Dimitri the Clown, who has died aged 80, was one of the world’s great mime artists and circus entertainers.
With his pudding basin haircut, ear-to-ear smile, his innocent humour and skills as an acrobat, juggler and musician, Dimitri entertained generations of circus and theatre goers around the world.
“The plight of a man, plucking his mandolin successfully, who keeps losing his plectrum inside the instrument, becomes an exercise in hilarity,” wrote one critic. “It’s the kind of thing which could happen to anyone and, in the expert hands of Dimitri, evokes delight in all ages.”
“I think you are born a clown,” he told in interviewer in 2012. “I have always loved to make people laugh.”
He was born Dimitri Jakob Müller on September 18 1935 at Ascona, on Lake Maggiore, where his parents, Werner, a sculptor, and Maja, an artist, were prominent members of the local artistic community.
Aged seven, he was taken to the circus. “I saw Clown Andreff and was fascinated by the fact that he had made it his profession to do what I loved the most,” Dmitri recalled. “I knew then that I wanted to become a clown.”
His parents had no idea how to help him, so they arranged lessons in basic skills – dance, acrobatics, ballet, acting, Flamenco guitar, mime, folk dance and gymnastics. After he left the Rudolf Steiner School in Zurich, he was even apprenticed to a potter: “a bit of a detour, but the rest of the activities seemed like the most direct way into buffoonery”.
In Paris, where he studied mime with Etienne Decroux, the 23-year-old Dimitri met Marcel Marceau and was offered a place in Marceau’s course and later in his troupe: “He told me, 'Dimitri, you could be a mime, but you would merely be average. But if you really put your back into becoming a clown, you will be a great one.’ That’s all I needed to hear.”
After his time with Marceau, Dimitri appeared as Auguste (the slapstick troublemaker among clowns) to the Whiteface clown Louis Maisse at galas and on tour with Cirque Mendrano, as well as staging his first solo programme as a mime artist in Ascona in 1959.
In 1961 he married his childhood sweetheart Gunda, with whom he had four children. By the early 1960s he was performing at leading Paris theatres.
In 1969 Fredy Knie invited Dimitri to join the Swiss Circus Knie – the first time a theatre clown had featured in the circus’s programme. He made such an impact that after his initial showing (in which he was partnered by an elephant), the Knies brought him back in 1973, when he worked with a cow, a pig and a donkey and was joined in the ring by his children. He also toured Switzerland with Circus Knie in 1979.
In the meantime, in 1971 Dimitri and his wife had founded the Teatro Dimitri in the Swiss town of Verscio. Four years later they established the Scuola Teatro Dimitri, a circus school for young artistes, followed, in 1978, by the Compagnia Teatro Dimitri.
Their success led to invitations to perform all over the world. In 1974 Dimitri appeared for the first time in the US, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, followed by a major tour in 1975. He made his debut in Britain in 1982 in the first of several tours beginning at the Bernard Sax Shaw Theatre in London. In 1995 he did a tour of war-torn Sarajevo as an ambassador for Unicef. “All people like to laugh and a humour that is innocent, situational and kind defies cultural and national borders,” he said. “If something is truly funny, it will always be funny.”
In later life Dimitri directed and choreographed shows for the Wiener Kammeroper and other European theatres, and directed shows for the Swiss Circus Monti.
Three of Dmitri’s children, his two daughters, Masha and Nina, and his son David, became successful performing artists, and in 2006 they appeared alongside their father in La Famiglia Dimitri, a burlesque show featuring juggling, cycling, singing, and high wire acts, that enjoyed a successful run on Broadway.
In 1973, he was awarded the Grock prize, and he was inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame in 1995.
He is survived by his wife and children.
Dimitri the clown, born September 18 1935, died July 19 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment