The Circus in America

Voltige, a French word for mounted gymnastics. In a voltige act, the rider vaults off the horse’s back and runs alongside it, holding onto a handgrip attached to the harness. Turning cartwheels and somersaults, the rider might spring back up to assume a rear-facing position, before he scissors around to the front. According to the late British circus historian Antony Hippisley Coxe, there are many variations: “voltige à la Richard, where the horse is unbridled and unsaddled (Davis Richard, an American in 1860, performed this act), “voltige à la cowboy,” (where a lariat is used), or “tcherkesse” or “Cossack” riding, involves lying across the horse’s back with the ankle in a loop attached to the surcingle, the band passed around the horse’s midsection. (Antony D. Hippisley Coxe, A Seat At the Circus (London: Evans Bros, 1952) 43. While virtually upside down, the Cossack rider can in this manner retrieve handkerchiefs and other objects from the sawdust floor, while the horse gallops around the ring. The Circus in America.