Lupeta Perea: Mexican Circus Girl An Ambitious Artist

1915--

Mexican Circus Girl An Ambitious Artist

Among the performers whose exploits will thrill and dumbfound spectators at the Barnum and Bailey circus which exhibits here Monday, August 30th, is Lupeta Perea, a newcomer to the world of American "white tops" from Mexico, fleeing gladly from the revolution and its political unrest. Her mother accompanies her with the remnants of a fortune accumulated in cattle-raising near Monterey and which became the prey of insurrectors.

The girl's wonderful agility asserted itself in early life. She was the marvel of her school-girl friends in hazardous feats in mid-air and amazed older beholders who witnessed her exploits.

Then one day there came, during the fiesta days of December, a grand display in El Toreo, Mexico City's famous bull-ring before President Madero and his dignitaries. Senorita Perea's apparatus was stretched from barrier to barrier, and the ovation she received from her aerial exhibition is still remembered in the capital. Her entrance into professionalism dates from her triumph upon that occasion. It was not long before her fame had spread all through the republic of Mexico.

Her talents are not vested solely in her lithe and nimble body. When she isn't amazing onlookers by her feats aloft in the "big top," she may be generally found ensconced in a corner of the circus "green room" with a pad and pencil, perpetuating the forms and faces of her associate performers. Clowns, equestrians, aerialists, acrobats, chariot drivers and all the other multifarious figures and features of the big show are being put in black and white.

This little beauty of the circus, for she is a beautiful girl, has twelve different costumes which she carries with her despite the protests of the circus property men. Then, too, she has stunning street attire, and Senorita Perea has "off and on" the reputation of being the best dressed girl of the circus.

"Not always will I be a public circus performer," she declared in a recent interview. "My real love is for the pencil and paper and maybe my products will yet attract praise worth while. When this big circus folds itself away for the winter, I'm going back to New York and study art in earnest."

--The Sheboygan Press, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, August 27, 1915, page 3.