Marina Mayatska Trainer Date of Birth: 26.02.1926 Country: Russia

Marina Mayatskaya - a Famous Animal Trainer and Clown

People easily admit that they don't like to read books, go to the movies, or listen to chamber music... But it's not easy to admit that you don't like the circus. It's equivalent to admitting that you have stopped being a child. Almost all children love the circus, and almost all adults want to remain children for as long as possible. The circus is always a celebration... for the audience. But for someone, it's hard work. And a whole life. Women and predators - this always intrigues, especially if the woman is beautiful. Marina Mayatskaya is a well-known animal trainer of cheetahs and... also a clown. After performing with cheetahs, she transforms into a red-nosed clown with a big smile that entertains the audience in the arena along with a colorful dog company. But these facts, although they beg to be put in the first place, are not the main ones. The main thing, perhaps, is that Marina was born into a circus family. And that means she had almost no chance of becoming anything other than a circus artist. Her father, Petr Mayatsky, worked in various circus genres during his life and is considered one of the greatest authorities in circus art. His name can be found in many circus and theatrical encyclopedias. He invented the stunning "Ball of Courage," in which he and his wife, Nadezhda Mayatskaya, rode racing motorcycles at breakneck speed. Before becoming an animal trainer, Marina worked in the "Ball of Courage" with them. And this is perhaps no less dangerous than entering a cage with a predator. Marina's personal life is also connected with the circus. However, there is no other way. Her husband, Nikolay Ponukalin, also comes from an old circus family. His mother, Vera Volkova, trained monkeys and then horses. Nikolay also started his circus career with horse training and now works together with Marina, considering that they have a wonderful family and work partnership. Who was the first circus artist in the Mayatsky family? Marina's father. He started working in the circus at the age of sixteen, even during the time of Tsarist Russia. And he was a power acrobat. Private circus-balaganas traveled all over the country at that time. What does it mean to be a circus artist's child? You wake up in the morning - it's the circus, you go to bed in the evening - it's still the circus. This life begins from childhood. Our children run behind the scenes, among cages with tigers, lions, bears, and dogs. They attend all rehearsals. Kindergartens and nurseries are excluded because, like gypsies, we constantly move from one city to another. Our nursery is a corridor in a dormitory or a hotel near the circus. True, we used to have a "red corner" in our dormitories, where the unemployed wife of a circus artist sat with the little ones. The children crawled around the room with a television, and posters with images of members of the Politburo of the CPSU hung on the walls, and Lenin's bust was always present. Now there are no such "corners" because there is no money to pay for a nanny. And everyone does what they can. How can you go to school with constant moving? We moved from one city to another about once a month. And for ten years, I almost came to a new class every month, thus changing about 60-70 schools. Many believe that constant change of collectives adversely affects a child's psyche. I think such education is much better. Circus children communicate with a large number of people. Therefore, we are uninhibited. And learning is more fun this way. You come to, for example, another republic, and there they study in their native language, and they have different textbooks. It was horribly interesting. And how did your circus career begin? I was about thirteen years old when I first sat behind the wheel of a racing bicycle and started working in the "Ball of Courage" with my parents. At first, we performed as a trio. Then my father died, and we worked with my mother. By that time, I had already switched to a motorcycle. What did the "Ball of Courage" look like? It was a metal mesh ball that was installed on the arena on four legs. It looked like a large spaceship. The ball consisted of two hemispheres that opened from time to time. And we rode in it on racing motorcycles at breakneck speed. The patent for the invention of the "Ball of Courage" belongs to my father. The audience could see everything that happened inside the ball. When its lower half descended onto the circus arena, we rode in the upper part of the ball along the edge, then the lower half was raised back on winches. There was another very difficult trick - the death loop on a motorcycle. It was performed in the dark, with fireworks shooting out of the motorcycle. Now you can see something similar abroad, but unfortunately, there is no such act in Russia. When did this tragedy happen? It happened in Krasnoyarsk in 1975. Once, when my mother and I were working, the cable snapped, and the lower half of the ball simply collapsed. And we along with it. It was just a mystical accident. The thing is that before us, my father crashed in Krasnoyarsk. He spent a whole year in the hospital at that time. He had almost everything broken: ribs, collarbones, arms, and legs. By the way, a year after the accident, he was already working again in the "Ball." After his injury, my mother believed that Krasnoyarsk was a fatal city for our family. She always refused tours to this city. And 12 years after that accident with my father (by that time, he had already passed away), my mother and I were working in Leningrad. Suddenly, a telegram came: we were sent to Krasnoyarsk. My mother went to the Minister of Culture, begged and pleaded to send us to any other city, but she failed. We had to go. And exactly 12 years later, on the same day (January 12), in the same act and in the same place, this fatal catastrophe happened to us. My mother was 49 years old at that time. Are circus artists superstitious? We have many omens that we take extremely seriously. For example, you cannot chew sunflower seeds in the circus - there will be no audiences. You should never put your work costume on the bed. This is one of the worst omens. And God forbid if you sit on the barrier facing the arena. It's just a tragedy. How did your career in the circus unfold after Krasnoyarsk? We were given a third degree of disability with my mother. We had to choose: either leave the circus or come up with something new. We decided to work on animal training and make it something unusual. We introduced dogs into the cage with cheetahs. Nobody had combined dogs with "cats" before us. And after us as well. It's hard to say who was more afraid: the black terriers of the cheetahs or vice versa. These were terrifying dogs that I got as puppies from the military kennel "Red Star." Usually, such dogs guard prisoners in prison or serve on the border. And we ordered cheetahs from Africa. With this group of six dogs and four cheetahs, we started performing in 1977. And after five years, my mother retired. When do circus artists retire? We can retire after fifteen years of work. This term does not depend on when the artist started performing in the arena. But practically no one in the circus leaves after this period. People who have worked in the circus for about twenty years rarely retire on their own. Circus artists can change their genre due to circumstances such as age, injuries, and so on. For example, acrobats and jumpers, after injuries, retrain as animal trainers or illusionists. In principle, almost everyone who works in a cage - with lions, tigers, bears - are former acrobats and aerial gymnasts. Why did you decide to become a clown? I was born a clown. But seriously, it happened because the first group of cheetahs died of old age, and the second group did not accept the dogs. I still had dogs from the first group, but when I tried to introduce them into the cage, the new cheetahs started attacking them. And since the dogs were workers and knew many tricks, I decided to make a second act with them. But in the circus, there is a rule: if an artist starts performing with a second act, they must change their image. That's why I became the clown Klepa. What do the dogs do in this act? The funniest thing is that they don't do anything. They, like me, act foolishly. I tried to make the dogs do everything they liked. If I had only black terriers before, now I have a team of ten dogs: collies, terriers, giant schnauzers, and a mongrel. Where did you get the mongrel? I was walking along the street, and I saw a funny dog sitting on a trash can. It was so small, marble-colored, fierce-looking, with crooked legs. I named him Pupok. My husband Nikolay found a circus suitcase - leather, old, with belts. At the finale, it is brought to the arena, opened, and Pupok falls out of it and starts chasing everyone. He is so cheeky, he always has collie hair in his mouth. And how do you come up with names for your pets? In the circus, there is such a regularity: the names that a trainer gives to their animals depend on their interests. For example, one trainer loved playing cards, and she named her animals like this: Poker, Joker, Valet. Another trainer named his horses after wines, Agdam, and so on. I try to give names with meaning. For example, I have two cheetah brothers, and their names are Chuck and Geck. And in the first group of dogs, I had Athos, Portos, and Aramis. Each animal, in addition to the passport name, has a nickname at home. For example, the collie named Lord is called Goat or Lucy at home. I had a cheetah named Roma. But at home, we called him Mamochka because he licked everyone. Do people ask you to get them a cheetah? Over the past year and a half, I have been bombarded with such requests. People buy themselves three-story mansions, then watch movies about the "cool" life, and they want to have a predator lying in their foyer. I remember when I worked in Voronezh and was training my second group of cheetahs, I suddenly received a call from the police at night: "Marina, we have a lion cub here. Please take it!" It turned out that two weeks before that, a lion cub was stolen from the Voronezh zoo circus. Its night watchman, who was drunk, sold it to some new Russian for a bottle. The "buyer" probably thought that he would have a cute little kitty running around the house, and nothing dangerous. But the kitty tore apart his leather furniture, made a mess everywhere, and after a week, it started roaring wildly because the new owner didn't know how and what to feed it. And so he dumped the lion cub on the police. The police officers put the lion cub in a holding cell and started feeding it herring, which it ate greedily due to hunger. I came and took it away. I fed it for three days. It was so emaciated - all the ribs were sticking out. I named it Timosha. And then the director of the zoo circus came for the lion cub and said, "His name is Caesar." Does working in the circus interfere with your personal life? There are no boundaries between work and personal life for us. When you wake up, you are in your personal life, when you come to the arena, you are in your personal life again. In our family, the husband, wife, and children are always together and always in the circus. Artists from the circus go to dormitories after work, which are usually located on the upper floors of the same circus. Personal life is inseparable from work. On the other hand, in the circus family, everything is simpler than for normal people. We have very little free time, so we have fewer scandals. I believe that the more free time people have, the more foolish things they do. When a family doesn't know what to do, then