About The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus
Since 1995 the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus has traveled the world, bringing its unique hybrid of Vaudeville, Circus, Wild West Shows, Burlesque, and Sideshow to theaters, clubs, colleges, and festivals. The company has produced innumerable cabaret shows, custom performances for special audiences, all-ages and family productions, and sophisticated adult shows. Over the past decade the company has began developing more theatrical productions, including 2000's Down & Out in NYC, 2001's Off-Broadway Buckaroo Bindlestiff's Wild West Jamboree, 2003's High Heels & Red Noses, 2005's From the Gutter to the Glitter, and 2008's Kinko for President. In 2004 Bindlestiff instituted its children's performance program, the Cavalcade of Youth, in which young performers and technical staff (ages 3-20) have the opportunity to hone their skills with variety arts professionals.
 The Bindlestiff Family co-founders are Stephanie Monseu and Keith Nelson, who over the last decade have hosted a variety of outrageous talent under the Bindlestiff banner. Their personal dedication to the variety arts, circus, vaudeville, sideshow, and burlesque has made the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus famous both among audiences and within the variety performance community.
From 2002 to 2004 the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus operated the "last vaudeville house in Times Square." In conjunction with chashama, Bindlestiff opened Bindlestiff's Palace of Variety and Free Museum of Times Square. The Palace presented up to five performances a day, presenting continuous vaudeville shows on 42nd Street and hosting three different Bindlestiff shows and nearly 30 guest artist productions.
The size of the Cirkus can range from two to sixteen performers, depending on the show. Over 400 performers from a multitude of disciplines have entertained Bindlestiff audiences across the country and around the world. Bindlestiff has brought its grand spectacle to hundreds of thousands directly and to over a million people more through television. Dedicated fans come back again and again expecting the very best and most original acts working today.
In 2006 the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus and Magic Hat Summer Variety Show made its debut tour. Co-sponsored by Magic Hat Brewing Company, this production sought to bring circus to festivals and music stages up and down the East Coast. 2006 also marked the first year the Bindlestiff performed in a Spiegeltent. This European style cabaret tent provided the perfect background for the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus spectacle.
Starting in 2006 Bindlestiff began working with Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island to provide circus elements for musical theater productions including Sugar Babies: A Burlesque Musical. In the summer of 2007 the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus offered a Circus Summer Camp for Staten Island youth.
In the past few years Bindlestiff has been developing variety arts and circus programs in the Hudson Valley and Catskills. These have included programs in conjunction with Hudson Boy's and Girl's Clubs, Columbia Community College, and Bard College.
Bindlestiff has brought the circus arts to every type of stage and audience imaginable, and some unmentionable. Its shows have ranged from family shows to musical parodies to burlesque Cirkus spectacles. For nearly fifteen years Bindlestiff has been keeping the variety arts alive by performing and teaching in New York City and beyond. Bindlestiff has performed on stages and festivals around the world including Lincoln Center's Avery Fischer Hall (NYC), Glastonbury (UK), Burning Man (NV), Ruigoord (NL), Bonnaroo (TN), and in the Caribbean Seas.
You can find Bindlestiff Family Cirkus alumni working in theaters, festivals, arts centers, streets, circuses, cruise ships, and carnivals around the world.
Links to Additional Bindlestiff Internet Locations:
The Bindlestiff's Webisode Series
Bindlestiff on MySpace
Bindlestiff on Facebook
Bindlestiff's YouTube Channel
Kinko the Clown for President 2012
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Mission Statement
Bindlestiff Family Variety Arts, Inc. is a non-profit performing arts organization dedicated to increasing the knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the history of circus, sideshow, vaudeville, and related arts through activities including performances, lectures, print media, and workshops for the general public as well as creating opportunities for cultural exchange and fostering a sense of community.
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Organizational Overview
At its heart, Bindlestiff is an organization based on the passion of its founders for Circus and the Variety Arts and for the traditions of live entertainment. As performers and creators, we have found that there is no more rewarding exchange than that between an audience, rapt in attention to the impossible suspension of the rules of gravity and physics, and a performer, who has devoted many years to the development of skill and cultivated the means of sharing it. Since 2004, when we began the Cavalcade of Youth and other teaching endeavors, this exchange has grown to include the amazing energy that is transferred between teacher and student, mentor and pupil in the the passing of skill and experience and the cultivation of creativity in others.
We began in 1994 as a fire eating duo “Fireplay,” and soon our imagination sparked with larger ideas. In 1995 we formed the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, determined to work with as many artists as we could, to travel the US, and to make a living doing what we love. We’ve primarily self-funded Bindlestiff’s activities thru ticket sales, only becoming a not-for-profit in 1999 and getting our first funding several years later. Thanks to the support of artists who took very little or no pay, thanks to New York City programs like Matierials for the Arts and other non-profit arts organizations like Autonomedia, with which we have shared a Williamsburg warehouse space for 14 years, we were able to grow very quickly. Without a budget for tech support or an administrative staff, we learned how to do much with very little cash, teaching ourselves about marketing, PR, booking, rigging, theatrical construction, and more. What a tremendous gift poverty bestowed, enabling us to learn every aspect of our craft!
“Circus” is a phenomenon which has greater weight and cultural meaning than clowns in rainbow wigs and elephants in spangles. Humans are drawn to spectacle, need carnival, desire to see the nearly impossible and the potentially dangerous. Circus is a great equalizer, an art form accessible to all walks of life, appreciated by the educated and the novice alike and enjoyable on many different levels.
Bindlestiff has focused since its inception on integrating the disciplines of circus, sideshow, vaudeville, burlesque, magic, theater and music. Our techniques, practiced by each participating artist, vary but are all rooted in discipline, perfection of skill, and refinement of storytelling ability.
Therein lies the unique characteristic that is “Bindlestiff:" we have used circus as a medium to explore social and personal taboos, gender roles, spiritual beliefs, physical boundaries, and limits. We’ve addressed adult audiences with blunt and sophisticated imagery, and we've also found appropriate ways to reach and inspire children and families. We see in our work an opportunity to stretch the definition of “Circus," to help keep it vital and alive in the coming generations, yet to keep it accessible to all. Its historic rtoots as an "illegitimate” popular art form must always be honored. Our audiences have always cited these reasons for supporting Bindlestiff, and for coming back time after time, year after year.
As we look forward, our goals include a facility of our own in which to perform, rehearse, and teach; with a library, archives and a research facility to keep the future of the Circus Variety Arts bright!
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In The Future...
Bindlestiff Family Variety Arts hopes to build and support a network among variety artist by publishing an anthology on contemporary American circuses and variety arts troupes; producing a variety arts directory providing comprehensive information on education programs, venues, and performers; and designing a multi-media education program for exhibition in schools and universities that documents and discusses variety arts in America. The Bindlestiffs are now developing plans for a Variety Arts conference for 2003.
BFVA is seeking a permanent home,a facility that will allow for growth as an educational center and a performance venue. The facility will allow BFVA to organize workshops, teach circus arts, provide a performance and/or rehearsal space to traveling shows, create a cultural resource in the local community, and eventually house a variety arts archive and research center. Bindlestiff plans to create a metro New York based theater devoted to the presentation of the variety arts.
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Board of Directors
Chairman of the Board: Hovey Burgess - Professor (NYU) & Circus Historian
Andy Davis - Museum Administrator & Burlesque Historian
Jim Fleming - Professor (Hunter College) & Publisher (Autonomedia)
Michael Bongar - Entertainment Agent
Ellia Bisker - Arts Adminstration and Music Publishing
Keith Nelson - Entertainer (BFVA)
Stephanie Monseu - Entertainer (BFVA)
Advisory Board:
Advisory Board:
Havona Madama - Attorney
Michael Connor - Computer, Web Technician
Anita Durst - Chashama and Producer
Viveca Gardiner - Playful Productions
Mark Meyers - Marketing
Maike Schulz - Photographer
Travis Stewart - New York Historical Society
Howard Seligman - Accountant
Tina Voltz - Bongar Entertainment
Woody Keppel - Entertainer |
Links to Bindlestiffs Scattered About the 'Net
An incomplete list of other sites with a taste of Bindle
Links to Additional Bindlestiff Internet Locations:
The Bindlestiff's Webisode Series
Bindlestiff on MySpace
Bindlestiff on Facebook
Bindlestiff's YouTube Channel
Kinko the Clown for President 2012
Professional Organizations & Affiliations:
Circus & Sideshow Stops on the Midway:
Bullwhip Enthusiast
Cascade Youth Circus
The Circus Record and Documentation Center
Circus Guide
Circus Amok
Circus-Museum, Denmark
Circus of the Scars
Cirkus Pandemonium
Circus Royale
Circus Web
Clown Hall of Fame
Clown Porn
Cumbustible Kiva a.k.a. Grindergirl
Coney Island Sideshows
Corm Mo
Daredevil Opera Company
Imago - tumbling duo
Juicy Danger
Meets Burning Man
Tom Comet
Christine Taylor
Juggling Information Service
JuggleNYC.com
Jonny Meah
Know Nothing Zirkus
Magic Brian
Modern Gypsies
Mystic Family Circus
Planet Banana
Scotty the Blue Bunny
Shocked and Amazed
Sideshow.com produced by Fredini
The Big Top and the Beast Wagon
The Spice Boys of Amsterdam
Zamora, the Torture King
Festivals, Info Shops, Radical Bunches & Anarchist Groups
Blackkat Collective
InterActivist Network
Anarchist Groups of New York
Autonomedia
Mutant Fest
Blackout Books - closed
Cacophony Societies:
San Francisco
Portland
Brooklyn
Los Angeles
Institute for Anarchist Studies
Friends, Freaks & Fans:
Bingo Gazingo
Cabaret Hotline
Godchilde
Harvest Moon - The Sultry Siren of Burlesque
The Human Door Mat & Dr. Power Nozzle
Jason Little - Bindlestiff Illustrator
Joe Bates
M*A*S*H*cara by Ggreg
Mephisto the Master
Sexologist Dr. Ducky Doolittle
Strange New York
Rocket Number 9 - Mike Connor's Web Movies, including Bindlestiff
Tennesee Project - all-female superhero theater group.
Ultra Gypsy
Zero Boy
Sounds, Sex, Bangs, Booms & Crashes:
Action Theater
Alien Action
Dawn the Fawn
Hungry March Band
The Madagascar Institute
The Ministry of Burleqsue
Seemen
Survival Research Laboratories
Roadside Attractions:
Museum of Questionable Medical Devices
Bizarre Magazine
Interview with
the Cirkus - requires subscription or access from a library
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