We provide club shows for corporate parties, weddings, children's parties and any other events. Using our experience, we will not let you go wrong. We know exactly what we are capable of dance groups... Good dancers will light up the audience in 10-15 minutes, without arranging boring performances for an hour. With us you will definitely notice how a regular trip to a club differs from a club show. A professional DJ will prepare a special playlist for the party according to your wishes. The host sets the mood for the guests. Therefore, it is important that he exudes confidence, positive attitude and friendliness to every guest! It is easier to command the process when the DJ has his own elevated position on stage. This will help him feel more confident.

Go-go dancing as part of the club atmosphere

If you are planning a party, go-go dancing is indispensable. When choosing dancers, pay attention not only to physical data, but also to emotionality. You can show highly aerobatic figures, but if there is no sensuality, there will be zero impressions. Striptease differs from go-go in that the latter excludes any contact with the audience. Warn guests about this in advance, and you will protect yourself from unpleasant situations.

Club shows these days

European modernist heritage, pop culture from the middle of the 20th century to the present day, modern species arts emerging all over the world, the legacy of the plastic theater of Meerhold, and many other factors of past centuries and the present have played a large role in the emergence of new ways of storytelling, image and presentation, combining them into a single instrument of expression. Contemporary performance show inspired by unification expressive means: photo art, music, video technology, theatrical art, plastic numbers and dance, high-tech technology, sculpture, sports, light and laser tools, architecture, etc.

Club Show Trends

The most popular and club effects for club shows are cryo jets or CO 2. They are generated by special small settings (usually placed right on the stage). The jet blowing out into space is ordinary carbon dioxide! It creates the effect of pillars of ice, cooling the heated show participants. For cryo-jets to make a decent impression, there must be at least 4 of them.

Non-standard approaches to the implementation of club shows

If you want to make a splash at the evening, you've come to the right place! Application dance performance go-go dance combined with lighting equipment, bright luminous costumes, instruments and masks - all this creates an amazing delight. We have a lot of both standard programs and individual ones. The Ultra Blow club show is an irresistible effect in pleasure, on various human instincts: physiological and psychological needs for food, sex and human interaction. Our club show is able to make you feel great emotions, is able to give everyone some ground for thought.

How to book a club show

A club show is booked especially often where the desires of organizers and heroes of the occasion, public expectations and business interests are intertwined. We offer to order a club show from Ultra Blow for every taste: laser and light show, performance shows, dance and erotic show ballets, artists and musicians. Order a show for a club event means to pleasantly surprise your guests and successfully host the event. Using our experience, we will not let you go wrong. We know exactly what dance groups are capable of. Good dancers will light up the audience in 10-15 minutes, without arranging boring performances for an hour. With us you will definitely notice how a regular trip to a club differs from a club show. Are you interested in a club entertainment program? Or do you want to order a separate DJ or just dancers? We have specially created a company to satisfy any customer's request. We make it possible to invite even world vocalists and dancers. Here you will find teams for every taste and occasion. Make a reservation famous performers on your own is not an easy task. We can even order them from abroad.

The freak show began its march across the country in St. Petersburg, gradually conquering the cultural elite in other cities. The reason for the popularity of artists in this genre lies in the skills that every performer must possess:

• perfect body plastic
• artistry
• possession of choreographic skills, circus elements and acting talent
• and only after all of the above - a bright shocking image, emphasized by makeup, hair, incredible costume.

Costumed freak show: choosing performers

The art of creating a freak image is relatively young, so when choosing a performer, first of all, you should pay attention not to the length of service, measured in years, but to the following parameters:

• an individual approach to the development of a scenario and images for each event
• the presence in the existing repertoire of images that match the style and theme of your event
• number of events where freak dancers, live sculptures and other characters from the troupe performed
• recommendations and reviews.

Where can I find performers for a freak show?

the site has an extensive database of artists creating incredible costume freak shows for events of a wide variety of formats. Phantasmagoric characters, for whom performing for the public is a way of life, will gladly entertain your guests at the celebration. The personal pages of the members of our catalog contain a working portfolio and detailed information determining your choice.

How to order a freak show for a holiday?

The personal page of each performer contains a form electronic application... To place an order, you need to fill in the required contact information and feel free to click the "send" button. The troupe manager will contact you to conclude a contract and confirm your order.

In 1932, the famous American director Tod Browning filmed Feature Film"Freaks". Being to some extent a tragicomedy, to some extent a melodrama, the film almost immediately after the end of filming was severely cut by the censor (by about 45 minutes), and then completely banned. More than half a century later, in 1994, he entered the US national motion picture registry.

And the thing is that Browning was not afraid to shoot a picture on a topic that was forbidden by that time. A film about an endangered genre of freak show, about people who had no other way but to make a living by demonstrating their own ugliness ...

Today the freak show does not exist as such. Over the past hundred years, medicine has stepped forward, and ethics human relations has undergone major changes. For the most part, people with disabilities are cured or provided with normal living conditions - and rightly so. In the 19th century, the attitude was quite different. For a huge number of people who today could lead a full life, there was only one road - to the circus of freaks.

But this road also had positive aspects. Many freaks earned a lot of money and could provide themselves better than others healthy people... For example, the legendary camel girl Ella Harper in the prime of her career (1885-1886) received $ 200 a week at the Harris circus! Adjusted for inflation today, this is equivalent to a salary of $ 25,000 a month. A lot, right?

The origin of the genre

Demonstration of various deviations human body has been popular since time immemorial. From the point of view of psychology, this is a win-win option for doing business: even today we are drawn to look back at the disabled person passing by, and we cannot explain this impulse from the point of view of logic. But looking back at passers-by is ugly and inconvenient. And circuses of freaks provided a legal opportunity to look at anomalies, collected in one place and beautifully designed. Therefore, in almost every circus, since ancient Roman times, people with physical disabilities were necessarily present - they had their own numbers along with strongmen and acrobats.

In the 16th century, Europe began to transition to a market system of relations. Traveling circuses have ceased to be a bunch of buffoons who earned mainly alms and handouts. Already in the 17th century, a fixed fee was charged for entering many booths, and circuses, stopping at the fair, paid money for rent. The circus business started to get really profitable. If in the 15th century circus performers were basically beggars, and the circus fit into a single trailer, then two centuries later the circus business became a business.

This is not a real freak, but Charles Loughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). Shiny make-up did best specialist 1930s Hollywood Perk Westmore.

And within the framework of this business, a strange and unpleasant direction began to actively develop - a freak show. If in the days of Quasimodo, the fate of the disabled was poking and rotten eggs, then New time began to bring profits to freaks. It was these three centuries - from the 18th to the beginning of the 20th - that became the golden era of freak circuses: the profit was already significant, and public morality allowed an arbitrarily cruel attitude towards unusual people.

In the 17th century, the first known freaks appeared, who made a fortune on their appearance. The most famous freaks of that time were the Siamese twins Lazarus and John Baptiste Colloredo, originally from Genoa. John was not so much a man as an underdeveloped process growing from about the area of ​​his brother's chest. He always kept his eyes closed, and his mouth open, he could not talk. Nevertheless, he lived, moved and even took food (apparently, the digestive systems of the brothers were separate).

Lazarus, being a completely mobile and slender man (not counting half of his brother growing from the front of him), traveled in the first half of the 16th century all over Europe - Denmark, Germany, Italy, England - and was successful everywhere. Moreover, he later got married and had normal children.

Russia, too, did not shy away from any curiosities. For example, the Cabinet of Curiosities of Peter the Great has become one of the world's largest collections of alcohol-based freaks. This, of course, is not exactly a freak show, but the genre is very close.

V early XVIII century, the genre of freak show spun off from the usual circus. Enterprising businessmen picked up various crippled, sick, underdeveloped on the streets - and made of them something like a zoo. Officially, the first performance of a classic freak show is considered to be a demonstration of a woman "with a monkey head" taken out of Guinea in 1738. True, modern researchers are inclined to believe that the woman was completely normal. It's just that the Africans of exotic tribes seemed to Europe of that time as something completely outlandish, and an ordinary African woman (maybe sick with something) completely passed for a freak. But these are only assumptions.

Nevertheless, in Europe, the freak show remained a rather rare sight. Freaks still nailed themselves to ordinary circuses, and for freaks they often passed off as normal people, just well-made up. But in the early 1800s, the idea of ​​a freak show crawled into the United States. And a terrible, terrible golden age began.

American idyll of Barnum and Bailey

Until the 1840s, American freak shows were not very different from European ones. These were groups of wagons that traveled around the country, setting up a booth in every city and showing off their freaks. Unlike in Europe, American entrepreneurs approached the issue competently. The freaks received high enough salaries, signed contracts for performances - and generally lived like normal people... The only place where they had to endure the shame, demonstrating their inferiority, was the stage. But art requires sacrifice.

And in the 1840s photography began to develop rapidly. The owners of the freak show immediately adopted it: almost all freak show advertisements since that time have been supplied with numerous photo illustrations. The attendance of performances literally in a few years has increased tenfold, as well as profits.

Sarah Bartman (until 1790-1815), nicknamed "Sartji", a native of South Africa, was a famous freak early XIX century, "Hottentot Venus". In fact, she just had steatopygia, excess fat on her buttocks.

In the 1880s - 1930s, several hundred circuses were operating in Europe and the United States, specializing in the demonstration of human anomalies. The most famous among them were W. H. Harris's Nickel Plate Circus, Congress of Living Freaks and of course the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth. The latter is worth telling separately, because it was Pi-Tee Barnum who made his circus the quintessence of all freak shows in the world.

Born in 1810, Phineas Taylor Barnum was a natural businessman who constantly founded companies and firms, subsequently reselling them or giving them away for debt. He managed to visit both the publisher of the newspaper, and the organizer of the lottery, and the shopkeeper, until he came to the conclusion that people can be deceived even more. in simple ways... In 1835, he acquired Joyce Heth, an old Negro slave woman, and began taking her around the cities, claiming that she was 161 years old and that she was the nanny of Washington itself. When interest in the nanny began to wane, Barnum started a rumor that the old woman was not alive, but mechanical, and on the second wave of popularity he collected twice more jackpot. True, then Joyce died. And Barnum found his calling.

Since 1841, Barnum began to engage in organized demonstration of freaks - the midget Charles Stratton, nicknamed "General Boy-with-Finger", the Siamese twins Chang and Ang Bunker, as well as a number of African and Indian women unusual for white man appearance. Stratton was unusually popular in Europe and the USA - he was sent tons of love letters, he was invited into society, and even his wedding with the midget Lavinia was arranged by Warren Barnum as a grandiose freak show.

"General Boy-with-Finger" and his wife Lilliputian Lavinia Warren.

Barnum founded his most famous circus in New York in 1871; ten years later, the name of James Bailey, the co-organizer of the show, was added to the name of the circus. For every freak I came up with unique story and a unique number. For example, the Kostroma boy Fyodor Evtishchev, suffering from increased hair growth (hypertrichosis), on stage only barked and growled, pretending that he could not speak. Barnum paid very well - people mutilated themselves on purpose to get to work in his circus. The long-haired Sutherland sisters performing in his circus (an average of 1.8 meters of hair for each of the seven sisters) made a fortune of $ 3 million at the end of the 19th century!

Barnum set a new trend for business development - he used many methods, then unknown. Spread rumors, viral advertisements, invented spam (paper) and so on. The psychological effect is named after Barnum, when people relate to the descriptions of their personality, supposedly created individually for them, but in fact are an empty common set of words (for example, newspaper horoscopes).

Standard freaks

In the "golden age" of American freak shows (1850-1930), there was a clear classification of various deviations. Every self-respecting circus was obliged to have a standard set of freaks, plus a few unusual, unique specimens. The latter usually received the largest fees; circuses bought them from each other, as football players are bought today.

Bearded women

Ironically, many women have the ability to grow a mustache and beard. The abnormal growth of these purely male characteristics is due to an excess of androgenic hormones in the female body. In the 19th century, a bearded woman must have been present in every circus - there were so many such freaks that the audience “pecked” only at those who had some additional deformities. For example, a gray beard or lack of hands. An ordinary black beard (99% of bearded women are black-haired) no longer interested anyone. Most bearded women married many times and gave birth to children - their peculiarity only gave them a piquancy.

The most famous bearded women in history were the Mexican Julia Pastrana, who was taken to Europe as a child in the 1840s and lived in St. Petersburg in 1858-1860. An unusually ugly Indian woman, she nevertheless did not know the end of her admirers-nobles. She died of unsuccessful childbirth. Famous "employees" of freak circuses were Jane Barnelly (Lady Olga) and Annie Jones, and the Frenchwoman Clementine Delate even ran the cafe "At the Bearded Woman". As already mentioned, this is the most common type of "must-have" freak for every circus in the 19th century.

Wolf people

People with hypertrichosis - increased hair growth throughout the body. The most famous wolf boy was Fyodor Evtishchev, who inherited the "dog face" from his father Adrian. Yevtishchev became famous performing in the American Barnum show at the end of the 19th century. Today such patients lead a completely normal life. Hair growth is inhibited hormonally, and hair removal products have improved markedly over time.

People with skin abnormalities

Today, genetic diseases associated with the skin are either cured or left alone if they do not cause inconvenience to their wearer. The most common group of freaks with skin problems were people with "crocodile" or "elephant" skin - suffering from severe forms of ichthyosis. This disease is expressed in a violation of the horny, upper integument - the skin becomes multi-colored, keratinized, really resembling a crocodile. The famous freak alligator of the first half of the 20th century was Susie, a crocodile girl; in the 19th century, Ralph Kruner shone with his horny crocodile legs.

The second large group were freaks with elastic skin - patients with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. This syndrome disrupts the synthesis of collagen, a fibrillar protein that is the basis of the body's connective tissue. As a result, the skin becomes hyperelastic, and the joints become hyper-flexible (up to the bending of the fingers into reverse side). Today, Briton Gary Turner, nicknamed "Elastic", entered into the Guinness Book of Records, is widely known, and in the 19th century the "rubber man" James Morris shone on the stage.

Skeletons and Fatties

Unusually thin and monstrously fat people most often performed in joint numbers. But if everything is clear with fat men - most often they were people with severe obesity, then “ human skeletons"Are usually carriers of genetic diseases. "Skeletons" were more often men than women, and the upper limit of their allowable weight (with normal height) was 35 kilograms. Diseases causing abnormal thinness could be different - from different types dystrophy to the usual anorexia.

The most famous couple were husband and wife - skeleton Pete Robinson (26 kilograms) and fat Bunny Smith (212 kilograms), who were married in 1924 and were the stars of freak shows for 20 years. Like many "skeletons", Pete had a classical theater education and, by the way, played the harmonica superbly. Skeletons were often educated people who later made a career in other fields - their ugliness was easily hidden under their clothes.

Deprived of limbs

Unlike other freaks who simply demonstrated their bodies, the freaks, devoid of limbs, had to study and work. Because the audience was primarily interested not in the absence of hands, but in the ability to shave with their feet.

The most popular were "live torsos". The megastar of the 19th and 20th centuries was Prince Randian, the "snake man." From birth, devoid of arms and legs, he independently took out a cigarette from the pack and lit, drew, wrote, moved, and was also married twice and had six children. Of the women, Violetta (Aloisia Wagner) was famous, she knew how to dress independently and even paint.

Also famous were the armless photographer Charles Tripp, who demonstrated the ability to shoot with his feet (this is with cameras of the 19th century!), And "half-boy" Johnny Eck, who was deprived of his entire lower half of the body due to sacral agenesis.

Artificial freaks

The integral participants of the freakshow were amazing people without any physical disabilities. For example, women with extra-long hair were highly valued (the seven Sutherland sisters were very popular, with a total hair length of about 14 meters by seven), strong men who knew how to tie a horseshoe in a knot, sword swallowers. In the 19th century, albinos and representatives of relict tribes exported from Africa were also considered freaks (especially women with large ... hmm ... buttocks).

There was a special group of artificial hermaphrodites - people who make up one half of the body for a man, the other for a woman. Particularly famous in the 20th century was a character named Josephine Joseph. Of course, his "hermaphroditism" was nothing more than a masquerade.

Unique freaks

Of course, every circus had to amaze the audience with something absolutely incredible. Bearded women, skeletal people, and legless people were common. But freaks with unique anomalies, occurring once in a million, became the stars of freaks.

Camel girl

Ella Harper (1873-?) Disappeared from the freak show without a trace in 1886. Photo of approximately 1884.

The most famous freak late XIX century there was a camel girl Ella Harper, who suffered from congenital genu recurvatum, a syndrome of inverse bending of the knee joint. She was born in 1873 and if her knees were bent in the usual direction, she would look like a normal pretty child. Starry year Ella was 1886, when she, performing at the W. H. Harris's Nickel Plate Circus, earned up to $ 200 a week. In her room, Ella went on stage at the same time as the camel and repeated all its habits and movements. At the end of the year, Ella left the circus, being the owner of a good fortune, and nothing else is known about her.

History knows another freak with the same disease - "pony boy" Robert Huddleston. He was born in 1895, raised on a farm, then ended up at the Tom Mix Circus and displayed his weird knees for 36 years. After leaving the circus, he opened a car repair shop, was married.

Baby woman

Medusa Van Allen, nicknamed "Little Miss Sunshine," was born in 1908 and suffered from a unique genetic bone disease that caused only her head to grow. She could not stand or sit - and always lay. In a freak show, she usually played the role of babies - she, 70 centimeters, was carried onto the stage in her arms, cradled, rocked, and then she suddenly began to talk, talk about philosophy and literature, plunging the audience into delight. Medusa was the star of the Ripley's human oddities circus.

People with spinal deformities

The most famous freak of this kind was a certain Leonard Trask, who was born in England in 1805. At the age of 28, Trask fell from his horse and suffered a curvature of the spine. Another 7 years later, he fell out of the crew and suffered a number of fractures. Over the next 18 years, his spine flexed spontaneously, eventually burying Trask's nose into his chest. He could no longer see anything in front of him and made a living by demonstrating ugliness. The researchers say the flexion was caused by ankylosing spondyloarthritis, a systemic joint disease, but this is not entirely certain.

Another strange freak was the German Martin Lorello, who was able to turn his head 180 ° and stay in this state for quite a long time. He toured a lot in Europe and the USA, performed with Barnum, was married and even wrote a satirical pamphlet "How to turn your head 180 degrees: detailed instructions."

Penguin people

Freaks with phocomelia were in high demand. With this disease, the hands and / or feet are attached directly to the body - without shoulders, forearms, legs ... A person really resembles a penguin or a seal. The small number of freak penguins was due to the high infant mortality rate of those suffering from congenital phocomelia. In principle, such an anomaly in nature is just as common as the absence of any limb from birth - but 3% of patients with phocomelia survive up to 5 years of age.

To the same "subtype" can be attributed and quite common "people-lobsters" - patients with ectrodactyly. In this disease, the number and shape of the fingers on the hands, as well as the shape of the feet, are essentially arbitrary. Most often, ectrodactylists have two "fingers" on each hand, they are formed by the fused tissues of normal fingers. At the same time, the hands resemble pincers. Famous freaks of this type were Fred Wilson (born 1866), Bobby Jackson (early 1910s), Grady Styles Jr. (a unique "lobster" in the third generation!).

Glory and Sunset

Until World War II, the ethics of human relations allowed freak shows to flourish.

The famous 1932 film "Freaks" by Tod Browning shows a typical freak show - with standard set freaks plus some weird freaks. True, the ethics of this film shocked the public even in those years, Browning fell out of favor and from famous director turned into a Hollywood outcast - he continued to shoot, but failure followed failure.

In "Freaks" the most real circus freaks play. The Human Worm Prince Randian, who was born without arms and legs and gained worldwide fame for his skills. Half-boy Johnny Eck, deprived of the lower half of the body. Conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, fused sideways (by the way, today such twins are separated; but even the ugliness did not prevent the sisters from getting married and divorced several times). Martha Morris, "the armless miracle" and Frances O'Connor (oh, how she drinks wine with her feet in the film!).

The listed freaks were at least mentally sound and played in the film as actors. Problems with the law were caused by the use of mentally retarded freaks - microcephalics Zip and Pip, the “bird woman” Ku-ku (suffering from Sekel syndrome and the blind), and so on. The question was not ethics at all, but the fact that most people really did not know about the existence of freaks. More precisely, they knew, but pretended not to know. And here - ah-ah-ah! - showed everyone, look, there is a freak show in the USA.

After World War II, freak shows lost their popularity dramatically. Society has become more ethically rigid, and the struggle for various rights, including the rights of people with disabilities, has become fashionable. And many freaks, who before the war earned a lot of money and, in general, were happy, after the war vegetated in poverty and obscurity (including the aforementioned "half-boy" Johnny Eck).

By 1955, the ban on freak shows as a phenomenon was adopted by all European states and most of the US states. Freaks could expose themselves by on their own as separate numbers, but the posters with the words "amazing ugliness", "lizard man" or "the best freaks we have" disappeared once and for all.

Freak show today

Another analogue of old freak shows is the Lilliputian circus. There are very few such circuses in the world, they are closed communities and rarely allow ordinary people into your inner life. Some freaks show themselves in different television shows and at club shows. For example, in the USA there is a widely known “lobster boy” nicknamed “Black Scorpion” (he hides his real name) - a man with fused fingers; his hands resemble lobster claws.

***

A difficult question is who is happier - the freaks of the 19th century, who earned decent money with their ugliness, or modern disabled people. If the latter give up all their benefits for the right to regain health, then the former did not even think about this. Their mutilated bodies were their bread, and there was no question of any ethics.

But looking at vintage photos, remember that in comparison with these people you have no problems at all. Even if you were fired from your job, your wife left you and you owe a big mafia boss, you still have no problems.