The greatest? She finds stellar stories in family circuses
In today’s newsletter, we follow the stories under the Big Top, pick our favorite Nat Geo magazine covers, unmask the ancient creature found in Scottish sandstone … and discover how these ballroom dances got their cha cha cha.
In a world full of conglomerates, there’s something soothing about a small-scale family circus bringing joy from town to town. Photographer Stephanie Gengotti has been fascinated with the not-so-big-tent—and has used the circus as a vehicle for storytelling.
It’s not just tumblers, jugglers, sword swallowers, and high-wire artists, either. Gengotti catches the husband-and-wife duo of Vincent Schmitt and Florence Dusset (pictured above) dreamily re-enacting their wedding while floating over what looks like a giant celebratory cake.
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Offstage: At Giffords Circus, some front-of-house workers dance while the main event takes place inside the tent. The troupe’s co-founder and matriarch, Nell Giffords, died of breast cancer in 2019, but her legacy lives on.
Before the show: Cirque Bidon’s Fred Zagato prepares for a show; the circus has toured Europe by horse-drawn caravan since the 1970s.
Jumping: At Giffords Circus, members of the Havana Circus Company practice a rope-skipping routine that has echoes of the street games children play in Cuba.
Up we go! Cirque Bidon performer Manon Hantz trains her horse, Luce, in a field in northern Italy. While animals may occasionally appear in nouveau cirque performances, the focus is on the human artists. Read more.
STORIES WE'RE FOLLOWING
• The Tower of London has been terrorizing people for nearly 1,000 years
• 50 Nat Geo covers we love
• How COVID spurred translations of health info to rare Indigenous languages
• Mystery solved: The prehistoric creature found in Scottish sandstone
• Strictly ballroom: How waltzes, tangos, and foxtrots found their feet.
• A photographer follows miners into the heart of an active volcano
• It was America’s first English colony. Then it was gone.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
One thing about sand dunes: Want to see how dunes move? Step up to the edge of a dune’s slip face (shown above). Reuben Wu’s video from our Instagram page shows how wind pushes sand to the top of a Utah dune. Eventually, says Wu, the movement causes the sand “to flow downhill like an avalanche.” Learn more from this story from the Nebraska Sandhills, the largest dunes in the Western Hemisphere.
LAST GLIMPSE
Training the next generation: Nat Geo Explorers worked with students at a weeklong Photo Camp while exploring the Okavango Delta in Botswana. The photo and storytelling mentors included Explorers Jahawi Bertolli, Federico Pardo, Esther Ruth Mbabazi, Thalefang Charles, and Kirsten Elstner. “We are all storytellers, and with the right tools and opportunities, we can be in charge of our stories,” said Mbabazi.
