Bongie’s Head to Foot
Posted By thecircusblog on August 14, 2010
Bongie was an extraordinary chimp. When he learned his head balance there was no end to the different tricks. He would balance himself exactly like a human. It was just pure luck to have a chimp with this much intelligence and dexterity. I would only think of what head balancing tricks I had seen and within a few days of practicing, Bongie had the trick down perfectly. My father gets all the credit as he was the one that taught both of us this type of balancing. You can see in this photo that he was very proud. As time passed we had to cut out many of these tricks because the act ran too long. It was not to my liking but it had to be done. We pick the best some of the best tricks and embellished the comedy even then the act would run sometimes over 20 minuets. It was never planed to run over, It just did. The comedy that the chimps would ad lib but at times it was completely beyond my control. Probably my greatest advisers were my fellow performers. Their comments helped to build the comedy that we were noted for. Sometimes it wasn’t anything more than “leave that bit in, it’s funny”. One special friend was Tony Fossett.
About the author
thecircusblog
My name is Ivan M. Henry and I am the 4th generation of a circus/show business dynasty. I hope you enjoy the blog.Comments
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I think this is why Castle had you on his show i belive it was the same year we had the Young Bros who did a lot of head balancing .