The “World Circus in Mongolia” event is coming soon to the ASA Circus. The National Circus of Mongolia in association with the “Development Center of the Mongol Circus” NGO and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is organizing the show in Ulaanbaatar between March 25th and April 7th. Over 60 circus artists from 14 countries have been invited to take part including fabulous troupes from Armenia, Canada, China, Germany, Hungary, Spain, the United States, and Mongolia.

This is a largest scale event ever organized in 30 years, since the International Circus performance was organized as a part of the “Friendship of Brotherhood Socialist Countries” in Ulaanbaatar in 1983.

The Mongol Circus is famous for its Mongolian traditional contortion, a precious and rare heritage created and practiced by Mongolians. It is the cultural heritage of Mongolians that has been developed, trained in, passed on and distributed for generations. Contortionism is an acrobatic dance mixing acrobatics and circus acts that involve dramatic bending and flexing of the human body. Contortion is a form of traditional art used to display the beauty of the human body based on the flexibility of a women through various breathtakingly dramatic bending, folding and flexing positions which involve Mongolian traditional dance elements.

In any period in the history of Mongolian traditional contortion the practitioners of this art were only a few individuals. The main location of the Mongolian contortion school is in Ulaanbaatar, along with other schools in Erdenet and Darkhan. Mongolian contortion training has been conducted since 1940. It existed only within Mongolia until 1990 and since then, Mongolian contortionists have performed and introduced Mongolian contortion abroad.

The Government of Mongolia accepted that the tradition of Mongolian contortion is a unique intangible heritage of Mongolia and was therefore registered in the National Urgent Safeguarding List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Mongolia nominated its traditional contortion to be entered on the representative list of the UNESCO Intangible Heritage of Human Culture in 2011.