Nadia Houcke

Nadia Houcke, who died in Lincoln on September 5 aged 84, was the last surviving child of the famous Houcke circus dynasty — her father, Jean Houcke, was one of Europe’s most celebrated circus directors and horse trainers.

Jean inherited the Cirque Houcke, which had been founded by his grandfather in 1834 , but became known in his own right as the director of the great Nouveau Cirque in Paris from 1905; as artistic director of the Hippodrome in New York in 1911-12; founder of a circus in Constantinople; and as the director of circuses in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Amiens.

The former chief rider and instructor to the Imperial Cavalry Riding School in St Petersburg, Jean was also the artistic director for the Bertram Mills Circus at Olympia, London, for three years from its inception in 1920 .

Jean always wore a monocle, and Nadia Houcke would recall: “For a joke, someone once changed his monocle for one with clear glass, thinking he wouldn’t be able to see clearly. But it made no difference — his own one was plain glass, just for effect.”

With his [second] wife, Marcelle Rancy (from another famous French circus dynasty), Jean had five children, the youngest of whom was Nadia, born in France in December 1926. All the children came to prominence as riders and horse trainers. One of them, Gilbert Houcke, a talented bareback rider, capitalised on his film star looks and superb physique to go on to present his Group of Bengal tigers while dressed in a “Tarzan” loincloth; he directed the graceful movements of his beasts with an unsheathed knife.

Nadia Houcke remained faithful to the family’s equestrian roots, becoming the youngest haute école (advanced classical dressage) rider of the time and appearing regularly in her father’s shows at Amiens. She later performed in other leading European circuses — including the Cirque Medrano in Paris — as a dressage rider.

In 1954 John Ringling North invited her to appear in America with The Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus, known as “The Greatest Show on Earth”. For three years she starred in her dressage act until Ringling North closed the show, in 1956, as a result of soaring overheads and labour disputes.

On her return to Europe, Nadia Houcke was signed, in 1957, by the Bertram Mills Circus, with which she toured every summer from 1958 to 1963, presenting dressage and liberty (riderless) horses and ponies owned by the Mills brothers.

In 1958, while touring with the show, she had the unenviable task of appearing in the ring immediately after Frances Duncan, a trapeze artiste, fell to her death in front of a packed audience in Wales.

Nadia Houcke’s father was said to have been the first trainer to introduce dummies as riders on the backs of liberty horses, and she re-created this act with a team of Bertram Mills’s chestnut Arabian stallions, presenting it at the Belle Vue Circus, Kings Hall, Manchester, in the winter of 1959-60 .

Her last assignment for Mills was at Belle Vue in 1963-64, presenting liberty horses and a novel act with ponies pulling sulkies (the vehicles used in trotting races).

Nadia Houcke spent a year in South Africa with the Boswell-Wilkie Circus, to which her brother Gilbert later took his celebrated tiger act. She then settled in Britain with her second husband, Geoff Morris, a saxophonist in the Bertram Mills Circus orchestra, who survives her.

London Telegraph, through Richard Flint