“I am an actress. I am a manipulator. Animals do it too.”
In her new live show Link Link Circus (a name derived from Darwin’s theory of evolution), actress, model, filmmaker, and animal lover Isabella Rossellini explores and celebrates the marvel of animal psychology, how animals communicate, and how their behavior has evolved over the centuries. Rossellini recently packed downtown Seattle’s Triple Door for a doubleheader, and we went to the show to check it out.
Her trusty dog/sidekick Peter Pan assists throughout the show, demonstrating various tenets of animal psychology. The show is peppered with dog tricks and costume changes. Peter Pan is a rescue Rossellini took in and trained with the help of renowned animal trainer Bill Berloni, and he’s got some serious skills.
The daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, Rossellini is a star who’s appeared in films like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, in Death Becomes Her, and more, and was the face of Lancome in her thirties and again in her sixties. Today, Rosselini lives on a poultry farm in Long Island with her dog, where she raises chickens (she wrote a book on it here), sheep, bees, and more.
Simultaneously comedic and enlightening, Link Link Circus sheds a whimsical light on animal behavior—a subject Rossellini earned her masters in at Hunter College.
For anyone familiar with Rosselini’s TV show on Sundance, Green Porno, which explores insect sexuality, Link Link follows a relatively similar format. Clocking in just shy of two hours, ringleader Rossellini and Pan take the audience on an enthralling ride that astonishes and edifies.
From bird songs played at a drastically slowed-down rate to reveal melodies, to evidence that chickens have the intelligence to plan for the future, to a discussion on how dogs were the first animals to be domesticated by man, Link Link is a charming and super-digestible way to learn about animal behavior.
The show was truly something unusual and enthralling to behold. Check out more shots from the performance below.