“When Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus opened at Madison Square Garden in the spring of 1942, the program listed as ‘Display No. 18: THE BALLET OF THE ELEPHANTS. Fifty Elephants and Fifty Beautiful Girls in an Original Choreographic Tour de Force. . . . Music by Igor Stravinsky. Elephants trained by Walter McClain. Costumes designed by Norman Bel Geddes.’. . .

There were 425 performances of this circus ballet. . . .

The poet Marianne Moore [saw] the ballet, and rhapsodized in Dance Index over the dancing elephants: ‘their deliberate way of kneeling, on slowsliding forelegs—like a cat’s yawning stretch or a ship’s slide into the water—is fine ballet.”



What remains today of that elephant ballet is the music, of course: Stravinsky’s “Circus Polka”; plus some motion picture film of the elephants in action; and a wonderful circus poster showing two elephants in pink tutus and cupcake hats dancing in a golden, star-studded spotlight. The “strong linear” poster with its frankly flat elephant shapes, “a radical departure in the history of poster art,” according to poster connoisseur Jack Rennert, was designed by E. McKnight Kauffer (1890–1954), who is known in Europe for his many London Transport posters.?”

—John Culhane, from The American Circus: An Illustrated History, 1990.