Detour on an Elephant

What was it like to travel on tour with a circus in the late seventies? Detour On An Elephant is the memoir of a ballet dancer, Barbara File Marangon, who traded her pointe shoes to ride an elephant with the Greatest Show On Earth for a year. Taking a detour from the world of ballet to the circus, she recounts her experiences performing in hundreds of shows, in twenty-four cities coast to coast, with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Blue Unit Show in 1978. Named Ringling's China Doll by a New York newspaper, she compares dancing at the Metropolitan Opera House to dancing at Madison Square Garden. Among her adventures she describes how Kevin, the lion that rode a motorcycle with his trainer, tried to break into the shower room while she showered. A stampeding elephant in Chicago is another memory. Then there is her love story on tour with a bareback rider. But most of all she remembers her love for Peggy, the elephant she rode all over the U.S.