David Larible
(ITALY)
 
David Larible
(Verona, 1957)
represents the 7th generation of an Italian circus family. He joined the ring already in his childhood acquiring all expertise in circus. He worked with his family's variuos productions in the famous circuses of Europe. At the end of the 70's he appeared as a guest artist in Germany at the Krone Circus when he took advantage of the opportunity and warmed up the atmosphere of the audience as a clown before the performances. At this circus he could watch the personalities of the two clowns who had the greatest effect in the past century: Charlie Rivel and Oleg Popov. In the 80's David establishes his character: a classic perosnality in simple outfit, the grey colour is in contrast with his gaiety. He is invited to Monte Carlo in 1988 to fill the breaks between the programme items of the Circus Festival: surprising everyone the Jury awards a Silver Clown prize to him. Thereafter he goes on the tour of the most important South American circuses; he performs in tents but also in giant arenas accomodating 80.000 people. He arouses Kenneth Feld producer's attention who signs a comtract with him as an individually playing clown in 1990. He appears as a star, "the Clowns' Clown", for 14 subsequent years for the first time in the 136-year long history of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, the greatest circus of the world. His creator's concept is based on the classical repertoire and the improvisation technique "Commedia dell'Arte": the renewal and rewriting of the classical comical programme items. He won a Golden Clown prize in 1999 in the Monte-Carlo Festival as the first clown. His audience,who followed his career, considers him as the best known living circus performer in the world.David is the Mexican acrobat American Jimenez's husband and Shirley and David jr.'s father.