is in Ulaanbaatar, along with cities of Erdenet and Darkhan. Mongolian
contortion training has been conducted since 1940. It existed only within Mongolia until 1990 and since then, Mongolian contortionists performed and introduced Mongolian contortion abroad. The Government of Mongolia took into its consideration that the tradition of Mongolian contortion is a unique intangible heritage of Mongolia and registered Mongolian contortion in the National Urgent Safeguarding List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, besides Mongolia nominated its traditional contortion for Inscription on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Human, UNESCO in 2011.
