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This Year's Specialty Act

Bert Davis

The Wizard of Whips & Lariats

From the start it seemed that Vince Bruce was careening up life’s one-way street the wrong way, blazing a trail of contradictions. Cowboys come from America, Vince comes from England. Cowboys are Sturdy, if Vince was to turn sideways, you’d miss him. It was a chance meeting of Wild West rodeo star Tex McLeod that first put a lasso in Vince’s hands and Vince’s typically British father first taught him how to use it.

That chance meeting with Tex spawned Vince’s love for cowboys, horses, ropes and the Vaqueros of the Old West that has consumed his whole life. He began doing rope tricks when he was six years old. At twelve he already had a regular spot at a local country club and by the time he was sixteen he was an established performer in the traveling circuses of England and France.

A list of the Countries where Vince Bruce has performed reads like the index of a World atlas. In a showbiz career that has spanned most of his life He has performed in a diversity of venues from Casinos, night clubs and half time act for the Harlem globetrotters to Comedy clubs, dinner shows and the Broadway stage in the “Will Rogers Follies.”

With his wife, singer Anne Dubats their show is a blend of dazzling rope tricks dangerous feats of whip cracking/mastery and an offbeat British humor that has established them as perhaps the foremost western act in the world.

Vince also holds the World Record for “Texas Skips”, 4011 as documented by the Guinness book of World Records.

Here are just some of the Performance Highlights:

TV Highlights
 
bullet The Today Show
bullet Late Night with David Letterman
bullet Jerry Lewis Telethon
bullet Paul Daniels Show – England
bullet The Ron Lucas Show - England
bullet Martes 13 - Santiago Chile
bullet Variete Variete – Germany

 

Rodeo Highlights

bullet Calgary Stampede
bullet Fort Worth Livestock show & Exposition
bullet Cody Stampede
bullet Grand National Rodeo, Cow Palace, San Francisco
bullet Dixie National – Jackson, MS
Live Performance Highlights
 
bullet The Will Rogers Follies – Broadway
bullet ’88 Winter Olympics - Eve Gala, Calgary
bullet Casino Monte Carlo – Monacco
bullet Crystal Room - Tokyo
bullet Municipal Casino – Venice, Italy
bullet Tiger Palast Variete – Frankfurt, Germany
bullet Carriage Room Show, at Dixie Stampede – Branson, MO
bullet Big Apple Circus – N.Y.
bullet Circus Conelli – Switzerland
bullet Circus Sarasota. – Florida

And the Critics…

“…and there is a lariat twirler – Vince Bruce – who is nothing short of fabulous.” Howard Kissel, Daily News NY

“… Vince Bruce, a roper who dazzles as much as any roper can. “ Clive Barnes, NY Post.

“Not Since Will Rogers himself walked on a Broadway stage for Florenz Ziegfeld has anyone twirled ropes like Vince Bruce in ‘The Will Rogers Follies’”. Tom Poster, NY Daily News

“Vince Bruce, the trick roper from ‘The Will Rogers Follies’, gave a more considerable account of his artistry than he’s allowed time for on the stage of the Palace. It’s an odd. Anachronistic art, born of the need to allow men of the pre-Fred Astaire era, when males wore more armor, some small arena in which they could be simply graceful, which Vince Bruce is, exquisitely.” Thomas M. Disch – The Nation

“…Bruce was funny anyway but somehow the rope made it irresistible”. Rhein-Main Zeitung, Germany

“With his loose-limbed charm, this cowboy held the audience in the palm of his hand.” Tages-Anzeiger, Switzerland

For more detailed information, check out his website:  http://www.vincebruce.com