Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® Launches 2013 North American Tour With Built To Amaze!(SM)

VIENNA, Va., Dec. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® proudly announces Built To Amaze!^SM, a new 90-city North American tour.  Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® Presents Built To Amaze!, is an extraordinarily engineered circus experience where Children Of All Ages® find out what it takes to build The Greatest Show On Earth®. The foundation is set and the rising anticipation of high-energy, high-jinx and hilarity is ready to be transported by colorful circus machinery and unleashed from shipping crates right before the audience's eyes!

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121219/PH32588LOGO )

"Ringling Bros. Presents Built To Amaze! takes a child's curiosity of how things all around us work by showcasing the very best performers from around the world, both human and animal," says Nicole Feld, producer. "Ringling Bros. Presents Built To Amaze! is a blast of excitement created in a fun way of girls versus boys that will leave audiences cheering for their favorite performers!"

Built To Amaze! opens with the All-Access Pre-show where everyone is invited to join the fun and meet the Built To Amaze! international cast of performers as they prepare for the show. The Ringling Bros.® Ringling Girls and Barnum B-Boys encourage kids to participate in a tug-of- war and kick off what will soon become an insane battle of girl power versus boy power in Built To Amaze! Audiences also can pick up some hip dance moves during the dance party, try on custom designed costumes, learn circus skills like juggling from the famous Ringling Bros. Clown Alley and even have the opportunity to witness and win a one of a kind masterpiece created by Asia, Ringling Bros. very own painting pachyderm!

"As producers of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, we love to challenge our creative teams and this year Rye Mullis is leading the Built To Amaze! team as the youngest director in Ringling Bros. history," says Alana Feld, producer. "Rye is bringing to life an unforgettable experience bursting with amazing performers, brightly colored construction equipment with oversized power tools, fantastic costumes, cool music, great choreography and brilliant lighting."

Andre McClain, Ringmaster and America's favorite cowboy takes the Ringling Bros. reins and accompanied by his horse Comanche, leads his Built To Amaze! funny and mischievous super circus supervisors, to construct The Greatest Show On Earth. A fantastic design with more than 110 of the world's best performers representing 17 countries along with 95 exotic and domestic animals will be assembled, creating never-before-seen heart pounding performances. Ringling Bros. is thrilled to introduce nine-time international award winning comedic animal presenting duo Alex and Irina Emelin of Russia.  Also new to Ringling Bros. is the Tower Tumblers, a troupe of competitive aerial athletes from the Ukraine who launch themselves from trampolines to scale, repel and pass through a three-story high translucent tower. Ringling Bros. brings a spirited and fiery competition of basketball with the next generation of whirling unicyclists, the legendary King Charles Troupe hailing from New York City!  

Ringling Bros. Presents Built To Amaze! will travel more than 30,000 miles over two years on the world's longest, privately owned train to present audiences with riveting acts and astonishing animal presentations including:

Builders in their own right, Alex and Irina Emelin have spent years constructing unique acts full of comedy, animals, magic and dynamic athleticism earning the married couple nine international comedy awards. The result is a custom built comedic duo with an eclectic animal menagerie, including 16 black and white poodles. Hilarious mischief is non-stop as they compete against one another to construct The Greatest Show On Earth! In addition to their many Built To Amaze! responsibilities, Alex and Irina perform an animal magic transformation with an outcome so outrageous that it is guaranteed to leave audiences speechless.

Tabayara, standing fearless inside the tiger arena, eye to eye with 13 ferocious exotic big cats, creates a thrilling display of absolute amazement between a man and his tigers. In Built To Amaze, he presents a remarkable new element as four tigers, each poised with just one razor sharp claw on a spindle and using their hind legs rotate in perfect unison. Tabayara and these mighty tigers jump, roar and dance, and have the audience on the edge of their seats.  

The King Charles Troupe was first featured in 1969 by Ringling Bros. producer Irvin Feld, grandfather of producers Nicole Feld and Alana Feld. Now a new generation of producer and performer has come together again.  Twelve basketball players present a continuous, whirling display of one-wheeled excitement while perilously perched on unicycles, some teetering more than ten feet in the air! Audiences will be astounded at the troupe's agility and balance as each team dribbles, passes, shoots and weaves their way with outrageous skill and high-speed comedic antics in the wackiest game of b-ball ever played.

The Tower Tumblers, a troupe of ten competitive aerial athletes that will leave audiences spell-bound by using an unusual trampoline apparatus to perform rare acrobatic combinations of calculated strength and daring precision to defy gravity. The troupe uses two trampolines as spring boards to catapult their bodies in a whimsical but harmonized, freestyle aerial tumble where they dive over, around and even through a three-story high translucent tower!    

The Danguir Family dazzle as they raise the roof, looming high above the arena floor, on a high-wire as thin a pencil, as they execute difficult acrobatics and dangerous stunts.  The Danguir's construct two-man pyramids and intricate jumps, including an incredible one man leap from one troupe member's shoulder to another's.  Audiences also will witness the inconceivable and fearless high-wire attempt by troupe leader Mustafa when he jumps a car length's distance over four troupe members balanced on the high-wire.

Ringling Bros. beloved animal presentations will delight all as Ringling Bros. constructs a mesmerizing living carousel uniting powerful yet elegant Fijord, Friesian and Arab horses that are remarkably synchronized with beautiful aerialists suspended above the arena floor. If that weren't enough, the most popular divas on the planet will astound as Ringling Bros. epic Asian elephants show off fresh and classic dance moves to contemporary music reflecting each elephant's unique talent and personality.

The Human Canon Ball, Elliana Grace demonstrates explosive girl power! Just 20 years old, Elliana will amaze audiences as she slips down into the 24-foot long cannon with a diameter measuring just 30 inches!  Inside the dark canon barrel, she will be elevated to a forty degree angle where upon the Ringmaster's command she instantly becomes the Human Canon Ball.  Elliana will rocket through the arena sky experiencing a G-force of 7, the same force felt by NASA's Apollo 16 upon reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, and land at an incredible distance of 100 feet!

The dynamic Duo Fusion and Duo Solys hand-balancers, demonstrate powerful passion and insane flexibility in an exotic presentation of unbelievable symmetry where in a turn of unexpected events the petite females, Virginia and Tatiana are supporting their male partners, Giovanni and Hector.  These very distinct yet captivating couples maintain perfect synchronization even as Virginia attempts to balance Giovanni, upside down on her shoulders, poised in three inch heels and Tatiana attempts to elevate Hector with only one arm. 

The Wheel of Steel defies the forces of gravity as four outrageous daredevils including Flavia Costa, a 5'11" female acrobat, propel themselves with cat-like ease in and out the spinning double wheel. Flavia will demonstrate that there is no fear in this feminine feline as she undertakes an unfathomable attempt balancing dangerously on her partner's shoulders as they spin the wheel rising 40 feet in the air.

The world-famous Ringling Bros. Clown Alley, are the foundation of Built To Amaze! and will fabricate the audiences' funny bones with hysterical silly antics and clownish comedy.

CREATIVE TEAM: To produce Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Presents Built To Amaze! the Feld sister duo put together a creative team consisting of:

Rye Mullis (Director) – Returns to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey as Director of Built To Amaze! Previously he was Director for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Presents Barnum Bash, Associate Director for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey productions of Bellobration^SM, Over the Top^SM, and Barnum's 200^SM. Other notable production credits include Disney's The Cheetah Girls, Yanni Voices Tour, American Dance and Disney's Imagination Movers Tour. Mullis' stage experiences include performances in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein The Musical, Curtains, and Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Grant Moran (Writer) – Head Writer for PBS Kids' 2012 Emmy® Winning WordGirl series, and currently the Story Editor on Umigo at WildBrain Entertainment.  His 20 year career includes developing works for Warner Bros. Animation, award-winning shows as Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Batman. Moran's other works include Nickelodeon's Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys, Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius and Cartoon Network's recently-premiered Pink Panther & Pals.

Greg Poplyk (Costume Designer) – Emmy® nominated costume designer returns to design Built To Amaze! following The Greatest Show On Earth's hit DRAGONS ^SM. Poplyk has designed for a variety of national shows and performances across the United States including Saving Aimee, Guys & Dolls, Yankee Doodle Dandy, My Fair Lady, Land of Nod for The New York City Ballet, A Christmas Carol, Grease, Carousel and Show Boat.

James Youmans (Production Designer) – Design veteran of several Feld Entertainment production designs including Disney Live's Mickey's Magic Show and Disney On Ice presents Treasure Trove, this is his first Ringling Bros. production design. Youman's credits also include designs for the Tony® Award nominated Broadway revivals of West Side Story and Gypsy. He has also worked on the Broadway dance musicals and in the themed entertainment world he has designed live projects for Universal Studios Hollywood and Six Flags Theme Parks.

Michael Picton (Score Composer) – Award winner composer who also has written the music for the 137^th, 140^th, 142^nd Editions of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. Picton served as composer, orchestrator and music producer for Le Reve at the Wynn Las Vegas; has composed for clients including VH1's I Want to Work for Diddy, SyFy network series Flash Gordon, and the PBS documentary POV. He is the Grand Prize recipient at the Turner Classic Movies Young Film Composers competition and scored Turner Classic Movie's DVD release of the 1926 Greta Barbo silent movie epic, The Temptress.

Michael Himelstein (Lyricist) – Three time Emmy nominated songwriter Mike Himelstein's television and film credits include Shrek, The Sopranos, Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show. Including Built To Amaze!, Himelstein has written lyrics for seven editions of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. He is the Composer and Music Director of the hit Disney shows Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and the upcoming Sheriff Callie's Wild West.  He's written all of the songs for the award winning Jim Henson's Sid The Science Kid and is a frequent contributor to Jim Henson's Dinosaur Train.

Kevin Wilson (Choreographer) – Accomplished choreographer and performer with a range of work including the highly anticipated feature film Rock of Ages, as well as Dreamgirls, Austin Powers: Goldmember, and Blades of Glory. Wilson's work has been seen in America's Got Talent, So You Think You Can Dance, Your Chance To Dance, 2010 Miss Universe pageant and the 2011 Nickelodeon Awards.

Richard Schoenfeld (Lighting Designer) - Richard "Nook" Schoenfeld is a 30-year veteran of the lighting profession,  specializing in the production design of live entertainment events of all caliber including concert tours for American music sensation KID ROCK, award show presentations as well as many televised events.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Presents Built To Amaze! will open January 2, 2013 in Tampa, Florida at the Times-Forum. For tour dates and ticket information, visit www.Ringling.com. 

Media can find more information on http://feldmedia.com/mediaguides/ringlingbros Find Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey on Facebook and follow producer Nicole Feld on Twitter at @NicoleFeld

About Feld Entertainment: Feld Entertainment is the worldwide leader in producing and presenting live touring family entertainment experiences that lift the human spirit and create indelible memories, with 30 million people in attendance at its shows each year. Feld Entertainment's productions have appeared in more than 70 countries on six continents and include Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey^®, Monster Jam®, Monster Energy Supercross, Nuclear Cowboyz^®, Arenacross, IHRA Drag Racing, Disney On Ice and Disney Live!

SOURCE Feld Entertainment, Inc.