360° Circus: Meaning. Practice. Culture 1032138068, 9781032138060

Citation preview

360° CIRCUS

This collection aims to map a diversity of approaches to the artform by creating a 360° view on the circus. The three sections of the book, Aesthetics, Practice, Culture, approach aesthetic developments, issues of artistic practice, and the circus’ role within society. This book consists of a collection of articles from renowned circus researchers, junior researchers, and artists. It also provides the core statements and discussions of the conference UpSideDown—Circus and Space in a graphic recording format. Hence, it allows a clear entry into the field of circus research and emphasizes the diversity of approaches that are well balanced between theoretical and artistic point of views. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of circus studies, emerging disciples of circus and performance. Dr. Franziska Trapp is a postdoctoral researcher at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. Riikka Juutinen is a Finnish Master of Social Sciences from the University of Tampere with Social Anthropology as her major subject. She is interested in questions of transnationalism and mobility, and in her master’s thesis, she focused on themes about circus and mobility studies. Juutinen completed an internship at the international conference UpSideDown—Circus at Zirkus | Wissenschaft research project in 2017. Since then her area of work has been crisis work, child protection and work with people with substance issues.

Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies

This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited collections. Considering theatre and performance alongside topics such as religion, politics, gender, race, ecology, and the avant-garde, titles are characterized by dynamic interventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics. Live Digital Theatre Interdisciplinary Performative Pedagogies Aleksandar Sasha Dundjerović Performance Cultures as Epistemic Cultures, Volume I (Re)Generating Knowledges in Performance Erika Fischer-Lichte,Torsten Jost, Milos Kosic, Astrid Schenka Performance Cultures as Epistemic Cultures, Volume II Interweaving Epistemologies Erika Fischer-Lichte,Torsten Jost, Milos Kosic, Astrid Schenka Politics of the Oberammergau Passion Play Tradition as Trademark Julia Stenzel and Jan Mohr Beyoncé and Beyond 2013–2016 Naila Keleta-Mae Reconstructing Performance Art Practices of Historicisation, Documentation and Representation Tancredi Gusman For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Advances-in-Theatre-Performance-Studies/book-series/RATPS

360° CIRCUS Meaning. Practice. Culture

Franziska Trapp

Cover image: Alexander Vantournhout photographed in Prague 2017. Copyright: Franzi Kreis Completed with the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Franziska Trapp; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Franziska Trapp to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 9781032138060 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032138527 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003231110 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110 Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii List of contributors ix Introduction: welcome to the wonderland of contemporary circus 1 Franziska Trapp Part I

Circus meaning

19

1 Circus does not exist Jean-Michel Guy

21

2 “La Putyka” by Cirk La Putyka: a glimpse at Czech contemporary circus Veronika Štefanová

34

Part II

Circus practice

41

3 On mutations of forms, style, and meaning: from a traditional to a contemporary trapeze act 43 Sandy Sun Interviewed by Franziska Trapp and Riikka Juutinen

vi Contents

4 Articulating hand-balancing: finding space for critical self-transformation 47 Camilla Damkjaer 5 Extreme symbiosis Louise von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger

55

6 Hamlet: to have written or not to have written for the tightwire 71 Louis Patrick Leroux Translated from French by Anna Vigeland and Louis Patrick Leroux 7 Verticality, gravity, sense of balance. Transmitting a technique, conveying a sensation: practices and discourses of circus arts teachers 87 Agathe Dumont 8 Reading circus: dramaturgy on the border of art and academia 100 Franziska Trapp 9 UpSideDown circus and space Graphic Recordings by Andreas Gärtner

115

Part III

Circus culture

123

10 Circus between technique and technology: heideggerian “enframing” and the contested space of free expression 125 Sebastian Kann 11 Chaplin, Brecht, Fo: toward a concept of epic clowning 136 Gaia Vimercati 12 To walk the tightwire Ante Ursić

153

13 The spatiality of Australian contemporary circus Kristy Seymour

161

14 Cheerful, nostalgic, melancholic: mood in circus 179 Peta Tait Index 195

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank You Rebecca Walsh | Proofreading Felicitas van Laak | Student Assistant Riika Juutinen | Student Assistant

CONTRIBUTORS

Louise von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger — are two acrobats from Stockholm, Sweden, educated at Moscow State School of Circus, who have worked together since 2001. Louise graduated 2013 from the program new performative practices at the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm (DOCH) with a Master’s in choreography with specialization in Circus. The master’s program at DOCH was the starting point for the research project “The art of working in pairs, a deeper look into our practice” which began in the summer of 2011 and resulted in the performance and the booklet called Extreme Symbiosis. Henrik also went to the Mime Acting Program at Teaterhögskolan Stockholm (Stockholm university of the arts) and has been involved in the establishment of “New Circus” in Sweden as one of the original artists in the creation of Cirkus Cirkör in 1995. As freelance artists, Henrik and Louise have been working with companies such as the Russian State Circus and Cirkus Cirkör. They have also been producers of their own performances. Henrik and Louise’s work is based on research, and they always include one or two question statements in their creative processes. Physical expression is at the center, and their Circus discipline, Pair Acrobatics, is often the starting point. Camilla Damkjaer, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Performing Arts, Department of Performing Arts, Stockholm University of the Arts. Camilla Damkjaer’s research concerns the performing arts, movement practices, philosophies of the body and first-person methodologies of research. Her research focuses on the analysis of the phenomenal and socially constructed experiences circus, dance, and yoga. Theoretically, her work draws, among other things, phenomenology, Deleuzian scholarship, feminist, and post-colonial theory. She is also particularly

x Contributors

concerned with the historical, discursive, and geo-political implications involved in performing arts and bodily practices. Agathe Dumont, PhD, is a Professor of artistic education at the School of Art and Design in Angers (ESAD TALM). Her research focuses on gesture and artistic work and she is particularly interested in the paths and practices of circus and dance artists. Winner of two research grants from the French Ministry of Culture, she is a member of the French collective of circus researchers and has contributed to the recent publication of several books on contemporary circus: Le cirque en transformation. Identités et dynamiques professionnelles (Cordier, Dumont, Salaméro & Sizorn, EPURE: 2019) and The Cambridge Companion to Circus (Arrighi & Davis, Cambridge University Press: 2021). She is also associated researcher to circusnext (2014–2022). Andreas Gärtner began his professional career as a freelance illustrator in 2004.

In 2012, he graduated with a master’s degree in design and a specialization on illustration. When he entered into an associated partnership with Kommunikationslotsen in 2013, he put his professional focus on the field of graphic recording. Together with Martin Markes, he founded “Die Zeichner” in 2014. In 2016, he became a lecturer at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences. In the same year, he expanded his portfolio to include work as a speaker on the topic of creativity. Jean-Michel Guy  is a sociologist, author, director, dramaturge, and teacher of

critical analysis. From 1980 until his retirement in 2021, he was a research engineer at the French Ministry of Culture (Department of Studies, Forecasting, Statistics and Documentation) where he conducted studies on cultural practices and representations, and audiences (for cinema, theater, dance, and the circus). In parallel, he worked and continues to work in a wide range of fields in the contemporary circus: writing and directing shows, writing articles and books, advising on dramaturgy, teaching and leading research laboratories. Sebastian Kann  (he/him) is an independent artist and researcher dwelling in the interstices of circus, dance, and performance. Physical experiment lies at the heart of his work, which often interrogates the ideological entanglements of the body. Playing across different media—on stage, in print, and in video—­ Sebastian’s often collaborative practice is quadruple-anchored by intuition, irony, ambivalence, and a deep love for big Theory. Having studied at l’École nationale de cirque and Utrecht University, he is now based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.  Louis Patrick Leroux  is a Full Professor in both departments of English and

French Studies and Associate Dean of Research at the Faculty of Arts and ­Science, Concordia University, Montréal. His research spans from theater to contemporary circus and has involved research-creation and cultural discourse analysis. He was elected to the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists

Contributors  xi

of the Royal Society of Canada. Recent academic books include Contemporary Circus with Katie Lavers and Jon Burtt (Routledge, 2020), Cirque Global: Québec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries, coedited with Charles Batson (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), and Le jeu des positions. Discours du théâtre québécois with Hervé Guay (Nota Bene, 2014). Forthcoming books include Le cirque social : son rôle, ses pratiques, pédagogies et aspirations with Jacinthe Rivard and Mathilde Perahia (PU Laval) and Estie toastée des deux bords : Les formes populaires de l’oralité chez Victor-Lévy Beaulieu with Sophie Dubois (PU Montréal). Dr Kristy Seymour (she/her) is an emerging scholar and professional circus artist, with over 20 years of experience in the Australian contemporary circus sector. Her main research areas are autism and circus, Australian contemporary circus, and circus performance as art form. Throughout her career, Kristy has worked across various aspects of the circus sector as a performer, trainer, artistic director, general manager, and producer. Her research and practice on circus and autism is widely regarded as a “best practice” approach. She has worked extensively in the youth circus sector leading a team of inspiring artists as the Head Trainer and Artistic Director of Flipside Circus in Brisbane 2004–2010. Working as a creative producer and choreographer, she has collaborated with leading arts organizations, venues, and festivals such as with Strut n Fret Production House, Brisbane Powerhouse, Creative Generations, Woodford Folk Festival, Brisbane Festival, and Adelaide Fringe Festival and Festival 2018 (Commonwealth Games 2018). In 2012, Kristy completed her Honours thesis “How Circus training can enhance the well-being of children with autism and their families.” She then went on to open her circus school, Circus Stars, solely dedicated to children with autism in 2013, the topic of her recent TEDx talk ( June 2017). Kristy recently completed her doctoral research titled “Bodies, Temporality and Spatiality in Australian Contemporary Circus” at Griffith University Gold Coast. Veronika Štefanová, PhD, occasionally teaches at the Academy of Performing

Arts and at the Faculty of Business Administration in Prague. She is in charge of the research section at CIRQUEON, the umbrella organization for contemporary circus in the Czech Republic and works as a cultural journalist for the Czech Radio, Czech Television, and cultural journals. She has published articles in divers journals and anthologies such as Disk, Theatralia, Performance Matter and in The Cambride Companion to the Circus. Sandy Sun  Trained in mime and clowning (Covent Garden School, London,

1975) and in circus techniques (Paris, 1977), Sandy Sun is a soloist on the fixed trapeze, awarded with various prizes: Gold Medal of the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain (1980), Winner of the Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet Foundation pour la Vocation (1081), laureate of the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques de Paris (2005). She has performed with renowned circuses

xii Contributors

(e.g., Pinder/Jean Richard, Fratellini, Orfei, Roncalli, Archaos) and European cabarets (e.g., Tiger Palatz, Gop, La Luna) Combining classicism and contemporaneity, she is the creator of a very personal style mixing contemporary choreography and the virtuosity of classical dance. Sun holds a State Diploma as a circus teacher and worked among others for the Académie Fratellini, the Centre National des Arts du Cirque, the École de Cirque de Montréal, the Cie Maguy Marin, and Cirque Baobab. She is a university lecturer, and associated artist of two research programs at the Université Paul Valéry Montpellier III. Sun publishes and ­participates regularly at international conferences on the circus. Professor Peta Tait, La Trobe University, is an academic and playwright and a

Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She has written 70 scholarly articles and chapters and recent books include: the authored: Forms of Emotion: Human to Nonhuman in Drama, Theatre and Performance (Routledge 2022); Theory for Theatre Studies: Emotion (Bloomsbury 2021); the co-edited Feminist Ecologies: Changing Environments in the Anthropocene (2018) and the edited The Great European Stage Directors volume one (2018); the authored Fighting Nature: Travelling Menageries, Animal Acts and War Shows (Sydney University Press 2016); the co-edited The Routledge Circus Studies Reader; and the authored Wild and Dangerous Performances (2012). Her current “Towards an Australian Ecological Theatre” collaborative project is Australian Research Council funded. Franziska Trapp is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Berlin, G ­ ermany,

and the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. She is the founder of the research project Zirkus | Wissenschaft (Germany) and organizer of international conferences, including Semiotics of the Circus (2015), UpSideDown—Circus and Space (2017), Semaine du Cirque (2020), and Écrire l’histoire du cirque (2022). She is the initiator of the Young Researchers Network in Circus Studies (YOUR | Circus), co-initiator of the Circus Arts Research Platform (CARP), and co-editor of the academic journal Circus: Arts, Life and Sciences (University of Michigan Press). Trapp has worked for various circus productions such as the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain (FR) and Cirque Bouffon (DE) and collaborated as a dramaturge with Tall Tales Company (NL), Sysmo (BE), Julia Berger (DE), and Cie Hors Système (FR), among others. She was awarded third place as Germany’s Best Junior Research Talent of 2019 (Academics/Die Zeit) and received the DGS Young Researchers Price 2020 (German Association of Semiotics) for her PhD entitled Lektüren des Zeitgenössischen Zirkus (De Gruyter 2020, Routledge 2023 (EN)). Ante Ursić (PhD, University of California, Davis) is a circus practitioner and an

Assistant Professor of Physical Theatre at the Department of Theatre and Dance, East Tennessee State University. His research investigates the human-animal relationship in contemporary circus. He is especially interested in the circus’ political sphere and potential exploring how it relates to different understandings

Contributors  xiii

of animality. As circus artist, he received a gold medal from the festival SOLyCIRCO and a special prize from the festival Cirque du D ­ emain. He has successfully produced projects of his own and in collaboration.  He performed with established  companies such as Cirque du Soleil (Totem), Tiger Lillies Circus, Balagan, and Circus Roncalli. Ante Ursić holds a Bachelor with distinction in Dance, Context, Choreography  from Inter-University Center of Dance, Berlin,  and a distinguished master’s in performance studies from New York University. His research has received support from the German Academic Exchange Program, the Social Science Research Council, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, among others.  At ETSU Ante Ursić is heading the Physical Theatre concentration and teaches courses in the field such as Commedia dell’Arte, Modern Clowning, Theatre Movement, Tight Wire Walking and Thinking, and Contact Improvisation. Gaia Vimercati received an MA in Comparative Literature at Trinity College

Dublin. Together with Filippo Malerba, in 2015 she created  CENSIMENTO CIRCO ITALIA, the first map of circus companies in Italy. She is a cultural project manager for Quattrox4, a contemporary circus centre in Milan, where she is in charge of the development of circus studies in cooperation with Università Bicocca as an independent researcher. She was among the contributors of Semiotics of the Circus (Münster, 2015), Quand le cirque se raconte (Biennale Internationale Des Arts du Cirque, Marseille 2021), Circus And Its Others 2021 (Davis, California), EASTAP 2020 (Bologna) and 2022 (Milano). She was selected by Dramaturg Federico Bellini for a writing residency at La Biennale di Venezia (2021). Thanks to the support of the Italian Ministry of Culture, in 2021 she launched the project LA PAROLA AI CORPI, a hybrid residency between practice and theory in circus in cooperation with BASE Milano. Gaia Vimercati is the external eye of GRETEL (2021), circus solo by Clara Storti.

INTRODUCTION Welcome to the wonderland of contemporary circus Franziska Trapp

Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit hole under the hedge. In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again. (Carroll 2013, 1) Whether it is the perfect geometric figure in Plato’s philosophy, a magical gem of Middle-earth, or Alice’s rabbit hole, the ring has always been an object of attraction. In Wonderland, the famous fairy-tale character enters a world where common rules are turned upside down. Top and bottom, inside and outside, each follows its own principles. Alice’s words “Curiouser and Curiouser!” (Carroll 2013, 9) describe how our world also changes when we enter the circus universe. What is this genre of performative arts? What is circus in terms of its meaning, practice, and culture? How is meaning produced and transmitted in traditional, new, and contemporary circuses? Each of these questions will be addressed in the first part of this introduction in an analysis of Cheptel Aleikoum’s contemporary circus performance “Les Princesses—cirque aérien et chanté.”1 This performance manifests the meaning of contemporary circus, how it relates to traditional circus, and why contemporary circus differs from dance and theater. Most importantly, it questions the place of circus in our society. The contemporary circus performance “Les Princesses” was chosen because it uses the means of circus as a main dramaturgic principle—not as an “homage to circus” and not in order to declare the performance’s affiliation to the genre. Les Princesses uses a self-referential discourse as a methodology to establish a consistent universe and stimulate narrative frames with the means of circus. It must be DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-1

2  Franziska Trapp

stated in advance that this dramaturgic strategy is not unique to this performance but rather characteristic of a large amount of today’s circus performances. As the aesthetics and the dramaturgic procedures of contemporary circus performances are extremely heterogeneous, Les Princesses should not be seen as the paradigm for successful circus dramaturgy. It is rather one successful example among many which could have been used in this introduction.

On the characteristics of circus When stepping into the dome-shaped construction built for the performance Les Princesses, the spectator has to be careful so as not to be hit by the pendulating swing, on which one male artist and one female artist are sitting and distributing cotton candy. On silver trays, liquids from liqueur glasses are served to the audience by other artists. The ring encompasses 360° and is surrounded by an auditorium; the background is black. A mint green ornament taped on the ground of the ring contrasts with the forest wallpaper marking the artist entrance. Stuffed animals and artificial flowers are used as decoration and red glossy apples hang from the top of the mint-colored iron scaffold. The audience is lead into a fictional microcosm of discovery, a ritual space, a fairy-tale forest, a Disneyland. The lights are turned down and an electric guitar starts to play, marking the beginning of the performance. Two male artists with rabbit heads enter the ring, moving mechanically, pulling a bed behind them, on which a princess decorated with flowers is lying. Chimes are audible every five seconds. The words “kiss me” are written on a sign above the princess’ head. Since none of the spectators volunteer to do this, the rabbit-headed artists keep holding up their signs: Pas de bisous, pas de spectacle, which means “No kisses, no show.” Finally, a courageous person fulfills the task. The princess wakes up, guides her savior to the throne placed above the entrance of the spectators, and the first act begins, “The Cloud Swing.” Les Princesses, created by the company Cheptel Aleikoum in October 2016, is a contemporary circus performance comprised of three male artists and three female artists. The rope, trapeze, and equilibristic are the main circus disciplines presented and the performance is complemented by live music. The performance raises the question: What is left of the stories and tales of our childhood when we grow old? In the words of Cheptel Aleikoum (2016): ‘The princesses, or what is left of them.’ They say that tales help children learn to accept themselves and calm themselves down, and to deal with great fears … And after that? What is left? What is a princess today? The performance’s title and description in the program booklet and on the website offer the audience entry into a fictional world, the diegesis, and its narrative scripts: fairy tales. How is the fairy-tale universe established in this performance?

Introduction  3

Intertextuality and camp in Les Princesses The stage set, the props, the costumes, and the staged circus disciplines are ­immediately associated with the famous fairy tales of Grimm, Andersen, and Carrol: All the women are dressed in white, with transparent hoop skirts, flowered white tops, and either pink sneakers or high heels, whereas the men are wearing dark pants and pompous coats over a naked torso. The performance’s title leads us to believe they are princesses and princes. The forest wallpaper marking the artist entrance refers to Little Red Riding Hood. The apples hanging from above allude to Snow White, the ring and the rabbits to Alice in Wonderland. As the rope is slowly lowered from the top of the construction, we are reminded of Rapunzel. And the equilibrist who appears during the last part of the performance with her legs wrapped in plastic is reminiscent of the Little Mermaid. The fairy-tale universe established by the intertexts creates narrative consistency in the fragmentary performances. We are experiencing what the literary scholar Moritz Baßler describes in the following: We have many cultural frames and scripts and we only need a small amount of information to access them. We automatically complete the information in the text according to certain cultural patterns and thus form our idea of the narrative world and our expectations of what could happen next. (Baßler 2011) The performance does not create a diegesis of an innocent childhood, but rather underlines the ambiguous character of the fairy tales. The naughty gestures of the artists on the trapeze playing with Snow White’s apple refer not only to the tale but also to Adam and Eve. Alice’s rabbit reminds us of Playboy Bunnies. The artist’s instruction “Mouillez-moi [Make me wet]” turns the Little Mermaid’s performance into a sexual act. The comfortable mattress of the Princess and the Pea is replaced with a sharp nail bed. The semantic structure established by the performance becomes visible in the intertextual references. The binary oppositions of childhood and maturity, tenderness and violence, and naivety and knowledge are simultaneously established and offer two different readings, either from the perspective of the naïve child or the experienced adult. One of the major principles of the performance is to cause the spectators to continuously switch between the two readings, never once leaving them in one of the two universes. This result is reinforced by the use of camp. Sontag’s famous statement from 1964 that “it’s good because it’s awful” (Sontag 2018) is the main aesthetic principle of the performance. The stage set is dominated by clashing green shades, a kitschy chain of lights surrounding the electric guitar, and the use of nostalgic props such as forest-themed wallpaper, stuffed animals, and artificial flowers, “things which, from a ‘serious’ point of view, are either bad art or kitsch” (Sontag 2018). Due to their theatrical and exaggerated staging, the stage can undoubtedly be identified as camp, the “art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken

4  Franziska Trapp

altogether seriously because it is ‘too much’” (Sontag 2018). The camp frame of the performance offers a second principle that gives the otherwise fragmented performance a thematic thread; it also underlines the need for another reading of all the signs because camp “sees everything in quotation marks” (Sontag 2018).

Les Princesses acts as a meta-discourse on circus arts How does this performance use the means of circus to create a double reading involving the perspectives of the naïve child and the experienced adult? Entering Cheptel Aleikoum’s “Medusa,” the audience is not only confronted with a fictional universe but also a (ideal) circus space, which is marked by the (traditional) ring and the visibility of the apparatuses and riggings. One might object that the mere presence of circus props is insufficient to state self-referentiality, and I would agree. In Les Princesses, however, the performance’s relation to the circus genre is underlined in numerous ways. Even before entering the performance space, the para-texts, such as the program booklet, announce the wish to create a circus (!) performance, “For Les Princesses, I wanted a circus performance with circus” (Cheptel Aleikoum 2016). Furthermore, the distribution of cotton candy reminiscent of circuses and carnivals or the silver trays of liqueur bringing to mind the traditional clowns who entertained spectators before the start of the show ensure the activation of the “circus” frame. This is reinforced by the mere fact that Les Princesses was being presented at an internationally recognized circus festival that is an important showcase of contemporary circus. In this frame, the equilibrist wrapped in plastic is not only reminiscent of Andersen’s Little Mermaid but also of the traditional circus seals, which have become one of the main cultural emblems associated with circus in the last decades. And the bed of The Princess and the Pea is reminiscent of the famous traditional circus act of “sawing a woman in half.” The pompous costumes not only present princesses and princes but also refer to the dresses of traditional circus. Alice’s rabbits allude to traditional circus animals. How is the self-referentiality of the performance connected to the dramaturgic principle of intertextuality? How is the camp aesthetic related to the meta-discourse on circus arts? In what way does the self-referentiality of Les Princesses oscillate between the perspective of the naïve child and the experienced adult? The simultaneous staging of the fairy-tale universe and the circus universe leads spectators to search for similarities and disparities between the two. In contemplating the commonalities between circus and fairy tales, spectators enter into the main discourses surrounding circus: its traditional heritage, its cultural reception, and its contemporary aesthetics.

Circus as wonderland By staging parallel fairy-tale and circus universes, Les Princesses portrays circus as an alternative world and encourages the interpretation of circus as a place

Introduction  5

where “everything is turned upside down” (Zipes 2015, 4). Contrary to Alice, whose astonishment at the rabbit for having “a waistcoat-pocket, and a watch to take out of it” led her into Wonderland, at the circus “audiences have an expectation that circus … will surprise and excite” (Tait and Lavers 2016a, 6). This characteristic of circus leads Paul Bouissac to his definition of the (traditional) circus as a metacultural discourse: “Some of the cultural elements are combined differently in the system of the circus than in corresponding everyday instances” (Bouissac 1976, 8). Just like anything is possible in fairy tales, the possibilities of circus are endless as well: The rules of compatibility are transformed and often even inverted: at the level of the decoding process, a horse makes a fool of his trainer; a tiger rides an elephant (supposedly incompatible enemies are presented in immediate conjunction); an elephant uses the telephone, plays music, or, like man, eats dinner at a table; a clown produces incongruous sequences of objects and behavior. Even the basic rules of balance are seemingly defied or denied. (Bouissac 1976, 8)

Circus and narration Second, by placing the fairy-tale universe next to the circus universe, the performance refers to the structure of traditional circus acts, which, according to Bouissac, are quite similar to the canonical narrative structure of fairy tales. By applying Vladimir Propp’s components of a tale to circus, Bouissac explains: As an act unfolds, we can identify progressive stages that closely resemble the pattern of successive transformations that occur in folktales. The principle stages … are: 1 Identification of the hero, who incidentally is often introduced as a non-autochthon. 2 Qualifying test, which the artist considers a warm-up exercise. 3 Main test, which can consist of several tests presented in a variety of sequences. 4 Glorifying test, which is usually precedent by a special announcement and accompanied by a drum roll. 5 Public acknowledgment of the fulfillment of the task. (Bouissac 1976, 25) This Babylonian structure of traditional circus acts and programs is, in turn, picked up by Les Princesses—not in terms of increasing difficulty of the task but concerning the double reading: Each act begins as a (naïve) presentation of the fairy-tale universe and gradually develops into a sexual act.

6  Franziska Trapp

Circus and its others Next, the characters staged in Les Princesses greatly influence the oscillating reception between circus and fairy-tale universe. The princesses and princes are not only derived from fairy tales, but their exaggerated presentation (e.g., the prince is wearing an oversized cape) reminds us of the “freaks” of traditional circus performances, curiosity cabinets, and freak shows. The performance’s allusion to folkloric fantasy (e.g., dwarfs, dragons, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, mermaids, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, witches) once again reflects that circus was historically the “site for the celebration and exploitation of differences.” (Fricker and Malouin 2018, 1)

Circus and children As the audience enters the dome-shaped construction, they are served cotton candy and drinks from liqueur glasses. From the very beginning, elements reminiscent of childhood and maturity are presented side by side. Les Princesses implicitly questions the discourse about circus audiences, their relation to children and childhood, and the proximity to sex. American researcher Mark West writes that circus was not always intended for children: the lack of research into the history of circus audiences often leads to an assumption that the nature of circus audiences has remained the same throughout history. For instance … it is generally believed that children have always been well represented. In reality, though, there is very little evidence to substantiate such an assumption. (West 1981, 265) One of the many reasons for the lack of children at circuses was due to its reputation as “immoral” (West 1981, 266). The same discourse is also recognizable with regard to fairy tales. The Brothers Grimm, for instance, revised their fairy tales to make them “more appropriate for children” by cleansing their narratives of “erotic and bawdy passages” (Zipes 2015, 9).

Circus and Disney Furthermore, I would like to draw attention to the fact that the references to Disney, which are reinforced in the program booklet, establish yet another link between fairy tales and circus. Zipes argues, “When we think of the form and typical fairy tale today, we tend to think of a paradigmatic Grimms’ fairy tale (quite often modified by the Disney industry)” (Zipes 2015, 13). Circus is currently experiencing a similar development, which has been fittingly termed a “Walt-Disneyfication” (Leroux 2016, 5). Those unfamiliar with new and contemporary circus tend to associate it with the paradigmatic aesthetic of Cirque du Soleil.

Introduction  7

Circus, magic, myth, and reality Lastly, Les Princesses links the notions of magic and myth intrinsically to circus and fairy tales by staging the recipient’s expectations of what circus should be and taking those myths of circus to their absurd limits. In our contemporary society, the circus genre is confronted with preconceived (often irrevocable) notions and prejudices. Circus is ubiquitous nowadays. “Not my circus, not my monkeys” is part of our everyday language. In the times of Trump, The New York Times criticized a “Foreign Policy Circus.” (New York Times Editorial Board 2017) Children’s picture books, toys, and clothes display circus images. Given the omnipresence of circus in our contemporary culture, the organizers of the international conference on circus research “Circus and its Others” held in 2015 concluded in their Call for Papers, “From Pink and Britney Spears’ stage shows to American Horror Story … circus in the early twenty-first century has undeniably gone mainstream.” (Batson et al. 2017) The unifying element of these ideas of circus in the media—in literature, pop culture, music, and advertisement—is their reference to the peak phase of traditional circus at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century. These portrayals generally disregard the advancement of the traditional genre and the emergence of new and contemporary circus. Even more, they are creating romanticized images of a stagnant circus that has never actually existed and might even be contrary to what new and contemporary circus declares itself to be: art. In Les Princesses, the audience receives the expected codes and materials comprised in the mainstream concepts of circus: animals (stuffed dears, rabbits), the ring, a curtain (in mint green), fairground attractions such as can throwing, a boxing ring, cotton candy, naked skin, risks, artistry, and so on, but always in campy quotation marks. The company thereby stages the struggle of contemporary circus to define itself. Is the genre based on a strong cultural heritage or is it a free and independent artform? This struggle also appears in the discourse on the distinction between high culture and popular culture: traditional circus has the status of popular entertainment and contemporary circus is ambiguously located somewhere between mainstream entertainment and art. A double reading of all signs is required not only on the level of the fairy-tale discourse but also on the level of self-referentiality. Les Princesses invites spectators to enter into the discourse of circus reception and undermines the public’s (stagnant) ideas by offering the possibility of a double reading. The performance’s content and form reflect the contrasting features that have defined the genre until today: the oscillation between childhood and adulthood, between mainstream and otherness, between beauty and cruelty, between safety and risk, and between entertainment and art.

Reality and fiction as dramaturgic principles Erika Fischer-Lichte proclaims that “whenever and wherever theatre happens, it is characterized by a tension between reality and fiction” (Fischer-Lichte 2008, 84).

8  Franziska Trapp

Though the transgression of the fictional and the real is not easily identifiable as a specific dramaturgic principle in Les Princesses, I argue that the intertwining of reality and fiction is a feature unique to (contemporary) circus, in general, and even enhanced in Les Princesses by the dramaturgic procedure of the performance. This hypothesis is explained by means of the first act, “The Cloud Swing.” After being kissed by a spectator, a female artist in a white dress guides her savior to a throne above the audience’s entrance and begins swinging on the cloud swing. While doing her tricks, she continues to make eye contact with the exposed spectator. On the narrative level, this act can be read like a fairy tale: the focus is on the “character body” (Hurley 2016, 124), through which we see the princess courting the favor of her savior. This reading is emphasized by the intertextual references to Sleeping Beauty, where the prince’s kiss eventually leads to the marriage of the two main characters. On the narrative level, the recipient easily recognizes the cloud swing act as the story’s predictable outcome. Craver defines the character body as the entirety of “gestures and expressions of the actor that signify the life and experience of a fictional character within a fictional world” (Graver 2005, 159). Due to the omnipresence of intertextual references that create a cohesive fairy tale universe, the narrative level or the fictional level is strongly emphasized by the overall performance. In this story, though, the recipient also sees a circus act, the cloud swing, and the “real, phenomenal body” (Fischer-Lichte 2008, 84). This material level of performance is part of all performative genres, “for it is always real spaces where performances take place, it is always real time that the performance consumes, and there are always real bodies which move in and through the real spaces” (Fischer-Lichte 2008, 84). In circus, this level is enhanced by the existence of an aesthetics of risk, which comprises frequent unpredictable and unforeseeable elements. In this context, the aesthetics of risk is not based on the fact that performers are actually taking risks, but on “the belief that circus performance is dangerous—or more dangerous than high-impact sports…. The actual physical risks are usually not apparent” (Tait 2016, 529). Thus, the performance activates the recipient’s culturally established frames and scripts of circus, causing them to expect risk-taking behaviors, even if they have never seen a circus performance before. In Les Princesses, the activation of this script is ensured by the continuous indication of the performance’s affiliation to the circus genre. And the staging of risk is enhanced by several means: In the cloud swing act, the risk is especially enhanced through the sounds of whooping and wooing. Later on, an actual risk is created when a spectator is asked to pull on a rope that an artist is climbing without safety lines on the high structure of the “Medusa.” In a sense, the spectator is actually responsible for the artist’s life. Apart from the activation of the circus frame and the staging of actual physical risk, the performance engages the audience in order to underline the performative level. In the first act, the spectator becomes part of the narrative story, that

Introduction  9

is, the prince, which we recognize through the intertextual reference. Since the spectator is not wearing a costume or acting, his real presence is emphasized. This dramaturgic principle is repeated several times throughout the performance. The equilibrist does tricks on the spectator’s legs, the artists run through the auditorium, and spectators are asked to throw balls at them in order to establish a kind of snowball fight. By including the audience, the performance becomes a live event. Applying the camp aesthetic, moreover, the artists stage their characters with a twinkle in their eyes. Thus, as the artist pleasurably whoops while doing tricks on the swinging rope, we are deprived of being able to “believe” the staged story. The recipient always sees artist Marie Jolet and the staged character (the princess) at the same time. This effect is enhanced by the fact that the artists address each other by their actual names. Lastly, I would like to draw attention to the significance of proximity between artist and spectator in this performance. The audiences’ seats are right next to the small ring, the swinging rope is installed close to the ground, and the equilibrist’s tricks are almost literally performed on the nose of the spectators. This dramaturgical choice—made by the company in order to heighten the spectacular aspect and bring the artists as close as possible to the audience—highlights the technical aspect of the staged disciplines. The technical research not only adds a further meta-discourse to the circus discipline but also underlines the performative level. This procedure is repeated several times. By wrapping of the equilibrist’s legs in plastic, the performance refers not only to mermaids and seals but also makes the linear aesthetics of the equilibrist visible. Consequently, Les Princesses reinforces the narrative level or fiction just as much as the performative level or reality, and hence draws attention to the special procedure fundamental to all (new and contemporary) circus performances: spectators simultaneously worry about and admire the artists and follow the narration of the performance.

Les Princesses—a dramaturgy of self-referentiality? Dramaturgy is a way of conceiving the world, a certain way of organizing reality and imposing a reading lens on the spectator. It is a reading of the world, always in connection to the world. All art functions and articulates three poles: dramaturgy is in the middle in between those three poles: the artist, the medium (its history, its motivation), the society it interferes with (the context it interferes in). (Vanhaesebrouck 2018, 4) I would like to conclude this performance analysis by taking a position on a potential question. In what way does the dramaturgy of Les Princesses fulfill the demands of scholar and dramaturge Karel Vanhaesebrouck on art? Is Les Princesses able to balance between the three poles of artist, medium, and society? Due to the analysis’ focus on self-referentiality, one might object that the

10  Franziska Trapp

performance focuses mainly on the medium and neglects the other two poles. Vanhaesebrouck continues: A balance between these three poles is necessary, the excess of one of the poles leads to deviation: the excess of the actor-artist pole leads to narcissism; the excess of the medium pole leads to self-reference, and the excess of the society pole leads to the instrumentalization of art. (Vanhaesebrouck 2018, 4) But this is not the case. Throughout the performance, the critical analysis of what is left of the stories and tales of our childhood when we grow old remains the focus, both with regard to the identity of the artists (growing “old” as an artist) and the value of this question within society (feminism, stereotypes, etc.). Therefore, the balance between the poles is intact. Les Princesses uniquely uses the means of circus as a main dramaturgic principle on two levels: as a meta-discourse on the circus arts and to portray the reality and fiction intrinsic to circus performances. As mentioned, the self-referential elements of this performance should not be read as a “homage to circus.” My analysis also does not declare the performance’s affiliation to the genre because of the general unfamiliarity of society with new and contemporary circus despite its fifty years of existence. Rather, self-referentiality is a method to establish a consistent universe and stimulate narrative frames through circus despite using theatrical means. Due to the conscious use and continuous conjunction, this procedure of meaning constitution is quite successful. Les Princesses offers spectators entry into a world where theater and circus intermingle, alongside music and movement, the interaction between performers and audiences, and presentation and representation. This combination constitutes meaning in a successful work of contemporary circus art.

State of the art of circus studies To conclude, I would now like to examine this performance analysis’s place in the field of international circus research. My analysis is only one possible perspective on circus performances. By focusing on structures and meaning constitution, it was conducted through the lens of cultural poetics, semiotics, and theater studies. Other approaches to such performances could utilize, for instance, scholarship in dance studies to attain a deeper understanding of how the movements used in Les Princesses create meaning. Further inquiries might also involve economists focusing on the production costs of the performance. The performance could also be interpreted through the lens of anthropology or sociology in which the lives of the artist collective Cheptel Aleikoum, which differs from other circus companies, could become the research focus. Education sciences might be interested, for instance, in the collective’s teaching methods. Medical scholars could study the corporal state of the performer’s bodies; neuroscientists could conduct research on the neuronal activity of the artists.

Introduction  11

As you can see, circus research is extremely interdisciplinary. Both empirical methods and research methods for the humanities can be used to deepen our knowledge of the genre. Hence, the interdisciplinary approaches are not isolated but contribute to the same academic discourses. At this time, research on circus dramaturgy, circus and otherness, circus and identity, women in circus, circus semiotics, circus and education, social circus, and circus and profession are most canonical. Furthermore, circus research is extremely international, which becomes apparent when we take a look at the numerous circus conferences organized over the last eight years.2 The interdisciplinary and international character of circus has been outlined in three recently published anthologies on circus research, which explore circus in a very general manner: The Routledge Circus Studies Reader (Tait and Lavers 2016b); Cirque Global. Quebec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries (Leroux and Batson 2016); and The Cambridge Companion to the Circus (Arrighi and Davis 2021). Just as much as the present anthology, these volumes have brought together an international group of established and emerging scholars working across circus studies. The main aim of this book is to contribute to the international and interdisciplinary discussions3 by exploring contemporary circus meaning, practice and culture.

360° circus: Meaning. Practice. Culture. The chapters of this anthology consist of presentations, conversations, and collaborations on the circus arts that were selected from conferences organized in the frame of Zirkus|Wissenschaft.4 Focusing on circus meaning, practice, and culture in three different sections, 360° Circus provides an elucidated view on the genre as a relevant object of research for cultural studies. The first section, “Circus Meaning,” discusses how and under which conditions meaning is produced and transmitted in traditional, new, and contemporary circus. The second section, “Circus Practice,” explores how the analysis of circus performances can be used during the creation process itself and how circus practitioners position themselves and their artform with regard to processes of meaning creation. The third section, “Circus Culture,” examines the societal impact of circus and its relevance in contemporary society. 360° is intended to be a visualization of its object of analysis—the circus, for which its original performance space has been eponymous—as well as a symbol of the multidisciplinary and international perspectives on circus. The anthology welcomes different voices, viewpoints, and styles, ranging from “classical” academic chapters to interviews, graphic recordings, and artistic contributions.

Circus meaning The traditional circus code is no longer constitutive of the evolving new circus. The artists of the contemporary genre are no longer sprouts from circus families but graduates of state-recognized circus schools, animals have been mostly

12  Franziska Trapp

banished from programs, and the tent is no longer the exclusive performance space. The new circus performances are based on traditional circus disciplines (acrobatics, object manipulation, and clownery) and are supplemented by theatrical and choreographic elements. Its goal is no longer to underline the extraordinary ability of the artist and the particularity of the tricks by using a Babylonian structure, which sketches the elements according to difficulty, but rather to respond to current social and political issues, to create art, and to narrate. Therefore, the fundamental process of meaning creation in circus is changing. With this paradigm shift comes the challenge of clearly differentiating circus from other artforms and the internal classification of circus subgenres, for example, traditional, new, and contemporary circus. While the etymological origin of the word “circus,” which means “circle” or “ring,” fits the definition of traditional circus, the notion is stretched to its limit as soon as we take a look at new and contemporary circus performances, which are presented not only in big tops but also in theaters and in the streets. Also, with regard to the use of apparatuses, the differentiation between circus and other artforms becomes difficult. In contemporary circus, a qualified juggler might or might not use classical juggling material when juggling and they might or might not use signs that evoke classical juggling. For instance, in the first chapter, French circus expert Jean-Michel Guy refers to Phia Menard’s performance “Vortex,” which, according to him, visualizes the formal openness of contemporary circus performances. According to Guy, Menard’s performance is not circus; in fact, it is not even juggling. At the same time, it is neither dance nor theater. Faced with the patchwork nature of contemporary circus, Guy’s attempt to define traditional, new, and contemporary circus ends with the provocative statement, “Circus does not exist!” The paradigm shift not only influences ontological questions but also reflections on dramaturgy. In Chapter 2, Veronika Štefanová offers a short excursus into Cirk La Putyka and the debut of the now internationally renowned Czech contemporary performance “La Putyka”: While focusing on the relation between theater and circus, the description of the performance invites one to discover the dramaturgical shift from theater to contemporary circus, which is fundamental for the Czech context.

Circus practice In this section, former trapeze artist Sandy Sun outlines the ruptures between traditional and new circus aesthetics in an interview. Telling her own biographical story, she impressively explains how a serious accident during her high-level career forced her to develop a new, contemporary style on the trapeze. This chapter not only provides an autobiographic view of the development of circus, but also reminds us of the fact that circus is much more than its final product: the performance itself. It must be taken into account that artists spend significantly more time training and creating a performance, which lasts only one or two hours, than they

Introduction  13

actually spend performing. Hence, there should be a focus on the creative process in circus studies; training and individual artistic biographies are similarly interesting. As Swedish scholar Camilla Damkjaer states in her chapter, “I propose that we need to look at circus and each circus discipline not only as a performance but as practice.” In “The Circus Body Articulating,” she applies the theories of Deleuze and Guattari to examine the practice of hand-balancing. Not only in academia but also on the circus scene itself, the focus on circus as a practice has become much more relevant. In the performance “Extreme Symbiosis,” the two hand-to-hand Swedish acrobats Louise Von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger examine their discipline on a more intimate level. What is the nature of their practice? Bjurholm and Agger depict, discuss, and problematize the discipline of pair acrobatics from their perspective as practitioners. In “Hamlet: To Have Written or Not to Have Written for the Tightwire,” director, playwright, and researcher Louis Patrick Leroux offers a new perspective. His chapter calls to mind his process for creating “Hamlet on the Wire,” a short performance straddling theater, contemporary circus, and sound installation. To adapt this iconic play to contemporary circus, he found himself negotiating multiple artistic roles and wrestling with the very notion of writing and authorship, given that text, textuality, and texture became embodied in physical prowess. Searching for balance and waltzing between hesitation and redemptive risk, the piece presented Hamlet as a tightwire walker, artist, and researcher. “To rise, to stand, to move: no movement is performed without involving gravity, without a dialogue with gravity.” This explanation of choreographer, pedagogue, and emblematic figure of buto dance Ushio Amagatsu is the point of departure for French performing arts scholar Agathe Dumont, who focuses on the role of gravity in circus. Dumont conducts interviews with circus artists and circus teachers in order to examine how verticality and gravity are perceived by the artists themselves and in terms of movement analysis. In the chapter “Reading Circus. Dramaturgy on the Border of Art and Academia,” I write about the dialogue between art and science, practices (academic and artistic), knowledges (academic and artistic), and traditions (academic and artistic). I discuss a research project I directed in 2019 entitled “Reading Circus”: Artists of the Tall Tales Company were invited to the University of Münster, Germany, to collaborate with students of the graduate program Cultural Poetics of Literature and Media. Both groups worked together to read circus as a dramaturgical praxis. The chapter investigates the advantages of applying a cultural-­ poetic reading of contemporary circus to the creative process.

Circus culture The final section of the book spotlights the cultural, sociological, and political dimensions of the circus arts. The notion of culture in the section’s title is thereby understood in a broad sense, including a focus on expressive cultural practices, intertextual references, contemporary political discourses, transformative powers,

14  Franziska Trapp

and political changes. Focusing on the circus trick, researcher and dramaturge Sebastian Kann provocatively questions the political potential of circus practice: Circus artists are proud of their ‘signature tricks’ which function as their calling-cards and prove their uniqueness, but on some level these tricks are all the same insofar as they are all used as markers of the body’s commodity-­ value, and all produce more or less the same feeling in a spectator: awe. Kann proclaims that the very notion of the “trick” must shift if circus is to be taken seriously as an expressive practice. “Chaplin, Brecht, Fo: Toward a Concept of ‘Epic Clowning,’” written by Gaia Vimercati, deals with the clown, which is understood as the converging point of several artistic tendencies, culturally specific factors, and personal reinterpretations rooted in the tradition of the Middle Ages. Taking Brecht’s concept of the epic theater as a theoretical framework, this chapter discusses the ways in which the works of Charlie Chaplin and Dario Fo provide a style of clowning that differs from their predecessors. In “To Walk the Tightwire,” tightwire performer and researcher Ante Ursić views the tightwire artist as a symbol of modernity. Based on the theory of Peter Sloterdijk, Ursic examines how two tightwire acts—“Grand Canyon Crossing” by Nik Wallenda and “Twin Tower Crossing” by Philippe Petit—illuminate crucial questions of western modernity: paradoxes of individual freedom, territorial and spatial conquest, and the role of the artist and audience. The political dimension of circus acts is also analyzed by Australian researcher Kristy Seymour. In “The Spatiality of Australian Contemporary Circus,” she explores how contemporary circus as an artform transforms or changes the social coding of the spaces it occupies. She thereby focuses on circus performances from the Australian sector: “Gravity and other Myths” and “The Garden of Unearthly Delights.” This anthology concludes with the question of mood: While staging a cheerful mood has been fundamental to the success of traditional circus, recent circus and its music offer a far wider range of moods, including that of melancholy. How do such moods create connections to recent political spaces within culture? This question is raised by Peta Tait, professor of theater and drama at La Trobe University in Australia and copublisher of the anthology The Routledge Circus Studies Reader (Tait and Lavers 2016b).

360° circus: an invitation to find new directions in academia Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction. Francis Picabia (Umland et al. 2016) Not only with regard to internationality and multidisciplinarity, the notion 360° is eponymous for the present anthology. Within circus research, the necessity of

Introduction  15

a continual exchange between science and praxis requires a change of thinking regarding the presentation of academic discussion and findings. At the international conference on circus research “UpSideDown—Circus and Space” (2017), Leroux proclaimed, “A space for circus research must be a space for sharing knowledge and expertise between scholars and practitioners. It must be a space to enrich the discourse but also to contribute to the practice” (Leroux 2017). The research project Zirkus|Wissenschaft reflects this ambitious aim, which is why this volume welcomes different viewpoints ranging from the “classical” academic chapter to interviews and artistic contributions. This anthology also showcases the graphic recordings that were produced during “UpSideDown” in order to capture the key messages of the presenters and ongoing discussions in words and pictures, thus making the academic discourses accessible to a wider public. These recordings have been transformed into an academic graphic novel titled UpSideDown—Circus and Space (Kluth and Trapp 2017), which is a visual entry into the main academic discourses on the circus arts. 360° Circus can be read as its academic counterpart. It is an invitation to deepen our knowledge of the circus arts and its meaning, practice, and culture and to dive into academic procedures and findings. This anthology is an invitation to turn our heads upside down: “Curiouser and Curiouser!” (Carroll 2013, 9).

Notes 1 The analysis is based on Trapp 2020a, 160–176 (in German) and Trapp 2020b, 183-197 (in French). 2 Some of the conferences focused on the art of circus from academic and theoretical perspectives, as for example: “Semiotics of the Circus” (2015) University of Münster, Germany “UpSideDown—Circus and Space” (2017) University of Münster, Germany “Circus and Its Others I” (2016) Concordia University, Montréal “Circus and Its Others II” (2018) Charles University, Prague “Circus and Its Others III” (2021) University of California, Davis “Cirque et approches comparées” (2018) organized in Marseille by the Collectif des chercheurs sur le cirque (CCCirque) “Cinquième Semaine du Cirque” (2020), Ecrire L’histoire du Cirque as a collaboration between the Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier III and the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Others focused on the relations between professionals, artists, and spectators, as for example: “CARD II—Circus on the Edge” (2015) Stockholm University of the Arts “Circus and Identity” (2016) Festival Novog Cirkusa, Zagreb “Think Circus!” (2017, 2022) organized by Circus Next, Paris And circus’ reception and transfer in different media were for example analyzed at “Literarische Manegenkünste” (2016) University of Marburg, Germany and “Imageries et imaginaires du cirque” (2022) University of Rouen, France. 3 Circus researchers are working at different universities all over the world. Projects such as the recently founded CARP, a collaboration between several international circus documentation centers, aim at establishing institutionalized networks to connect individual researchers and strengthen collaborations between scholars. This is also the case for research networks such as for example: YOUR|Circus. Young Researchers Network in Circus Studies

16  Franziska Trapp

The Montreal Working Group on Circus Research CCCirque Cirque: histoire, imaginaires, pratiques|RIRRA 21 at the University of Montpellier. The present anthology is the result of the activities of the research project Zirkus|Wissenschaft, which I established in 2015. 4 At the beginning of March 2017, the ARD Campus Magazine announced “the eight things one knows when studying at the University of Münster: There are more than 280 study programs in Münster. And in addition to such classics as pedagogy, business administration, and law, there are also a few very special things: cultural poetics, for example, with circus research as a subcategory” (ARD Campus Magazin). The project Zirkus|Wissenschaft currently based at the Freie University Berlin and the Université libre de Bruxelles seeks to anchor circus as a relevant object of research for cultural studies in university research and coursework. The establishment of a circus studies section in the library as well as regularly held seminars and excursions for graduate students encourages and initiates research projects about this genre. It explicitly aims at establishing a long-term international meeting place for circus researchers and to set up an interdisciplinary network. Important milestones include the biennial conferences in collaboration with local cultural operators, the support of network projects such as CARP, which was initiated at the second international conference “UpSideDown—Circus and Space,” the initiation of the Young Researchers Network in Circus Studies, the implementation of a section Theater, Dance & ­Circus in the German Association for Semiotics, the realization of projects in research communication such as UpSideDown—Traveling Exhibtion and UpSideDown—­Academic Graphic Novel. Another recent project about the collaboration between theory and practice was filmed in the documentary Reading Circus. Dramaturgy on the Border ­between Art and Academia (Benda Film Productions 2019).

References Arrighi, Gillian and Jim Davis. 2021. The Cambridge Companion to the Circus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baßler, Moritz. 2011. Populärer Realismus. In Kommunikation im Populären. In Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf ein ganzheitliches Phänomen, ed. Roger Lüdeke, 91–103. Bielefeld: Transcript. Batson, Charles, Karen Fricker and Louis Patrick Leroux. 2015. CFP- Circus and its Others. https: //performancestudies.ucdavis.edu./2015/11/11/cfp-circus-and-itsothers-montreal-july-15-17-2016/ (4.11.2017) Benda Film Productions. 2019. Reading Circus. A Documentary about Dramaturgy on the Border between Art and Academia. Production: Benda Film Productions. Regie: Daniel Huhn. Camera: Benjamin Leers. Cut: Daniel Huhn. Idea and Concept: Franziska Trapp. Münster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvSlGJSDg4M (10.2.2023) Bouissac, Paul. 1976. Circus and Culture. A Semiotic Approach. Bloomington: Indiana ­University Press. Carroll, Lewis. 2013. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. ­Toronto: HarperCollins Canada. Fricker, Karen and Hayley Malouin. 2018. Introduction. Circus and Its Others. Performance Matters 4 (1-2):1–8. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. 2008. Reality and Fiction in Contemporary Theatre. Theatre ­Research International 33 (1): 84–96.

Introduction  17

Graver, David. 2005. The Actor’s Bodies. In Performance. Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, ed. Philip Auslander, 157–174. London: Routledge. Hurley, Erin. 2016. The Multiple Bodies of Cirque de Soleil. In Cirque Global. Quebec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries, eds. Louis Patrick Leroux and Charles R. Batson, 122– 139. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Karlin, Marjolaine. 2016. Les Princesses. https://cheptel-aleikoum.webflow.io/spectacles/les-princesses (2.2.2023) Kluth, Eckhard and Franziska Trapp. 2017. UpSideDown. An academic graphic novel. Muenster: University of Muenster. Leroux, Louis Patrick. 2016. Reinventing Tradition, Building a Field. Quebec Circus and Its Scholarship. In Cirque Global. Quebec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries, eds. Louis Patrick Leroux and Charles R. Batson, 3–21. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Leroux, Louis Patrick. 2017. Netherspaces; Collaborative Spaces: Performance Research and Circus Practice. In UpSideDown—Circus and Space, ed. Eckhard Kluth and Franziska Trapp, 33. Münster: University of Münster Press. Leroux, Louis Patrick and Charles R. Batson, eds. 2016. Cirque Global. Quebec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. New York Times Editorial Board. 2017. Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Circus. https:// www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/opinion/editorials/tillerson-trump-moron.html (10.2.2023)Sontag, Susan. 2018. Notes ‘On Camp’. London: Penguin. (Original work published 1964). Tait, Peta. 2016. Risk, Danger and Other Paradoxes in Circus and Circus Oz Parody. In The Routledge Circus Studies Reader, eds. Peta Tait and Katie Lavers, 528–545. London: Routledge. Tait, Peta and Katie Lavers. 2016a. Introduction. Circus Perspectives, Precedents and Presents. In The Routledge Circus Studies Reader, eds. Peta Tait and Katie Lavers, 1–11. London: Routledge. Tait, Peta and Katie Lavers, eds. 2016b. The Routledge Circus Studies Reader. London: Routledge. Trapp, Franziska. 2020a. Lektüren des Zeitgenössischen Zirkus. Ein Modell zur Text-­ Kontext-Orientierten Aufführungsanalyse, 160–176. Berlin: De Gruyter. Trapp, Franziska. 2020b. Le cirque contemporain ou ce qu’il en reste: Une lecture du spectacle Les Princesses du Cheptel Aleikoum, In Contours et detours des dramaturgies circassiennes, ed. Diane Moquet, Karine Saroh, Cyril Thomas, 183-197. Chalons en Champagne: CNAC. Umland, Anne, Cathérine Hug, and Talia Kwartler. 2016. Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction. Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Kunsthaus Zürich. Vanhaesebrouck, Karel. 2018. Certificat Dramaturgie Circassien. Unpublished Manuscript. West, Mark Irwin. 1981. A Spectrum of Spectators: Circus Audiences in Nineteenth-­ Century America. Journal of Social History 15 (2): 265–270. Zipes, Jack. 2015. Introduction. Towards a Definition of the Literary Fairy Tale. In The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, ed. Jack Zipes, 1–20. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

PART I

Circus meaning

1 CIRCUS DOES NOT EXIST Jean-Michel Guy

Internal and external borders Two, three subgenres? Or thousands? It is common to divide the circus into subgenres akin to those in dance: classical dance, modern dance, contemporary dance, traditional dance, hip hop dance, etc. The circus genre is popularly divided into two poles. The first is usually called Traditional Circus or Cirque traditionnel, even though some of its apologists like Alexis Gruss prefer to call it “classic” (Barré 2001, 37) and even though there are still a few fundamentalists who are just calling it “circus.”1 According to country and tastes, the other pole is called New Circus or Nouveau Cirque, Contemporary Circus or Cirque Contemporain, or Cirque de Création. Furthermore, you can find terms such as néo-traditionnel, néo-classique, petit cirque, cirque autrement, etc. (2001, 37). But who is using these different terms? Managers of institutions, circus directors, companies, artists, critics, and a small part of the public. The public, often uninformed about the latest developments of the circus, assume that there are generally two main genres: the “circus” overrepresented in the media of a big show involving tricks with wild animals and which relates to childhood, and “another circus” that is very difficult to define, as it is not using the popular codes. It is difficult to list what this “other circus” is not, because it may or may not have animals in the show, it may or may not be suitable for children, and it may or may not be very similar to the “well-known circus.” Under these circumstances, it is difficult for the public to say whether Cirque du Soleil, for example, is classic or new. But does the majority of the public care about the categories that journalists and experts are ascribing to the prevailing shows? Due to the diversification of the cultural scene, in France, in any case, the public is categorizing circus differently: “informal,” “intelligent,” “accessible,” “challenging,” “popular,” DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-3

22  Jean-Michel Guy

“violent,” “slow,” “varied,” “long,” “colorful,” “intimate,” “cabaret,” “zoo,” etc. And I am wondering why the categorizations implemented by consumers and merchants are often seen as less worthy of an intellectual approach to circus than the categorizations of experts. “New,” “contemporary,” “traditional,” but also “extraordinary,” “boring”—perhaps the question is not what these concepts are covering but whose interests these concepts are preserving, or if we assume those involved are not using any strategies, the question concerns knowing what the concepts are doing. Nevertheless, the issue that we wish to examine here is not primarily sociological. Even if the approach were sociological or if we were talking about medical or astrophysical questions concerning circus, it should be noted that the bipartition of the circus genre into “traditional” and “new” or the a priori tripartition into “classic,” “new,” and “contemporary” is not working faultlessly. I am not saying that the common distinctions are meaningless; I just want to point out that they have limits.

Internal limits of classifications How should we classify, for example, a high-rise tightrope crossing above an urban crowd? Are the colors of the artist’s costume or the use of a balancing pole sufficient to label the act as “new” or “traditional?” The fascination, the immortality, the fact that the artist inspires us, is this “contemporary?” Or is it just “circus?” Would it not be better to define the tightrope as—excuse the tautology—the tightrope? Juggler Jerome Thomas was able to proclaim at a certain point in his career, “juggling is juggling/le jonglage est le jonglage” (Thomas 2000, 35), it is everything but circus. The issue of the internal borders of circus inevitably returns to its external borders. The inclusion of BMX, capoeira—in some shows, circus has always felt restricted, not to mention its proximity to the cabaret, the bullfight, or other extreme sports. The street kid juggling three clubs during a red light to earn some money, is he doing circus? Or what about the increasing number of social circus programs giving a sense of community to people who feel excluded? The circus of these people, for example, Circolombia, has a very high level of technical but also political commitment. Is it traditional, new, or contemporary? And finally, what do we do with the ethnic practices (e.g., Mexican Voladores, Mongolian Contortionists, Arab Horsemen, Korean Jultagi, etc.) that are not defined as circus but can be easily allocated to this genre by Europeans due to their extreme physical virtuosity? What is more, we see circus as a live show, even if it repels us to consider the act of the poor street juggler a “spectacle.” Yet, it is what he is doing. Reversing the perspective, the live show is only one of the many possibilities of circus. Remember Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus, where the artist precariously balances on a wire while being assaulted by a crowd of monkeys. This is obviously cinema, but it can also be seen as circus. In any case, some contemporary artists do not

Circus does not exist  23

hesitate to show circus through angles that are impossible in live shows, thanks to the technological possibilities of film and internet. And they go even further by calling it “digital circus.” While simply observing the diversity of the world, our convenient categories begin to totter. The circus is such a polymorphic object, one so mobile that it seems to evaporate. Let us try to catch it.

Traditional circus and contemporary circus: formal differences The absence of clear signs It would be so simple to say, “Here there are tigers, here there are none.” The absence of the tiger, lion, or elephant could be used as a marker. Here the children represent 50% of the public, there only 5%. Here red is omnipresent, there it is simply possible. I see all the benefits of a thorough description of the elements of a show and even of a statistical approach that would record the frequency of red and basic geometric forms, the presence of a particular figure, and the smile at a special moment. No doubt, such a study would highlight both the consistencies (i.e., contemporary, classic, and new jugglers throw and catch objects) and differences (i.e., some jugglers no longer throw or catch objects). It remains to be explained why. According to Howard Becker (1982), we might have to look for signs of the circus in the world of arts, not only in the narrow sphere of creation. The circus not only consists of shows and artists but is the product of an extensive network of mediators, pedagogues, directors, technicians, spectators, and researchers. The presence or absence of a specialty in a particular school, the number of students, the use of the words “experimental” or “family” in a show’s brochure, the exclamation of a spectator who describes the performance of an artist as “extraordinary” or “ordinary,” the price of a ticket—all of these are no less signs than a drum roll or nudity on stage. Nevertheless, I will limit myself to the narrow sphere of the show itself.

New circus and contemporary circus: two generations Contemporary circus is not that difficult to define. It is a circus of research and creation as is contemporary dance or contemporary music. Its principal notion is that of authorship. This is intimately, one might even say tautologically or circularly, linked to the notion of work and originality. The author of contemporary circus performance generally has a unique style and a “signature.” Traditional circus highlights a sign, a mark, and never or very rarely an author. It is essential that there is no originality—even if it plays a big role since you have to set yourself apart from the competition—but only fidelity to the canon. The concept of originality is certainly unclear: it includes concepts such as authenticity, novelty, and singularity, which are not always compatible. This ambiguity might even be an emerging characteristic of new circus.

24  Jean-Michel Guy

What is new circus? It is an artistic movement that was born in 1968 and that is about to disappear as its inventors are leaving the stage. These pioneers can still amaze us. But the project they were carrying, the new circus, is gone. Contemporary circus is its unfaithful heritage. Without going into detail, I just want to recall that the first creators of the new circus were at most a few dozen in 2000. Most of them were faithful to certain circus codes, in particular the tent, the number, and the apparatus. They were fighting for recognition of their “new genre.” Contemporary circus differs at least in these points: there are hundreds, even thousands of companies on a European scale and the representation in a tent is very small. I would like to return to the institutional recognition: contemporary circus has been accepted for the past thirty years in France and has changed significantly in the last fifteen years. In Quebec, it has been recognized for the past twenty years. It proceeded to gain recognition in Finland, Sweden, most recently Denmark, Belgium, the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany. In almost every case, it is the opening of schools that has changed everything. A circus school is extremely expensive due to the rarity of teachers and the variety of specialties. It needs to be behind or in front of a public authority, regional or national, and therefore a cultural policy. Contemporary circus is basically this: a political creation that is usually unsound because it relies on the demagogic argument that the circus is “in itself ” a popular art, but was soon overwhelmed by the results. France, a pioneer, exports its circus everywhere, displaying the country’s unique way of seeing the world. Finland, with only 5.5 million inhabitants, has created a remarkable contemporary circus scene in the last ten years, which now has its stars, ambassadors, and even a national “touch.” From Brazil to Serbia, Portugal to Singapore, Japan to Latvia, Ramallah to Tel Aviv—wherever you go, you will meet circus performers whose only horizon is the contemporary circus, which is to say, a relatively free circus. Now, these artists are coming to France and increasingly to other European countries as soon as they can, because in France, a country known for its literature, the arts of the body are paradoxically the least belittled. It is a fairly populous country offering a vast circus network. The French now speak easily of cirque contemporain, claiming it is no longer defined in relation to a former circus but, to paraphrase the philosopher Christian Ruby (2007), in its newness or transcendency. I find that traditional and contemporary circus stick to their own poles, basically differing in terms of their value systems, which are expressed in economic choices, practices, and forms.

Signs of the traditional circus The main formal difference is that traditional circus performances are more or less similar and contemporary circus performances are becoming increasingly different. Traditional circus performances bear resemblance; they respect a set of representational codes expressed by conventional signs. It has a global format, a time format in which an act lasts about eight minutes in a two-hour program,

Circus does not exist  25

and a spatial format in which the ring is often placed in a tent. Furthermore, there is a dramaturgy based on a dozen numbers in juxtaposition with no thematic link but various specialties, which usually includes animal acts connected by the oral presentation of a ringmaster or the repetition of a clown act with an individual structure in every number. It is a set of recurring aesthetic signs: red and gold, music based on brass and percussion, the smell of horse droppings and sawdust, the frequency of cone-shaped forms, and iconic signs like the red nose, not to mention the shape of the apparatus. Of course, there are thousands of possible variations in this core paradigm, for example, the stands may be completely circular or there might be a red curtain; the music can be prerecorded or performed live; the clown nose can be black; and there can even be a global theme unifying the numbers. But these changes never question the impression of familiarity and resemblance. For example, if we consider the commercial teasers by Cirque Pinder,2 one can find all these signs not only once but twice, as if the firm’s intention is to create a whole unity in itself, which is to say, a genre.

Contemporary circus is infinitely diverse Contemporary circus has absolutely no formal unity and yet—unafraid of creating a paradox—it is unified by its own diversity. This diversity comes from the importance of originality. Since contemporary circus authors aim to create a singular performance, and the number of authors is growing, diversifying forms are increasing. However, the economists working on cultural diversity applying the mathematical “Stirling’s formula” (Moreau 2011) warn against an unduly optimistic use of the notion “diversity.” They distinguish between “variety” or the number of different works (which is a growing expansion), the “concentration” or the relative proportions of works consumed by the masses and some people that make up the famous long tail (this phenomenon can also be observed in contemporary circus) and the “disparity” or the number of formal, qualitative categories that can be established in a production. I will later return to the notion of concentration, that is, the unequal distribution of elegance. The criterion of disparity can help us to get a better understanding of contemporary circus. It is possible to compare different works according to certain dimensions: I am not saying that contemporary works can be classified into airtight categories, but that they can be classified in 1,000 ways depending on the dimensions allowing us to identify the similarities and differences. At the risk of oversimplifying, I would like to draw your attention to the certain kinds of distinctions that I would like to discuss in the following order: spaces; the number of disciplines represented on stage; the concept of place; the hybridization of forms; and the variety of aesthetic effects.

Spaces Though the spaces of contemporary circus performances are more diverse than ever, the theater, with its stage and auditorium in the front, is the dominant

26  Jean-Michel Guy

space. The presentation of performances in the ring or tent is no longer the rule but the exception; in France, only 20% of the shows are played in a circle (David-­Gilbert et al. 2006). Nevertheless, since the market has been growing over the last fifteen years, there are more tents than ever before. It is estimated that 15% of circus performances in France are played in the street and open spaces (David-Gilbert et al. 2006). This is certainly very little when compared to, for example, circus in Spain, Italy, and Poland. And as I alluded to earlier, we are now beginning to see circus works that are not designed for traditional spaces but for computer screens. What we have to remember concerning the diversification of space is that the performance space itself has become an aesthetic parameter of primary importance, an artistic choice with regard to the relationship with the public, heavily loaded with meaning. Some examples might help to illustrate this aspect. “Vertical Horizon” is a fifty-­n ine-minute film cowritten by Raphael Péaud and circus artist Marie-Anne Michel. In the Tunisian desert, an artist puts up her autonomous Chinese pole. The artistic project of Marie-Anne Michel is trying to oppose the endless expanse of the desert with the artificial verticality of a pole. Her research, she claims, is the confrontation of an unusual space with another temporality. She explores the challenge to give up the temptation of seduction and expressiveness. This project excludes live performances and relies on film. And yet, it is circus not only because of the presence of the typical sign, the apparatus, namely, the Chinese pole. “Questions de direction” by the collective AOC is another example of the importance of space for the dramaturgy of circus. This group chose the tent. They “chose” the tent, because it is no longer a necessity but one option among others. I am exaggerating somewhat, as in some cases the tent is necessary for technical reasons: the presentation of a flying trapeze, for example, is not possible in most theaters. Artists who choose the tent usually do so for two reasons. First, as artist Johann Le Guillerm has stated, they like to live by their work tools while working close to where they live. Second, artists are very sensitive to the friendliness of the audience and their proximity to them. They feel that they can meet more easily in a tent than in the foyer of a theater. What is interesting about this example is that they “play” with the familiar image attached to the tent, but they present an absolutely unfamiliar show, which may contain very violent scenes. But I would like to emphasize the rarity of this case: the tent is often combined with the aesthetics of familiar, user-friendly joy. More generally, the scenic area is undoubtedly one of the strongest signs, not in technical terms but symbolically as it realizes a special relationship between artists and the public. I could also say that it is sociologically marked.

Mono-disciplinary shows The second important aspect is the internal diversity of shows (and you could also apply the famous Stirling model to each show). I will limit myself to an important

Circus does not exist  27

observation: The majority of circus performances today are mono-disciplinary, and this phenomenon of the circus arts’ autonomy has been characteristic for the last twenty years. This is mainly due to economic reasons, as it is easier to create and tour with a solo or a juggling duo than to create a show with a large number of performers with different specialties. But it also has its origin in the artists’ motivation to attain power over their own art. In recent years, we have also seen the emergence of large sets of artists with the same specialization: there were twenty-four acrobats in the latest show of Company XY; seven jugglers in “Les beaux orages qui nous étaient promis” by Petit Travers; eight tightwire walkers in “Le fil sous la neige” by the Colporteurs; and the flying trapeze companies should not be forgotten. This empowerment of each circus art, and thus the creation of long-lasting mono-disciplinary works, is the most significant development of the past twenty-five years. Even though the earliest “mono-disciplinary” long-lasting shows appeared in the 1920s with juggler Enrico Rastelli and clown Grock, they now affect all disciplines without exception, even the most singular: BMX, juggling diabolo, the flying rope. Le fil sous la neige by the Colporteurs is symptomatic of the emancipation of each “circus art” from the usual circus paradigm. It was also revolutionary insofar as it was the first spectacle to show eight tightrope acrobats at the same time, thus breaking with the image of the solitary, narcissistic artist associated with the artists of this discipline. Moreover, it helped to form a kind of brotherhood among tightrope walkers. In this show, the audience surely recognized the familiar signs, the ring, the tent, the cables and platforms, rather catchy music, red, and virtuoso artists. Nevertheless, the aesthetic effect is unique because it mixes narrations of rather loose structure (people are crossing in the same way as in public places) with the permanent impression of floating through air. The show “Mobile” by juggler Jörg Müller is the last example of the emancipation of each circus art. This revolutionary thirty-minute piece was created in 1990 and is known as “the tubes.” Müller is indeed the inventor of a new way to juggle, which I would like to refer to as “pendular juggling” since the objects, the tubes, are hanging, but it is also jonglage asservi, meaning “suppressed juggling,” since the objects cannot fall. He juggles with five metal tubes of different lengths hanging from the ceiling and forming what looks to be pentatonic “tubular bells.” He throws them in different ways, either avoiding their potential clash or organizing them in order to compose music. This is circus in terms of the artist’s mastery of the medium, but is this really the most important sign? Does the meaning of this act only lie in the artist’s skill? Of course not. Its meaning encompasses the extremely subtle writing covering purism and sobriety; one man who uses five tubes to intertwine dance, rhythm, music, theater, and the visual arts. The signs are not taken from the “language of circus” but lie in body language or more accurately stated in dance jargon, “states of body,” “states of being,” and the “postures” that the artist crosses. At the same time, is it not circus? The person who can say whether this timeless piece is traditional or contemporary is very clever.

28  Jean-Michel Guy

The subject The third notable feature of contemporary circus, ignored by traditional circus, is the notion that the subject, purpose, or “proposal” is central. Subjects are obviously very diverse, but it is easy to identify some recurring orientations, one being the psychological subject dealing with intimacy, which has been common in dance for at least a century, especially since 1968, whereas in circus it only became relevant after 2000. There is the sociological subject dealing with social problems like unemployment, disability, or usability. Moreover, there are the deliberately poetic and dreamlike subjects that are able to create strange universes and the subjects of a very singular type dealing with the physical determinations of human beings: submission to gravity, to death, and to animal drives—themes reminding us of the attempt to subvert the natural limits of the human being in traditional circus. But these general subjects about the human being and nature are approached differently in contemporary circus, more environmentally. Or should I say in a way that is less athletic, less competitive? Jörg Müller, mentioned above, is an artist who has gone further with these questions as he tried to juggle weightlessness aboard a plane in a parabolic flight. What is juggling, what is left of juggling, or rather what does juggling become when you stop what is forming it, namely weight and therefore the risk of dropping? The answer was already presented in Mobile: it is a way to stand and dance with objects. The subjects—their varying writing principles and poetic methods—follow a model more or less based on that of contemporary dance: a work in progress. That is to say, the meaning of the work is discovered along the way, inside and outside views are constantly switching. Concerning dramaturgy, artists often ignore the concept of the act for the benefit of either shorter or longer formats or a continuity in gesture or rhythm, but rarely in narrative. The shows themselves are of varying duration: twenty, thirty, forty, or 150 minutes, even though the standard of contemporary dance is about one hour. Virtuosity and prowess are sometimes assumed, sometimes neglected. Concerning this topic, I will limit myself to this insight: thanks to circus schools, the average technical skill of artists has increased considerably and there are many “dancing stars,” as we say in dance. Nevertheless, there are more and more shows in which these virtuosos are hiding their virtuosity, playing down the effects of apnea, exhilaration, and danger, which they could easily provoke.

Hybrids and purism The fourth characteristic concerns the hybridization of forms. It has been mentioned that the new circus, referred to as “Theater Circus” twenty years ago in Scandinavia (Eigtved 2001), was distinguished from the traditional circus by its concern to make the circus theatrical. This is only partly true, but what is certain is that the contemporary circus inherited the habit of “borrowing” from the new circus. It takes from dance and different types of theater (not just from narrative

Circus does not exist  29

theater or text), video, cinema, architecture, visual arts, puppetry, and most recently, magic. It uses music from diverse genres. The phenomenon of hybridization reached its climax in the mid-2000s with so many mixed shows that we did not know whether to classify as circus or theater, or if we should rank them in both genres. Even if this trend continues, we have also witnessed in recent years the opposite phenomenon, which I will call purism. It intends to release the circus from its neighboring arts in order to deal with the question of “the specificity of circus.” In this case, one assumes that circus itself is dramatic and should be able to deal with “circensic problems” such as how to manage the fall of juggling objects to renew the creation. More than ever, limitation, prevention, and the invention of new barriers has become a source of inspiration for artists. I would like to mention another recent phenomenon linked to this, namely the proliferation of impressive stage sets designed as “massive rigging,” or rather replacing traditional rigging and providing artists with playgrounds to test out new gestures. “Human (articulations)” by Christopher Huysman illustrates the polarization of the hybrid and the original. This show is a mixture of theater and acrobatics. It is subtitled “pièce du cirque,” meaning “circus play.” Interestingly, it was presented in theaters as well as at circus festivals, each with a focus on either “play” or “circus.” Concerning the theater genre of this piece, it can be classified as contemporary since there is no story, no characters, but a fragmented text always expressed in “freestyle.” I mention this point because we have used the words “theatrical circus” or “circus theater” in order to express that circus could now tell stories, even though theater is even more heterogeneous than circus and experienced remarkable developments in the last forty years. To represent the other extreme, we could turn to the example of “Appris par Corps” performed by the company Un loup pour l’homme. There is music, there are glances between the protagonists, and the audience cannot help interpreting those glances as expressions of a complex relationship between two brothers, two neighbors, or two lovers in a “theatrical” way. However, and this is essential, the authors of this piece keep repeating that the audience is seeing a circus performance absolutely stripped of any narrative or choreography. The drama lies entirely in the gestures; thus, this performance is only dealing with what might be called “specific circus issues” such as the search for physical agreement. Appris par Corps is a puristic performance not easily understandable due to the importance given to the music. I should also insist on a new trend, namely the use of new, usually huge stage devices that I like to call “playgrounds,” which you can see in creations of Aurélien Bory, Mathurin Bolze, Martin Zimmermann, Nicolaus-Maria Holz, and Yohann Bourgeois, among others.

Aesthetic effects Diversity is still the main aesthetic effect sought by artists of contemporary circus. The variety? Undoubtedly, in circus we do not see a range as broad as in

30  Jean-Michel Guy

cinema, but it is extensive nevertheless, ranging from laughter (and many kinds of humor, “slapstick” being very popular) to tears through diverse nuances of tenderness and melancholy. It ranges from familiar or ordinary to the odd and even the monstrous, passing more conventional effects like wonder and dizziness. The disparity? What deserves to be pointed out is that the arrival of these aesthetic effects was unthinkable in traditional circus. I will mention the poignant and the contemplative effect. The poignant effect moves the audience to tears through the staging of human fragility, of disability, and non-passing. Put differently, joy, excitement, and happy endings are no longer needed in circus. The contemplative effect is an important category: it suspends the judgment of taste, a state that is neither comfortable nor uncomfortable but a possibility for reflection. We should also point out the renewal of the clowns who recently rediscovered the insolence or cruelty that they had lost in the traditional or commercial circus. Again, the monstrous has a right to be presented in circus. But if we consider diversity in terms of concentration, it is obvious that there are effects of fashion, reputation, and market—and market must be understood here in plural because there are circus markets and markets aimed at the general public, the intellectual elite, a dance audience, or passersby, where difference dominates. Conversely, in all these forms, an expectation shared by all markets consists of simplicity and hyper-originality: simplicity because you have to reach the heart of a target quickly; hyper-originality because the competition has always been strong and our global society is looking for new geniuses across the globe. This is how I explain the emergence, for now mainly in France, of extremely daring circus artists who are pushing the boundaries of circus far beyond conventions which can be exported easily. I would like to talk about Johann Le Guillerm, Phia Ménard, and Aurélien Bory, for example. Many others have followed this path of hyper-originality by dealing with disability, handling fire, showing nudity, and monstrosity with more or less success.

Paradigm and phrase: vary to the maximum! The relative importance of a sign This chapter began by inviting readers to question epithets, boundaries, and classifications. Then the different dimensions of comparison were discussed and contemporary circus was presented. I would like to return to the first idea. Let us forget the distinction between traditional and contemporary for a moment and choose a potentially common sign such as the presence of the tent. Two questions arise immediately: the first is whether the tent is a distinguishing sign and the second is whether only one sign is powerful enough to make a distinction by itself, like a constellation of signs would be able to. If we are able to identify distinguishing dimensions, it is almost certain that we would have to avoid the distinction between traditional and new, but also the one between circus and dance. The three notions of theatricality, musicality, and physicality, common to all the arts, but diversely invested and weighted in each of them, can serve us more.

Circus does not exist  31

When I am analyzing a performance in the lessons of critical analysis that I teach, I often give my students an impossible task: to separate the important from the unimportant, the essential from the accessory in a circus piece. This is obviously absurd, because if we are substituting one sign for another, we are creating a different piece of work. But the exercise is very useful if, for example, you replace the Chinese pole number with a tissue number: Will the meaning of the work be completely, deeply, or moderately affected? This kind of thought experiment seeks to identify signs by their relative valence, balance, and articulation. I could replace the word “valence” with a simpler word like “importance” to express myself like sociologists Boltanski and Thévenot (1991), which is to say, the principle that helps to distinguish what is relevant and what is not or what is big and what is small. There is not just one principle but several. What is important for one person or rather for a person in one social setting, what Boltanski and Thévenot call a “world,” may be irrelevant for another. And I am not talking about taste but about elements perceived or not perceived as significant. I identified some of these signs or rather some global categories, like scenic space, variety of disciplines, hybridization, subject, mode of writing, and aesthetic effect. Sometimes, this is easily expressed by a constellation of signs such as the presence or absence of a black box or of certain disciplines and related arts (e.g., the red nose and tiger) and sometimes is found less easily because it can be difficult to identify clear markers of irony, pathos, or vertigo. In any case, interpretation frameworks, “worlds,” have to be applied to signs, dimensions, or categories, so that they are able to be of particular magnitude.

Instability of invariants Among all of these potentially endless signs, there are probably a number of signs that seem more interesting than others. These are the signs of circus, understood as the signs that constitute circus such as an apparatus or a figure. This minimum program seems simple, but given the notion of importance just mentioned, it is very complex in practice. Many works could be cited, such as “Rivages” by the company Carpe Diem, which are considered almost exclusively choreographic, given the fluidity of movements; however, sometimes they are considered circus, given the characteristics of certain acrobatic movements. The fact that such parts are presented in circus festivals may or may not help the audience to identify it as belonging to circus. But circus is an art and as such it continues to blur the codes with which it speaks and is spoken about. Some of its semiotic systems seem invariant and outdated, but the emancipation of equestrian art, or clowning, or, for example, the recent inclusion of magic among the circus arts reminds us that circus continues to reconfigure itself and invites us to be at least as attentive to its deconstruction and reconstruction as to its permanence. If circus is working on the limits, whether to overcome them or simply identify them, it is also working on the limits of our thinking.

32  Jean-Michel Guy

I would like to conclude with a provocative example: “Vortex” by Phia Ménard. This piece depicts the metamorphosis of a man into a woman, passing like an animal into different states of shedding skin. It is not important that we know this performance is a metaphor for the real transformation of Philippe to Phia Ménard. We are able to see ourselves being someone else, at least in our imagination. This is the formal arrangement of the scene: sixteen round fans are arranged in a circle, forming an invisible “vortex” in which we witness the changing, swimming, dancing, and fluttering of the various skins of the “chrysalis.” The choreography of these skins depends on the fans, meaning their orientation, their speed, and their combinations. This example is especially relevant because Phia Ménard is a juggler whose works deal with juggling, and absolutely nothing in Vortex evokes classic juggling. Faced with such a work, we can declare that it is not circus and not even juggling. But as this clearly is neither dance nor theater, what is it? We have to accept that this is circus or at least juggling, knowing that only a juggler could conceive such a form, and Phia Ménard went further by inventing the concept of “jugglability” or the capacity of any object to be juggled under certain conditions and the responsibility of the juggler being to discover or to invent such conditions. And who are we to think that we are able to better qualify something as circus than circus authors themselves? These authors urge us to go beyond circus like they are doing themselves. They incite us to think about circus differently than before. The aim of the radical works of circus today is to teach us that the sense, the need to speak, the translation of the world, and the end are all more important than the means. Circus—a patchwork of extreme practices—is only the means to an end. I would like to end with a provocation: Circus does not exist.

Notes

1 See Pierron (2003). The author denies what she calls autre cirque (other circus) the right to present itself as circus. 2 Cirque Pinder is the largest French retailer, in economic terms: several hundred employees, a show that takes place almost every day or several times a day in a different town with wholesale sales.

References Barré, Sylvestre. 2001. Le Nouveau Cirque Traditionnel. In Avant-garde, Cirque! Les Arts de la Piste en Revolution, ed. Jean-Michel Guy, 37–45. Paris: Autrement. Becker, Howard S. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Boltanski, Luc and Laurent Thévenot. 1991. De la Justification. Les Économies de la Grandeur. Paris: Gallimard. David-Gilbert, Gwenola, Jean-Michel Guy, and Dominique Sagot-Duvauroux. 2006. Les Arts du Cirque. Logiques et Enjeux Économiques. Ministère de la culture et de la communication. DEPS.

Circus does not exist  33

Eigtved, Michael. 2001. Det teatrale cirkus, essays om cirkus artister kunst og kultur. Copenhagen: Multivers Aps Forlag. Moreau, François, and Sylvie Peltier. 2011. Cultural Diversity in the French Book ­Publishing Industry (2003–2007). Culture Etudes 4 (4): 1–16. Pierron, Agnès. 2003. Dictionnaire de la langue du cirque. Paris: Editions Stock. Ruby, Christian. 2007. Devenir Contemporain? La Couleur du Temps au Prisme de l’art. Paris: Le Félin. Thomas, Jérome. 2000. L’art de la jongle. Arts de la Piste 15: 18–19.

2 “LA PUTYKA” BY CIRK LA PUTYKA A glimpse at Czech contemporary circus Veronika Štefanová

In the last decade, contemporary circus has gained in popularity in the Czech ­Republic. Theater actors, dancers, and athletes have shown an increasing interest in participating in the creation of Czech contemporary circus productions.1 When compared to other foreign circus performances, it becomes evident that Czech contemporary circus exhibits some unique features. What may have been lacking in terms of technical perfection is made up for in dramaturgical ingenuity.2 The relationship between theater and circus is still viewed as a dynamic one within the Czech context. The development of Czech contemporary circus has frequently been perceived as a line of evolution from theater to circus. Czech contemporary circus artists, though mostly recruited from the ranks of actors, puppeteers, mimes, dancers, and gymnasts, have largely become acquainted with contemporary circus through theater. In Czech art history, contemporary circus has often been perceived and consequently described as a theatrical art form (physical, nonverbal) or as a form of contemporary dance. The concepts utilized by Czech theater and dance critics (and subsequently the general public) with respect to describing contemporary circus do not take into account the specific attributes and features of contemporary circus. This is where the following description of one of the first Czech contemporary circus performances entitled “La Putyka,” performed by the group Cirk La Putyka, starts: It is inviting the viewer to discover the dynamics of dramatic theater, popular culture, and circus in the Czech Republic.

Cirk La Putyka The Cirk La Putyka company was established in 2009 following the performance of their first project, La Putyka.3 The company was founded by Rostislav Novák,4 who initiated collaboration with theater directors Martin Kukučka and DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-4

A glimpse at Czech contemporary circus  35

Lukáš Trpišovský. In terms of creativity and arts marketing, Cirk La Putyka ranks among the most successful contemporary circus companies in the Czech Republic. It is also the first group of artists in the Czech Republic to officially refer to themselves as a contemporary circus company. The company’s creative direction and the aesthetics of individual works are primarily determined by artistic director Rostislav Novák. Cirk La Putyka has since premiered a number of successful works, including “Up End Down”; “A cirkus bude?!”; “Slapstick Sonata”; “Risk”; “Airground”; “Dolls”; “Biograph”; “Play”; “Family”; “Roots”; and “Black Black Woods etc.” Cirk La Putyka introduced a new creative poetics, a new style, and new technical skills to the Czech arts environment. Though initially created as a voluntary association of artists, it now boasts a permanent ensemble. Furthermore, external dramaturges, directors, choreographers, artists, and dancers are frequently invited for individual projects. Cirk La Putyka is somewhat exceptional with respect to the professional focus of some of its artists, whose skills are not primarily associated with theater or circus, but with a range of sports disciplines. Athletes who became members of the company have since grown into professional contemporary circus artists.5

Dramaturgical composition The creators of La Putyka were looking for a way to use circus disciplines to create a complex performance capable of communicating content based on a clearly defined environment and set of situations. They turned to contemporary circus as an experimental platform, a springboard capable of providing new images within the dramatic arts context. They had to learn how to transform circus arts (movement material) into the language of dramatic arts. The performance creators first had to understand the laws of circus artistry in order to start interlinking them with additional ingredients essential for the final form of the stage work. The goal was thus to transform movement into a sign on stage, which led to the development of the larger and more complex choreographic structures of La Putyka. Theater critic Vladimír Mikulka describes the performance as a dramaturgical shift from theater to contemporary circus. This also refers to the structure of the performance in which each act included a selected circus discipline. Mikulka writes: La Putyka thus seems to be significantly more circus-based than is customary in the Czech Republic. The performance is also, despite the use of theatrical elements and the effort to create a unified pub atmosphere, a succession of more or less independent acts; in many cases, technique or physical skills play a decisive role and any dramatic meaning is only added subsequently. (2009, 224) The theme of La Putyka6 may be summed up as a portrayal of the secret life of a pub after closing time. Individual acts are unified by the coherent nature of the

36  Veronika Štefanová

pub environment, complete with typical pub dwellers. The performers are thus guests of a vaguely defined pub or dive who come to the pub for a drink and a chat; the subsequent establishment of new relationships between them leads to a range of grotesque situations. The physical skills of individual artists are used as a basis for compiling choreographies illustrating relationships between characters; individual acts may thus be perceived as the micro-histories of each character. According to theater publicist Karel Král, these characters are emblematic of a specific and well-known social environment: The rather grotesque characters belong to a fairly wide range of different styles: there is a cartoonish red-nosed innkeeper wearing a hat similar to one worn by Palivec, a character from The Good Soldier Švejk, three young regulars with black and white targets—Dadaist monocles reminiscent of the avant-garde theatrical make-up worn by Jan Werich and Jiří Voskovec, also quite cartoonish today—painted around one eye, and several old pub regulars (young cast members with stuffed bellies and wigs), all of whom are surprisingly evocative of old Czech pantomime masters, assuredly because their performances were also based on cinematic comedy. (2009, 79) The plot of the production begins with the arrival of the spectators (the space is configured as a proscenium stage). The individual characters are already in place on stage, sitting or lying around. Except for the innkeeper ( Jiří Kohout), all are asleep; three figures, most likely angels with wings slung over the backs of their chairs (Anna Schmidtmayerová, Rostislav Novák, Zdenek Šporc),7 are resting on a table. The innkeeper is the only active character. The innkeeper, something of a master of ceremonies and also a clown, sings the praises of the bar and of the beer, of which he speaks in tender and loving metaphors. He distributes bottled beer among the audience, an action which seems very natural due to the presence of an “alcoholic haze” of sorts. The character of the innkeeper is the most prominent advocate of dubious messages of adoration for alcoholism, which discreetly pervades the entire evening. The innkeeper walks about nervously, waving his arms, shuffling about, and changing the intonation of his speech. The first scene features a well-known musical number from the Czechoslovak television series Chalupáři (“When you’ve got an orchestrion in your cottage…”), a motif which is repeated at a lazy pace, discordant, and in a rhythmically uneven fashion, over and over again. The first dramatic situation is initiated by the innkeeper, who begins to serve two rather fat barflies (Petr Horníček, Jiří Weissmann). As the innkeeper raises a glass to inspect the two patrons through the bottom of a pint, the situation is dramatically transformed, with music rapidly picking up pace and the two men engaging in pair acrobatic acts on the table. Individual acrobatic acts are performed with gusto, though slightly unsteadily to indicate that the balance

A glimpse at Czech contemporary circus  37

of the individual characters is influenced to some extent by excessive alcohol consumption. This aspect makes the presence of artistic movement all the more comical—and admirable—since balance is, of course, the key ingredient of any acrobatic act.8 The pub environment is inextricably linked to alcohol. Its consumption drives the entire plot. Alcohol causes drunkenness, which, in turn, leads to quarrels and various conflicts. Drunkenness is portrayed in an extreme fashion by the artists and musicians, specifically by using the movement register.

Movement La Putyka primarily makes use of pair acrobatics and trampoline gymnastics. Pair acrobatics is utilized in a scene in which the innkeeper wishes one of the regulars a happy birthday. He brings a full pint of beer, inserts long straws into it, so that both men might comfortably drink from the same pint. However, this is only a prologue for a subsequent dramatic situation: One of the regulars climbs onto the table and drinks the entire pint, which leads to a dispute and eventually a fight. Pair acrobatic figures are performed on the table along with jumps and somersaults. Some situations are thus repeated, while new choreographic elements are added. However, in terms of dramaturgy, the creators of La Putyka did not limit their means of expression to the efficiency of pure artistic output. Instead, artistic movement was hindered to some extent by visually distorting the performers’ bodies using bulky costumes and masks: performers playing the role of pub patrons were dressed in stuffed leotards, which deformed their bodies to resemble chubby old men. In addition to being utilized in recurring bouts between the barflies, the circus technique of clown eccentrics, that is, comical acrobatics, is also employed by a drunken dancer (Lenka Vagnerová), who staggers about, tripping and bumping into the artists and musicians. Her act is accompanied by the above-mentioned musical motif (“When you’ve got an orchestrion in your cottage…”), this time in slow polka rhythm. Together with dancer and acrobat Petr Mašek (Bělouš; Whitey), who always wears a white suit and only drinks milk, she performs a short acrobatic dance choreography. Her key prop is a white handbag, which both of them hold on to during the act and become entangled in. In the acts involving trampoline gymnastics, the costumes, music, and choreography were selected according to the topic, that is, the emotions involved in a relationship ranging from jealousy to passionate seduction. An act by trampoline artists Tereza Toběrná in a long dress and Jiří Dejl in a flashy suit is accompanied by tango music. Since the tango is a contact dance, the two performers showcase trampoline figures designed to look like stylized variations of dance movement. In accordance with the direction, the dance moves are thus interlinked with gymnastic figures. During the acrobatic act, the trampoline becomes an icon: it is a giant bed for the flirting of the two protagonists. The scene also features the

38  Veronika Štefanová

song “Heaven on Their Minds” from the Jesus Christ Superstar musical. Between and during jumps, the artists utilize gestures that may be interpreted as elements of schematic nonverbal theater to depict the dramatic process of seduction.

Visual arts The alter ego of the dancer Bělouš, one of the characters in La Putyka, is represented by a puppet. It is almost life-sized (and thus a sign or iconic representation of another character) and operated by the artists playing the roles of angels. The puppet’s speech is simulated by singer Vojtěch Dyk, who is thus the only character apart from the innkeeper to express himself verbally during the performance. Each character has a costume whose cut and color are unique. Costume patterns and colors are distinctive and intentionally removed from the look of real clothing in order to bolster the eccentricity and comedic nature of the characters. The three musicians are dressed in gaudy, shiny, and tight-fitting suits; all are wearing hats. Their makeup is also stylized: their faces are adorned with sequins and eye shadow. In many ways, their attire is reminiscent of women’s clothing more than of male attire. Heavy makeup is also worn by the three angels. Their faces are partially whitened, in stark contrast to black patterns and facial contours.9 Their clothes are simple, with black pants and vests and black and white striped shirts. The costumes worn by the musicians and the angels are something of a departure from the remainder of the cast. The function of their characters within the plot is one of collective action, that is, when participating in an act, they are not generally viewed as individuals but rather as a group. They are instigators, especially in the case of various quarrels. Like the black and white clothing worn by the angels, color functions on a symbolic level in the case of one-of-a-kind characters, for example, the dancer wearing a flowing red dress. While red may be perceived as provocative, white— which predetermines the character of Bělouš—symbolizes innocence, purity, and perhaps even naivety. The innkeeper himself is dressed in a colorful shirt, vest, and bartender’s leather apron. Though he does wear heavy makeup, unlike in the case of the angels and the musicians, his natural facial features are still readily discernible. His nose is painted red to indicate that he himself might even enjoy a drink or two once in a while. The red nose also brings to mind the clown nose of August, the so-called sad clown, whose typical behavior is channeled by the innkeeper.

Music Music is a fundamental element of La Putyka and grants it a dynamic component. It also functions as a dramatic action-driving device. Thanks to its simple rhythms, the music is suggestive and funny at the same time, to the point of being more intense than the verbal expression of some of the protagonists. The

A glimpse at Czech contemporary circus  39

original lineup was billed Tros Discotecos: Jan Maxián (keyboard), Jakub Prachař (drums), and Vojtěch Dyk (vocals). Mikulka states that they: contribute to the overall atmosphere with their eccentric appearance and their tireless accompaniment of individual acts with the dementedly tautological hit from the Chalupáři TV series “When you’ve got an orchestrion in your cottage, then you’ve got an orchestrion in your cottage”—and so on, over and over. However, when needed, they are fully capable of delivering a properly dramatic circus motif. (2009, 224–225) Melodic motifs included in individual songs are inspired by famous Czech film music, some converted into a polka rhythm. The frequently repeated musical theme song “When you’ve got an orchestrion in your cottage…” manipulates the viewer’s attention because it is indeed notoriously well known among the Czech audience. “When you’ve got an orchestrion in your cottage, then you’ve got an orchestrion in your cottage”: This truism is, of course, an unassailable fact and its demented repetition seems to have a crushing and devastating effect. When the innkeeper looks out at the world through a pint glass, fatigue suddenly disappears from the woozy band, and zest and color return to the musical production, in no small part thanks to the adoption of a range of styles (tango, gypsy rhythms, Latino music) and even specific melodies (“Sex Bomb” by Tom Jones, motifs from Jesus Christ Superstar) (Král 2009, 82). The musicians skillfully manipulate familiar melodies and lyrics. Throughout the entire performance of La Putyka, the speech of individual characters has been replaced with a number of well-known songs, although the lyrics have either been excluded completely or replaced with a scat version.

Conclusion Despite some deficiencies—tolerable for a debut—La Putyka, the first piece by the now internationally renowned Czech contemporary circus company, is a key performance in the Czech contemporary circus universe, in large part because it is the first Czech production to be officially presented as a contemporary circus work by its creators and one which also undoubtedly includes the characteristic contemporary circus components. The description of the piece demonstrates that the characteristics of contemporary circus emerge from the relationship between circus and theater aesthetics which applies to the beginning of Czech contemporary circus in general: the works of Czech contemporary circus creators are consciously or subconsciously affected by theater aesthetics. In analyzing a key production by a Czech contemporary circus ensemble, I have attempted to introduce a possible line of dramaturgical thinking about theater and circus and their mutual relationship.

40  Veronika Štefanová

Notes

1 As of 2021, a number of Czech professional artists have graduated from international circus schools: CODARTS University for the Arts and Akademiet For Utaemmet Kreativitet – Academy for Modern Circus (AFUK–AMoC). 2 As of 2017, there is no active professional circus school in the Czech Republic. 3 Premiered on April 21, 2009 at La Fabrika in Prague. 4 Actor, puppeteer, dancer, acrobat, and director from the Kopecký family of puppeteers. 5 This line of development, i.e., from sports to contemporary circus, is not an exceptional one from an international point of view. A number of athletes are to be found even at the beginning of the contemporary circus “movement” and to this day the contemporary circus environment continues to be connected with a variety of sports, e.g., gymnasts teaching in circus schools. 6 Putyka may be loosely translated into English as pub. 7 These are the names of the original cast members. While La Putyka remains on the repertoire, the cast has changed. 8 In terms of choreography and direction, individual circus figures are connected at different speeds and with diverse dynamics to form larger choreographic units. Ground acrobats appear in pairs or larger units without props or technical equipment; they showcase their physical abilities (i.e., strength, flexibility) by means of static (i.e., standing on shoulders or heads, handstands on another person’s hands) and dynamic elements. 9 The makeup is vaguely reminiscent of the abovementioned style used by Jan Werich and Jiří Voskovec during their time at the Liberated Theatre in the 1930s.

References Král, Karel. 2009. Toč se toč: La serre–Volchok–La Putyka. Svět a Divadlo 20 (5): 75–82. Mikulka, Vladimír. 2009. Když máš v Chalupě Orchestrión. Revolver Revue 76: 224–225.

PART II

Circus practice

3 ON MUTATIONS OF FORMS, STYLE, AND MEANING From a traditional to a contemporary trapeze act Sandy Sun Interviewed by Franziska Trapp and Riikka Juutinen

What kind of circus background do you have? I learned1 mime and clownery at the Covent Garden School of London in 1975. Then, from 1976 to 1980, I went to a professional mime and circus school in Paris (Carré Silvia Monfort and Alexis Gruss). In 1978, I signed a contract as a trapeze artist in the Cirque Jean Richard and was part of the “Sylver Stars” act. At that time, I discovered the circus way of life and understood how violent, vital, and full of energy this world was—your body is 200% alive. The tour could easily be considered another school: twelve shows a week, seven cities a week, without a single day off during a seven-month-long tour. Even though I liked the act, I wanted to create my own. So, I went back to the Alexis Gruss Circus School, where I trained seven hours a day, including four hours on the trapeze. My aim was to present my act at the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain, which took place at the Cirque Alexis Gruss’ big top in Paris. This competition was and still is the most important one in the circus world for young virtuosos. I was my own teacher and I was my own pupil. At the time, I was training six hours a day on trapeze, which changed my body profoundly, though I did not pay attention to my big muscles and did not direct my rehearsals in that direction. I did not want to look like a little boxer. My aim was to keep the body of a woman; I wanted to send the sign of femininity to the audience. And I also wanted to show that strength comes from the inside as well. I was eager to participate in the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain since I knew that many artists from other countries were coming and I was passionate about seeing other new performers and learning from them. And I was keen to show my first audience what I had been rehearsing in my tiny trapeze territory. But in order to do this, I had to find an artist name for myself. I wanted it to be something energetic and light, so I came up with Sandy Sun. DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-6

44  Sandy Sun Interviewed by Franziska Trapp and Riikka Juutinen

In this anthology, we consider how and under which conditions meaning is produced and transmitted in the traditional, new, and contemporary circus. Where would you position your early work with regard to the notions of traditional, new, or contemporary circus? And what did you focus on with regard to the creation of meaning? For my act, I picked up some very difficult moves from the classic repertory, because I think that if you choose an art, you have to study the proven methods first. It is important to be in contact with the “old masters” who carried out the profession before you. In my opinion, it is important to follow in their footsteps and to listen to what they have to say about their acts and how they maintain the quality of their acts. In the show I created, I had to work with and against gravity, just like the sky was the earth. I had to coordinate each part of my body; in acrobatics, controlled energy, concentration, calmness, and confidence are the key words. Those qualities create a magnetic dialogue and interaction with the audience. With that balance I found a new equilibrium, and with that creation, I became a pioneer in the field. I even invented new moves and rhythms in my first act, which are typically the choreographic signature of the following act. When the public saw my performance, they clapped like mad. No one explained to them whether the performance was traditional circus or new circus, old fashioned or not. They felt I transcended the limits, and they responded to that sign. In my first act, I was not trying to frighten the audience. My choice was to study the repertoire of the traditional circus. In the kind of acts I was performing, the risks were obvious and anticipated as gravity was always on my mind. Difficulties kept on increasing and the audience’s suspense did too. In that first act, I did one thing after the other; the order was harmonious from an acrobatic point of view. In this way, I surprised the audience and maintained their emotional involvement. After attending the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain and experiencing such a high level of excitement, I felt a bit disappointed, even though I was performing at galas and on television. I would have liked a nice circus season, but I knew I needed good working conditions to perform my act, in which I risked my life four times in seven-and-a-half minutes. Still, very enthusiastically, I kept progressing. In 1981, I received a prize awarded by the Fondation de la Vocation Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet. That same year, I worked in the springtime show for the Cirque d’Hiver Bouglione in Paris. In 1982, I signed a contract with the Italian Circus Nando Orfeï. There, I discovered a universe with blazing and sometimes cruel poetry: you’re “attached” to the act. But I did like the show. This circus holds an audience of about 1,600 spectators. The audience is close to you; it is very warm. It is very warm at the top of the big top as well, and therefore quite dangerous. I fell from seven and a half meters. I fractured my dorsal spine and experienced a cranial trauma.

On mutations of forms, style, and meaning  45

How did this major accident affect your life as a circus artist and in what way did it influence your following creations? I was always very ambitious when it came to the disciplines I was practicing. And that is surely why I performed an act at the first part of the performance that should have been at the end. Usually, that kind of movement takes place at the end of the act, creating an apotheosis; the most risky or spectacular acts are always performed at the end in traditional circus shows. But it was important for me to give my all straight away. Metaphorically, one could say I caught the trapeze, but I put the bar too high. Once someone from the audience told me after a show, “When you’re doing your most dangerous tricks, I always watch my shoes.” It made me skeptical, because, of course, this was not what I had intended. I was making such an effort for the public, and I wanted them to enjoy the performance. After the accident, I was not sure if I could get back to the level where I was before. And I was not especially interested either. I felt so lucky that I was not paralyzed. I just wanted to begin training on the trapeze again, so that I could see what was still in it for me. I relearned everything on the small trapeze I have in my flat and went back to the basics. Because of the accident, I understood that I would not be able to do the same figures as before. After having rehearsed for some time, I rediscovered all the tricks and figures I was doing before the fall. But I knew I would not be so lucky twice. Indeed, my act became a continuous movement from the beginning to the end. The circle has always interested me, because you cannot hide any angle of your body. You cannot escape; you are exposed completely and entirely committed to the public in a 360° constraint. What I was telling in the new act was not a narrative per se, but stories and feelings, both political and historical. I was working on each image very precisely, like a sculpture in movement, a kinetic artwork.

During your presentation at the international conference Semiotics of the Circus, you winkingly called your art a cheeky play on death. Can you explain this thought? In my performances, I worked at great heights and performed on high levels without a safety net. This is why the big top suited my purpose perfectly; I felt like this number was really close to heaven. After the trapeze accident, I was so lucky not to be paralyzed. I suppose that whatever is above us was watching over my number as well. After all, everything happened in the sky! And they surely thought of me as naive to believe I could fight death with amazing and beautiful tricks. So, they used the accident as a warning, but gave me another marvelous chance. This unfortunate landing allowed me to do a spiritual take off: I learned my lesson. This is one of the meanings I took from the accident.

46  Sandy Sun Interviewed by Franziska Trapp and Riikka Juutinen

Did your understanding of circus change after the accident? It spurred me to develop new figures and choreographic styles on the trapeze. It allowed me to bring forth a more contemporary style that generates meaning from the traditional apparatus. My act became a dance on the trapeze, a trapeze dance. The accident allowed me to gain new perspectives on my art and to radically recreate it. The new act I created marked the aesthetic break with the traditional acts, as I invented a new choreographic territory for the trapeze. As an artist, I am a sender and the audience is a receptor. And in the interaction between us, messages are shared: the artist sends feelings of death, eroticism, seduction, and horror to the spectators and the audience sends applause, fear, and admiration to the artist. Those messages are transmitted through forms and codes: feats, figures, postures, movements, choreography, costumes, music, and the culture of the circus in its entirety. And the same artist is able to travel from the traditional to the new circus and contribute to the development of new figures and a new choreographic trapeze writing—they can contribute to the new meaning of a traditional apparatus.

Note 1 The questions in this text were added by the editors to Sandy Sun’s original text, which she has been presenting since 2011 at various international conferences (USA, Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands), published several times (see bibliography), and developed in her show “Trapeze, existence-ciel” (2017)—www. sandysun.eu. She presented one version of this talk at the international conference “Semiotics of the Circus” (2015) at the University of Münster, Germany.

Bibliography Sun, Sandy. 2020a. The Artist and the Scientist in the Circus. A Cross-Disciplinary ­Approach. In Manegenkünste. Zirkus als ästhetisches Modell, eds. Margaret Fuchs, Anna-­ Sophie Jürgens, and Jörg Schuster, 123–132. Bielefeld: transcript. Sun, Sandy. 2020b. Education à la hauteur en acrobatie aérienne. In Médecine et cirque, eds. Philippe Goudard and Denys Barrault, 427–432. Montpellier: Sauramps Médical. Sun, Sandy. 2020c. Se reconstruire après une chute au trapèze. In Médecine et cirque, eds. Philippe Goudard and Denys Barrault, 111–114. Montpellier: Sauramps Médical. Sun, Sandy. 2017a. Le trapèze: existence-ciel. In Le corps, ses dimensions cachées, ed. Guy Freixe, 85–89. Montpellier: Deuxième Epoque. Sun, Sandy. 2017b. One motivation for two different trapeze acts. In Motivatie de drijvende kracht, International Conference, 53–58. Uden: Felix de Jong.

4 ARTICULATING HAND-BALANCING Finding space for critical self-transformation Camilla Damkjaer

Introduction As soon as a body enters the stage, images, social structures, and ideas are immediately attached to its materiality. Actually, a body does not even have to enter the stage for this to happen; processes of signification are already there whether they are wanted or not. The hand-balancing body is already traversed by systems of signification that are inherent to the technique or have become a part of it. What are these systems of signification that have become a part of the body through practice? How are they inscribed in the materiality of the body? What space is there for the artist to navigate within this process? According to Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of the possibility of a “body without organs” (1980, 185–204), the three main structures of signification traversing and structuring human existence are the organism, signification, and the subject. “The organism” is not a pre-given reality but a certain ideological idea of how bodies are delimited, organized, and structured. “The subject” is similarly culturally specific and related to profound relations of power of what makes a subject readable in society. Structures of sense-making belong to these normative structures, through which we become understandable as meaningful, bodily selves. I would like to test the hypothesis that these three layers—organism, signification, and subject—are particularly intermingled in circus, as circus disciplines modulate all three within the same practice. I would like to explore how processes of signification traverse the circus body materially, discursively, and subjectively in the discipline of hand-balancing. Furthermore, I would like to discuss the forms of agency of the circus performer in these processes. How is the circus body articulating and already being articulated?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-7

48  Camilla Damkjaer

To understand this, circus and each circus discipline must be viewed not only as performance but as practice. Since the possible rearticulation of the structures we are part of depends on individual appropriations and manipulations, I discuss how I have dealt with these questions in my own practice. I do not limit myself to a strictly Deleuzian framework, but take the three levels as a departure point and use other concepts and perspectives to go into more detail. To understand these processes in hand-balancing, the theoretical material should be manipulated according to our specific needs, that is, it should not determine beforehand our focus and direction. An important question addressed in this work is: How can we articulate the rather mute practice of hand-balancing using these powerful philosophies and the discursive powers they are given in the current research landscape?

An extreme organism or hand-balancing as somatic circus At first glance, it may seem as if the practice of hand-balancing breaks with the typical image of the organism as an upright human body. But if we look more closely, it seems hand-balancing takes the idea of the organism to the extreme. The aesthetics of hand-balancing relies on “organic” qualities such as the display of strength, symmetry, and flexibility. Moreover, the very principles of the technique have characteristics present within the ideology of the organism, such as anatomical analysis, physiological functionality, and functional efficiency. Each body part of the organism must be discerned and distinguished, have a determinable function, and function efficiently. Because hand-balancing inverses certain functions, it requires an even more elaborate analysis and efficiency. The technique of hand-balancing relies on an extreme analysis of each body part and the way it is related to other body parts by means of joints. This analysis is expressed in practice through the necessity of isolating and dissociating each body part. For instance, the technique depends on the capacity to let the position of the shoulders be influenced by the movement of the torso, hips, or legs. Another example of this dissociation is the necessity to distinguish between the tilt of the pelvis needed to flatten the back and the movement of the legs. Also, in terms of functionality, hand-balancing actually requires an even more extreme organism. Since the structure of the body has developed through the human tendency to stand on the legs, the distribution of weight is much more difficult to control when the body is inverted. The surface on which the weight is distributed is much smaller, the shoulder joints are much less stable than the hips, and the center of balance is much higher when standing on the hands. The degree of efficiency and functionality must be even more minutely controlled when standing on one’s hands. Hand-balancing thus requires an even more detailed and perfected organism capable of balancing within a biomechanically more difficult position. This demands not only a strong and flexible body, but also a neurologically specific one. In his work on the use of handstands in capoeira, Greg Downey discusses how

Finding space for critical self-transformation  49

our neurological systems of balancing are both “ecological” (since they rely on the interaction between many senses all at once), plastic, and changeable (2012). Through practice, he claims, even our most profound bodily functions, such as our sense of balance, actually become enculturated, influenced by the body images and practices that we are part of. This “extreme organism” is thus slowly anchored in the materiality of the body, including the nervous system. But we need to understand the double nature or double movement of this process: it simultaneously anchors an extreme version of a normative organism and it renders possible a minute rearticulation of this organism. Due to the enhanced capacity to sense nuances in postural balance, the hand-balancer also becomes slowly capable of manipulating this organism and its demands. The question is, therefore, not only whether the organism is entering the body or whether the body has limits, but what this particular body renders sensible at all. In my own practice, I am most interested in the kinds of sensation rendered possible by hand-balancing. How does this technique enable sensations of the nuances of postural balance in ways that are not otherwise possible? I tend to consider hand-balancing a “solitary somatic circus.” The practice of hand-­balancers is twofold: their focus on the circus performance and the performance of tricks (another version of the extreme organism) requires them to work minutely on the sensorial systems of the body, thus becoming a site for experimentation with the organism. Though hand-balancing seems to differ from the practices we call “somatic,” it is indeed a somatic practice. Continuity and repetition, for example, are characteristic of hand-balancing. The hand-balancer must repeat quite a few movements, as hand-balancing is an intense training of the nervous system. The hand-balancer has to develop an understanding of the endless nuances and differences of sensation within one and the same figure. Even in the same routine, the same sensation never returns but varies depending on the time of day, temperature, degree of flexibility, etc. Rather than repeating one skill, balancing is the continual search for the sensation of balance. Here, the “analytical” aspect of hand-balancing, which may also be understood as part of the ideology of the organism, becomes part of the continual search for the sensation of balance. The technique of hand-balancing constantly asks the hand-balancer to distinguish between finer degrees in the angles of articulation of the joints and paradoxical and contradictory movements; the hand-balancer receives even more details of sensation. The very same characteristics anchoring the organism in the materiality of my body actually guide my search for more nuances in that materiality. Hand-balancing as somatic circus is not only about what you feel right now, but about what you cannot feel yet. When learning the art of hand-balancing, there are curiously things that one does not feel: one leg is higher than the other, one is tilting or twisting slightly. I tend to think about this as the “gap of sensation” in hand-balancing, a gap that is constantly displaced. Thus, hand-balancing is about the limit between what can be felt and what cannot be felt or cannot be

50  Camilla Damkjaer

felt yet. It pushes the boundaries of my own understanding of this materiality called my body, this organism of which I am a part.

Traversed by discourses or articulating (im)materiality Though hand-balancing is a rather mute practice, it is not devoid of verbal articulation and it is part of multiple discourses: those in which hand-balancing is taught, discourses of circus, and so forth. In the discipline of hand-balancing, I would prefer to not distinguish between discourse as linguistic structures and discourse as institutional practices. Hand-balancing is, through its practice, a discourse of its own. Thus, through that very practice, I am inscribed in a specific discourse. For the sake of simplicity, though, I will focus on the use of verbal discourse in hand-balancing and how this might possibly be part of the intermingled constructions of the organism, signification, and the subject. The use of language in practice is a way to make distinctions. Such distinctions make it possible for us to sense distinctions. We become capable of sensing what language is asking us to sense and in that way discourse is part of the enculturation of our material bodies, including our sensorial systems. So, we must ask ourselves: What does our discourse enable us to sense and how does that shape the organism and the subject? Within circus, it is not unusual to discuss the practice of the techniques in terms of what works or not; however, thinking about the practice in this way limits our understanding of the practice to terms of success and failure rather than sensation. This is especially problematic in disciplines such as hand-­balancing, because it relies on slow transformations of the practitioner’s ecological sense of balancing. In a certain way, hand-balancing is the invisible art of the sense of balance; it involves processes that we can hardly see or sense. I might boldly claim that this discourse of success and failure, of performance and perfection, does not help the hand-balancer develop more nuanced sensations of balancing. The discourse reveals rather that we tend to understand ourselves, become readable as subjects, as hand-balancers, when we perform to perfection. In this sense, circus is not far from the neoliberal demands on the contemporary subject. The question becomes, how can we develop forms of discourse or ways of articulating ourselves within discourse that support our work within the practice rather than impose the criteria of larger discourses? Of course, we can never escape the discourses we are a part of, whether they are imbedded in a practice or verbal and written communication. Regardless, it is important to create space for critical articulation within a specific practice or discourse. How can this be accomplished in hand-balancing? First, hand-­balancing is not a mute practice but is capable of articulating itself. Perhaps “articulation” could be grasped in hand-balancing terms in a way that traverses material and immaterial layers. Petra Sabisch (2011) defines articulation by returning to the idea of how a joint articulates. From there, she describes how articulation occurs when heterogeneous elements are both joined and distinguished through

Finding space for critical self-transformation  51

a relation. This double movement of connecting and differentiating is thus characteristic of articulation as a process. And this, according to Sabisch, includes “a qualitative transformation of the parts in their mutual relation to each other” (2011, 103). On a material level, such a qualitative articulation and transformation seem to be at stake in hand-balancing. This is yet another way to understand the “analytical” aspect of hand-balancing, and how the hand-balancer needs to connect body parts across an alignment that involves the whole body and differentiate minutely between different angles and body parts. But how do we create techniques of articulation that would allow hand-balancers to articulate their practice in other media and discourses without losing sight of practice? I do not think there is one single answer to this question. In my own practice, I have found that hand-balancing can be brought into contact with other forms of articulation, other discourses, which allows for a possible rearticulation of the practice. This is no easy task. First, it is not easy to articulate the specific characteristics and nuances of hand-balancing as it is sensed and experienced. Second, there is always a risk that the practice of hand-balancing will be dominated by the concepts and metaphors of other practices, that is, the practice of academic analysis and its known philosophical concepts. In fact, this has been one of my main concerns throughout the entire chapter: How do I detect and investigate the layers of signification that have become materialized in the circus body? How can I be sure that I am not imposing additional significations? The question is perhaps not whether this happens but whether it allows for rearticulation. I always keep two tools on hand: one which allows me to distinguish the concreteness of hand-balancing and another which connects it to something else. My ongoing effort to grasp the concreteness of hand-balancing helps me to create an articulation of hand-balancing in terms of practice. My focus on its concreteness hinders my other concepts and tools from taking over, that is, from ruling the argumentation. However, I need to connect hand-balancing to something outside of practice in order to allow a rearticulation of it. This may end up challenging the practice itself; but if we are to use verbal or written articulation as a method to critically rearticulate the discourses at work within practice, then it is a risk worth taking. It may stretch the practice significantly—but beneficially.

The “subject” as subjected or techniques of the self The concept of “subject” is probably one of the most contested. A detailed explanation of this fact is simply beyond the scope of this chapter. It is pertinent to ask here, are any specific structures of subjectivity imposed on us through the practice of hand-balancing? Interestingly, the technique of hand-balancing does not seem to elaborate any specific ideas of the subject. In the discourse used in hand-balancing training, no particular effort seems to be directed toward processes of subjectivity. What makes the subject understandable is the very action of hand-balancing, the performance of handstands, preferably to perfection, which

52  Camilla Damkjaer

makes the subject readable as a hand-balancing artist. This is actually a good example of how intermingled the structures of organism, signification, and subject are in circus in general and hand-balancing in particular: as if no specific understanding of the subject exists outside the performance of the organism; at least, not one that is explicitly dealt with in the practice’s own discourse. Rather than viewing this as a hindrance, it could also be seen as a certain liberty. If the practice itself does not interfere with the subject’s self-understanding (beyond the practice of hand-balancing), then individuals can articulate their own self-understanding as hand-balancing subjects. This liberty has actually become increasingly important in my own practice. I have come to understand hand-balancing as a “somatic circus,” an experiment with the articulation of sensation as well as a specific way of practicing subjectivity. Or, to use Michel Foucault’s term, I see it as a “technique de soi” (2001, 43–63), a technique of the self. To summarize, Foucault proposes in his earlier work that the subject is a product of specific “technologies of power” that render the subject visible, readable, and analyzable to society. However, in his later work, he returns to this idea, looking not only at the technologies of power but the historically specific “technologies of the self ” practiced by each society and period. Here, subjectivity is still culturally constructed but through the activity and deliberate effort of the individual. According to Foucault, certain practices of the self seem to give more space than others to the individual to critically engage with these techniques of the self (Allen 2011). Thus, the question is not only whether something possibly constitutes a technique of the self, but about the space this technique provides for critical reflection. According to Amy Allen’s reading of Foucault, this possible space for the critical agency of the individual can be understood in two ways: as the capacity for autonomy, including “the capacities to reflect critically upon the power-knowledge relations that have constituted one’s subjectivity,” and as the possibility to “engage in practices of self-transformation” (2011, 44). Can hand-balancing really be understood as a technique of the self? And does it allow for critical self-transformation? Several characteristics of hand-balancing make it potentially a “technique of the self,” even if this seems to be at odds with its use as a performance practice. To describe these characteristics, hand-balancing has to be connected to other concepts, and there is a risk of mixing theoretical perspectives nondogmatically. To understand hand-balancing’s way of practicing the subject, I believe we need to look at something much smaller than the powerful rules through which we become readable as subjects. We need to look at the way hand-balancing practices have embodied subjectivity. On a very concrete level, I need to ask myself, how do I perceive myself as a subject while I am balancing on my hands? What is going through my mind when all of my weight is on my hands? In my experience, the subjectivity experienced at this moment is a subjectivity stripped down to a minimum: there is no time for biographical narratives or psychological reasoning. I receive one sensation in many variations, “This is me, upside down.” In a certain sense, it reminds

Finding space for critical self-transformation  53

me of what the phenomenological researchers Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi have called “the minimal self ” (2008, 204). According to them, the minimal self is the very sensation that my consciousness pertains to me and not someone else, the experience that my thoughts are mine. I think there is something in the practice of hand-balancing bringing us back to this minimal self. Very experienced hand-balancers may have the capacity to think about other things when upside down. But when performing demanding figures requiring full concentration, we are all somehow brought back to this one sensation. However, the moment we begin to thematically address this experience becomes the moment we reflect upon the experience of sensing ourselves as subjects. Even in the most minimal experience of the self, there is already a dynamic or dialectic between the experience of self and the reflection upon the experience of sensing as a self. A doubleness exists even in the most concentrated hand-­ balancing positions: I experience myself as me (and not someone else) being upside down while reflecting upon this experience as if I am an object. Maybe the first possibility for self-reflection and rearticulation of the self within a practice can be found in this rift. Hand-balancing as a technique of the self allows us to experience and reflect upon subjectivity on a basic level: the one that distinguishes my experience of me from your experience of you. Hand-balancing is a way to practice this minimal subjectivity. This is not to say that hand-balancing practices subjectivity outside of societal power structures. Hand-balancing is still a culturally and historically specific technique of the self, which makes certain things possible and others not. But with some effort it can become a site of critical reflection on the practice of subjectivity.

Conclusion As the medium of circus is to a large extent the very materiality of the individual body, the material and immaterial structures inscribed in this body become a significant part of the signification that occurs in performance. Therefore, the circus body is not merely a neutral material through which aesthetic signification is communicated in a performance. We need to understand how different layers of signification are already materialized through practice and the space of the circus artists to rearticulate themselves within those structures. For instance, if circus seems to escape certain normative structures through its mythology, it does indeed participate in materializing certain ideologies of the organism, signification, and the subject in the materiality of the circus body. Rather than seeing these structures as something to escape from, perhaps these structures also make certain things possible (e.g., allow unique forms of sensation). The question is not how to avoid these structures, but how to create space for critical autonomy and self-transformation within the structures of the practice. Or, as Deleuze and Guattari would ask, how can you install yourself within one of these strata and experiment with it (1980, 199)? How can we create possibilities of articulation

54  Camilla Damkjaer

and rearticulation, both within the materiality of the practice and in its connection to other media and discourses? In my own practice, I have struggled with these questions. In order to come to terms with the expectations of circus hand-balancing, I have ended up almost removing hand-balancing from the field of circus. Instead, in my “somatic circus,” hand-balancing has become a way for me to explore sensation. I tend to think of it as a “technique of the self,” a way of sensing and practicing subjectivity, and a space for me to reflect upon the structures that I am part of, whether as a circus artist or researcher. I do not know if I will succeed, nor do I know whether this is the only way to create space for the critical rearticulation of circus hand-­balancing. But if we want circus to be a vital field of expression, we need to create space for different kinds of rearticulation, even if we end up taking a practice to its limits or its own negation. The question is not whether circus imposes structures of signification upon the circus body, but the extent to which it provides space for critical rearticulation within these structures.

References Allen, Amy. 2011. Foucault and the Politics of our Selves. History of the Human Sciences 24 (4): 43–59. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1980. Mille Plateaux—Capitalisme et Schizophrénie 2. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Downey, Greg. 2012. Balancing Between Cultures: Equilibrium in Capoeira. In The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology, eds. Greg Downey and Daniel H. Lende, 169–194. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Foucault, Michel. 2001. L’herméneutique du sujet—Cours au Collège de France 1981–1982. Paris: Seuil/Gallimard. Gallagher, Shaun and Dan Zahavi. 2008. The Phenomenological Mind—An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science. London: Routledge. Sabisch, Petra. 2011. Choreographing Relations—Practical Philosophy and Contemporary ­Choreography. München: Epodium.

5 EXTREME SYMBIOSIS Louise von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger

Introduction, background, practice This chapter presents “the art of working in pairs—a deeper look into our practice,” an investigation into the circus discipline pair acrobatic from our perspective as practitioners.

Why this project? This project1 arose from a desire to explore our practice in a new way; to look beyond physical action alone, discover new dimensions, and see what these could add to our understanding of what we are doing and have been doing for the past twelve years. Such an aim is perhaps a natural step for two aging acrobats, who understand from time to time the necessity of eventually finding other ways of expressing oneself. Curiosity about our practice, the pursuit of greater knowledge, to express it, and hopefully gain thereby some new experience—these were our primary motivations. We also wish to contribute to the art form, so that our fellow acrobats can learn from each other. We have investigated the fundamental elements that developed in our practice during twelve years of working together. Some of the topics are recently discovered, while others are old experiences. The process of the project has definitely opened up doors, behind which there is much more to find. In one way, it feels like we are just at the beginning of a lengthier process. We have been using a variety of methods to capture and collect information about our practice. We have been writing diaries, texts, and self-interviews, using a daily questionnaire, film recordings, and sound recordings. We have also used existing material such as a large body of filmed material accumulated over the years. The idea of the different methods is that they hopefully can DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-8

56  Louise von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger

complement each other and together provide a nuanced picture of our practice. Much of the information arises from the dialogue (verbal or nonverbal) that is constantly going on between us, and we believe it is in the dialogue that we have found what is essential in our practice.

Who are we? Louise von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger: two acrobats from Stockholm Sweden, educated at Moscow State School of Circus, who have worked and lived together since 2001. Louise, author of this text, graduated in 2013 from the program New Performative Practices at the University College of Dance and Circus (DOCH) in Stockholm with a master’s in choreography with specialization in circus. The master’s program at DOCH was the starting point for this project, which began in the summer of 2011. Henrik is coauthor of this text and one of the original artists in the creation of Cirkus Cirkör in 1995. As freelance artists, we have been working with traditional circuses like the Russian State Circus, but mostly in so-called contemporary circus contexts. For the last few years, we have been touring with Cirkus Cirkör’s performance “Wear it like a crown” around the world.

Pair acrobatic When we started with pair acrobatic in 2001, neither of us had experience from working in a pair constellation before; we did not even know each other or the discipline of pair acrobatic very well. It was the Russian coach Alexander Gavrilov in Stockholm who suggested and introduced the discipline to us. And since we both got hooked from the outset, we decided to give it a try. On the advice of Gavrilov, we went to Moscow State School of Circus to see if we could gain access to the legendary acrobatic coach Boris Nikiforovich Belochvostov. To make a long story short, we were accepted to be his students, and stayed in Moscow for four years. The practice of pair acrobatic has many names. Circus vocabulary tends to be a mix of many languages, which is why some disciplines have many names. The name pair acrobatic is a direct translation of the Swedish term for the discipline, parakrobatik. Hand to hand is the most common universal name of the discipline, which is probably a translation of the French term main à main. In Russian, it is called voltizhnaya akrobatika. Basically, pair acrobatic consists of two acrobats interacting through either static or dynamic movements. The base is the one on the floor and the flyer is the one on the top. In our pair constellation, Henrik is the base and Louise the flyer. Technically, it is Henrik who is leading and in charge of the balancing, and Louise has to follow.

The technique Analyzing our own circus technique was something we had to deal with from the first day we started to train together—first in the learning process in dialogue

Extreme symbiosis  57

with our teacher and then by ourselves in our daily training. In the beginning, it was mostly about what our teacher told us to do, listening to his instructions (theory), and trying to transform it into the body (practice). But the instructions became increasingly embodied; when it had become our bodies’ language, we were able to use theory by ourselves. When we say our technique, we mean the technique we learned during the years at Moscow State School of Circus. Let us call it Belochvostov Technique (after our teacher Boris Nikiforovich Belochvostov). Of course, we have developed our own technique in various ways after leaving the school, but it is still the technique we are trying to relate to. In our practice, the technique is about refining or improving precision, minimizing friction, and searching for a particular aesthetic form. In the technical analysis, we use a value scale based on the Belochvostov Technique. We know what we value as a success or a failure. We have a clear goal, a vision of how we want it to feel and look. These things are very clear, and we use the technique more or less consciously in our daily training and performing.

Other elements to consider If we compared the knowledge of the technique with the knowledge of other elements of our practice, we do not find the same explicit goals to pursue. Within the technique, we know how to analyze and we use a method to reach our goal. After realizing the importance and the strong impact of the technique on our practice, we became interested if we could find the same clearness and awareness within other elements in our practice and maybe a method that could create goals to pursue even there. Knowing that we perhaps should not have goals throughout our analysis, we assumed that the aim of getting a deeper knowledge of our practice elements was already a goal.

What are the essential elements in our practice? Two elements, beside the technique, which we know are of great relevance are trust and cooperation. Other key elements include gravity, the physical shapes of our bodies, and the fact that we are two human beings with strong emotions.

The element of trust Pair acrobatic demands a lot of trust by its nature. Two performers are involved and there are moments of risk in the art’s repertoire. Each has to trust the other to make the art happen. Trust is a big task, an everyday work. You build it up slowly, incrementally, but it can disappear in an instant by a single failure. There is so much at stake. What is the mental and physical price of this daily gamble? In the pair constellation we work in, it is not only the physical element of trust to consider, but also the psychological. It is an interdependence in all aspects—living (life), working,

58  Louise von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger

training, etc. It involves a lot of pressure and sometimes frustration. If one of us gets injured, for example, the other is unable to make his/her art. The consequences of such situations can be very psychologically demanding. We live in an extreme symbiosis, involving a significant part of our lives. And yes, such responsibility can become a burden. Sometimes we call our practice our baby—we have a shared responsibility for something we created together and we have to take care of it like a baby. But most of the time, it is nothing we think of, and it feels very privileged to be able to work so closely together. Many circus disciplines are based on pair or group constellations, which we think make circus artists a rather unusual group of people wherein so many interdependencies exist. There are many layers of trust in these constellations, not only in the physical work. The fact that we are dependent on each other as business partners as well, since we can only sell our product together, does not make the relationship less complicated.

Cooperation The next element is closely linked to trust: cooperation. Some days we say they are the same. The cooperation in our practice is like trust, a vital element for making our art happen. They are basically so interdependent that it is difficult to separate them. But one reason why we want to separate the two elements is our consideration of the way we use the two. Our experience is that there are different levels of trust, depending on if you are the flyer or the base. The different working roles have different elements of trust. For the flyer, trust becomes a transmission of responsibility, and for the base, trust becomes a commitment of responsibility. We have to trust each other and assume that the other one is committed to his or her mission. The trust constantly goes up and down. The cooperation is something that can be used to overcome the trust in some situations when the trust is weak. By “forcing” ourselves into cooperation, we can still manage to make the action, and the cooperation can by its success build up the trust. This reasoning is based on the existence of a basic trust, which (depending on the shape of the day) can be high or low.

The element of nonverbal internal communication Through body pressure during the interaction, a nonverbal communication takes place, one that contains technical information on how the trick is performed, but also emotional conditions. We talk about the acrobatic moments involving physical contact, which is the starting point for our discipline. It is through interaction that everything begins. It is not pair acrobatic unless there are two interacting acrobats. In what we call our “intercom system,” there is a constant flow of information and signals, conscious or unconscious, controllable and uncontrollable. It is also the communication that we call an “honest language,” because from the moment we grip each other, we feel each other. The “intercom system” is fast

Extreme symbiosis  59

and we feel the other’s state directly. Then the body speaks for itself without censorship by the brain. We cannot claim to be satisfied if we are not. It will show as soon as we touch each other. Conflicts must therefore always be sorted out immediately, before we can perform our tricks together. The internal communication system that exists between us is something that has developed over the years, and we have become more and more subtle in it and better at reading it. For better or worse, we would like to say, because sometimes it can be too sensitive. When it receives too many signals, it also makes it harder to solve. Constructive, technical information becomes mixed up with emotions and thereby it becomes harder to focus on the acrobatic moments.

Problem-solving We need to agree before we can interact. There are many layers in what we call “agreeing,” but the “basics” need to be sorted out, and it is seldom we are angry at each other for a long time. The common solution is often based on knowing that we both have the same intention and goal, this being of greater importance than a personal opinion. Since we are two people with different roles in our practice, there are always two points of view to consider. Our codependence makes both perspectives of equal importance since we both represent a true experience of a given situation, but from different perspectives. Fights arise easily if one fights for a single perspective. To avoid such polarity, an awareness of different perspectives is vital.

The art of the crash A fall, a failure, a crash; this is a theme very present in the field of circus, yet not always an easy subject to talk about. Nonetheless, I would argue that it is one of the most valuable elements of practical knowledge we have as circus artists. We need to go through it to attain control. I can only speak for myself, but once I have managed to make a “good” fall, I have gotten closer to the mastering of a trick and I feel safer and able to take bigger risks. What is the difference between a good fall and a bad fall? While the good fall can take you further, a bad fall can hamper you. In a good fall, you might lose control for a second, but success comes when you find your way out; in a bad fall, you may not find control and the outcome is then all about luck (not as pleasant feeling). Henrik and I use the word “crash” when we are unsuccessful in an acrobatic trick. We find the word to be more suitable than the word falling, because we are two persons involved in the mistake. Though only one of us is falling, he is implicated in the failure. The crash is when two forces collide, which is the case when we do not succeed. If success is two forces perfectly coordinated, the crash is when those forces go out of sync. When our timing is not right, we are not one force, but two. When we confront a crash, we have to rethink and strive to become one again to save the situation. It may sound a bit like a war strategy, but in the chaos or the loss

60  Louise von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger

of control, it is very important to keep our positions. It happens that Louise, for example, might feel at the start of a throw that it won’t succeed, but she must nonetheless execute her part so as not to surprise Henrik with a different action. Our teacher in Moscow strongly emphasized the importance of mastering the crash. From both perspectives, it is something to overcome. It is not only a scary moment for the flyer to fall, it is a breathtaking feeling to stand beneath and dare to catch. His method for getting over the first steps of falling/crashing was to let his flyer students jump/fall from different heights and let the base catch. Learning how to fall/catch was part of the basic training. A lot of time was spent on learning and refining the fine art of the crash.

Q&A The following text is based on conversations we had with our supervisor Camilla Damkjaer during the Autumn of 2012. It is not a reproduction of the actual conversation(s), but it does address some of the topics we were discussing. Many of the topics are so complex that it is almost impossible to represent them appropriately. But we felt it was valuable and worthwhile to try. Let us start by explaining what we mean by the concepts of training and practice, since these words are frequently used. When we talk of training, we mean the daily practice of technique and the necessary physical workout for the body. Besides the pair acrobatic, daily training includes an individual warm-up— stretching and power training. When we talk about practice, we imply the entire profession. We were asked if we had ever worked with a different focus within our pair acrobatic training, and how we work with interpretation on stage and during training. As we understood the question, it meant if we had tried to do our training and technique with, for example, totally relaxed bodies, in slow motion, or in any other predetermined body or mind mood. This question led us into interesting reflections, such as where our training mood comes from, what kind of limitations the technique imposes on us, and also how highly valued the technique is in our practice. It would be an interesting experiment to see how predetermined moods and bodily conditions might affect technical and artistic expressions, thereby distinguishing between traditional and essential elements of our art. But as we see it, this would be an experiment much larger than the current project. Our project has been to look at what is there as things stand and how we experience our practice as it is today. In our practice (and we would like to say in most circus disciplines that contain advanced technical elements or risk-taking), it would be difficult to experiment with focus or moods at a critical moment. At such a moment, you cannot choose a mood; you just occupy the right one. It should be noted that we are making a big difference in what focus or state we put ourselves in when we rehearse or perform other things than our pair acrobatic practice. But for now, we

Extreme symbiosis  61

will try to focus on the part of our practice that concerns acrobatic interaction and its phenomena. In training technique, the goal is to identify a feeling and an idea of what is the most efficient way of doing something. There is a right and a wrong (or at least a less efficient) way. It is important that the interaction between us is neutral, so that we can identify the technique.

What is a neutral expression for us? What is it we consider to be a neutral contact? The technique should not be colored by anything but itself, since we work with signals which are our tempos. If these signals become colored by a predetermined choice, they will appear differently. If, for example, Henrik adopts an angry character and plays these feelings full out in our physical interaction, this will send certain signals. An angry hand squeeze as the starting signal for a trick is probably a harder squeeze than a neutral squeeze, which, in turn, will make a faster tempo and thereby change the technique. The angry squeeze gives an impression of anger, and it will affect how the others interpret the signals; it is difficult to distinguish what is real and necessary information and what is merely a part of the character. If we compare it with theater, in which you can put yourself in different states (let the character take over or follow impulsive feelings), we must always find our way back to the neutral position before the technical operation (trick). The neutral contact is the most responsive contact for us, and it is the default state from which we make our references. It is our ground zero, the clearest way to show what is going on. If something is going wrong, for example, it will change from a neutral signal to an emergency signal. The neutral state is what we strive for during training and it is what we identify while performing. When we perform, there is no verbal conversation going on. So when we only rely on our physical interaction, it is very important that our contact is uncolored and we can recognize the information exchanged the same as during training. This interaction is our “intercom system” and it needs to be free from false information. Any “fake” represented information we are able to play toward an audience, but not through our physical interaction.

We strive for a mood that we perceive as neutral, but how do we get there? The pursuit of neutrality is about finding the most stable way to do things so that deviations are directly recognized. This is where daily training and repetition bring their rewards. To daily repeat something creates stability and a recognition in the body, which makes it calm. Repetitive work creates standards. Achieving a neutral state in the mind requires a capacity for satisfaction. One must not be too excited, happy, nervous, angry, or sad, but simply neutral. It is not an easy task, but it is what we are striving for when we work. How we

62  Louise von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger

behave toward each other and what we choose to think about are therefore very important. Everything that makes you upset, excited, or in any way emotionally involved should be left out. Circus disciplines that require a lot of explosivity (e.g., floor acrobatics) can often be performed better with adrenaline, whereas for us it is only in the way. Our best state for performing our tricks is when we have a sense of peace and satisfaction, almost a feeling of indifference. It would be interesting to examine more closely what neutrality means for us as individuals and what expression it has in our professional relationship. How are our individual neutral states played against each other? These behaviors are probably so strongly implanted that today they are our truths and therefore hard for us to see with any objectivity. Like many other things in our practice, it has become our universe. We have no good answers to the question, and since we have not devised a method for approaching it yet, it remains too complicated to answer. We must be content to talk about our common perception of neutrality in our practice. The whole idea of what we call our neutral state is built upon a common perception of something. It is about the common neutral standards we have created. Just as society has developed standards for what neutral behavior or appearance is, we have created standards. Somewhere, we believe, it is related to adaptation.

Could we perform or choreograph a “neutral training session?” This raises the complexity and contradictions of neutrality again. The neutral state is something which has been created by our daily routines, which may not fit into what other people would call a neutral state. It should be possible to perform the choreography of the training by using our daily patterns, which have certain places in the room, similar time intervals, and almost ritual routines. But if we assume our neutral expression is created by the procedures and the atmosphere that we operate in during training, it would probably be affected if we turned it into a performance.

Where does the choreography of the daily training come from? The main structure is built upon what tricks we are training or performing at the moment, what kind of warm-up these tricks require, and what body condition we are in. These are the conscious and predetermined frames. If we look at the unconscious patterns, like how do we move in the room during the training and why, there are probably many aspects and explanations; it is difficult to give a complete account, but some phenomena can perhaps be explained simply. When Henrik, for example, puts Louise down from a trick, he walks around a little to shake loose and gather strength for the next exercise. That he takes the round to the left may come from the fact that our coach in Moscow sat on the right side, which made Henrik take the turn the other way, to catch his breath before he

Extreme symbiosis  63

received the instructions about the execution. Louise used to go in the direction of the water bottle.

Why the length of the break between the actions? We don’t know why, but the break between the exercises is curiously constant from day to day. For some reason, it happened to be the same length—a minute or two for us to recharge before the next exercise. Many times, without talking we take the initiative to start again at the same time. It’s just kind of time. Those are the breaks, which must be scratched away when we perform. It’s difficult at first and requires another condition, breathing, tempo, and rhythm.

What is only technique? Practically, the technique is the execution of the actual action. If we take, for example, a fuß pol pirouette (step in, push, and half turn for the flyer, entering starting position, lift, rotate, and balance for the base), then the technique is the actual performing of the fuß pol pirouette (the name of the exercise is by the way a great example of the mix of languages in circus: Fuß meaning “foot” in German, pol “half ” in Russian, and pirouette “spin around” in French). The technique is the cause and effect of predetermined steps. It comprises the basic laws we try to follow. Technique is for us the theoretical method embodied by the physical execution.

What does our communication consist of? We would like to divide the communication into two, the verbal and the nonverbal. The verbal communication during training, besides everyday chitchat, consists of planning and analysis of the physical action. Even though the verbal communication/conversation may seem clear and easy to interpret and analyze (what is said is said), a great deal of this communication/conversation affects our performance. What you say and how you say it are both very important. Threats should certainly not be expressed, nor doubt concerning the other. It is strategically bad to try to prove an opinion by steamrolling the other party in a discussion. After all, when it is time for physical action, the outcome is uncertain, we are both equally needed, and our cooperation determines whether we succeed or not. Against this, one’s own opinion becomes insignificant. One could say that diplomacy is the best tactic within a discussion. It should be mentioned that there was a shift when we left our teacher in ­Moscow. For several years, he had been the one who could point out who did what and when in discussions of the technical performance (the most common reason for conflict during training). He was not only our judge but also our diplomat. The transition was challenging—it is not an easy task to start solving things on our own. After years of the habit of letting one’s teacher make an

64  Louise von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger

evaluation and assessment, to suddenly have to turn to each other—with guaranteed two versions of what happened (it will never be the same experience for both of us)—was difficult. We can have the same opinion and feeling of what happened, but never the same experience. So, which feeling or experience is most relevant to the situation? The situation of becoming your own coach is one of the major challenges in our practice. Many circus artists who work in pairs or groups would agree with that statement. A problem/phenomenon that we experienced is that the base often takes on the role of the teacher, claiming he has the best overview of the situation, which technically might make sense since he is “at the helm.” But this phenomenon can create an involuntary separation of powers, which can be difficult to handle.

What does the nonverbal communication consist of? When we perform our verbal communication is almost nonexistent. Then we only use words if something goes badly wrong or if something needs to be commented on. Otherwise, we rely entirely on nonverbal communication. The interactive nonverbal communication that we use through the physical interaction is first and foremost a signal system for the technique, where information about tempos and indications of directions are relayed. This physical contact also contains a lot of other unavoidable communicative signals, like emotions and a person’s present state. How much you listen to these unavoidable emotional signals depends on what mood you are in. To try a new trick might evoke some kind of fear, which provides certain signals in the interactive communication system. But with the right confidence and daily condition, these uncertainty signals can be ignored. The key is to be able to turn those feelings off, manipulate them, and take control over them. The body and mind work in a close cooperation, where a tired body affects the mind as much as a tired mind affects the body, and similarly with a vigorous state. Often, it is difficult to feel what is what. We both agree with the above description of what is happening in our interactive contact. Yet we have different experiences on different cases, depending on what we personally find difficult or scary. And we both share the experience of managing to take control over our body and mind, to either dare to let go (Louise) or dare to take control and thereby responsibility (Henrik). It is the same risk-taking, but from different perspectives.

What is the feeling of the technique? The point with the technique is for us to perform our tricks as smoothly as possible. After taking on a task (a trick), we rehearse that trick until it becomes part of our patterns of movement. When the technique is correct, it is among the best

Extreme symbiosis  65

feelings, and then it feels like the most natural thing in the world, the obvious way, a feeling of minimal friction. When the technique works, the exercises do not feel complicated or heavy, and you cannot understand why it took so long to get there, or why you were not doing it this way all the time. Once you have experienced the feeling of perfect technique in an exercise, you will always search for that feeling again. And when you have it, you are afraid of losing it. In one of our tricks, Henrik uses a melody in his head to get the technique and the tempo right. This helps him to align the different steps in the exercise to an appropriate duration in comparison to each other and to the whole. When he feels the melody is right, he knows the trick is going to work out. It is perhaps less of a melody than a dynamic rhythm. The more technically advanced the combination, the greater feeling when you succeed, and the more effort and complications when it does not work. In a technically advanced combination, there are many moments in the same trick that shall precisely match with each other to make it work, the margins are less, and precise timing is necessary.

Describe the repetition of the technique One part of the repetition of technique is the warm-up. We need to reach a certain shape to be able to perform our skills; the body needs to get started, get the blood circulating, and we do stretching to have access to the maximum required movements. The warm-up is also a process of getting into the mood. Our warm-up has changed slightly over the years, depending on the needs we have at the moment. The different exercises are steps in the build up for what tricks we are practicing. The individual exercises are of quite different character for Louise (the flyer) and Henrik (the base), since we perform different skills in the acrobatic duo. Except for the muscle training for weak parts of the body (rehabilitation), Louise has to undertake a warm-up that makes her muscles flexible to find the necessary muscle contact. Henrik prepares his muscles for Louise’s weight by weight lifting. These exercises are repeated every day the same way. After the individual warm-up, we start with the pair acrobatic training, which is a repetition of the tricks and combinations we use in our repertoire. Most of the tricks and combinations have followed us for many years, while others have come and gone. Our practice and our art are built upon an ability to rehearse something so precisely; it cannot be done just by having the right feeling, will, or courage, but requires years of daily repetition. There is something special about doing the same thing day after day, in the sense that it is actually an impossible task. Nothing can be repeated the same, since the conditions and circumstances around it will always be new for each day. The striving to repeat and reach perfection is a task which at least does not bore us, because there is always something new to take in and consider when trying to repeat the same thing in the pursuit of improvement from last time.

66  Louise von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger

How do the practical spaces/environments affect you? Space affects us a lot, and it has a big influence on how we experience our practice. We prefer to work indoor or possibly outdoor with a ceiling. Practically, the orientation of the room affects the balance. In a new space, there will be new reference points. For example, the highest point on Louise is the balance point for Henrik, and that point relies on the relation to the ceiling and it will appear differently depending on the room’s appearance. The feeling of an exercise can be quite different just by changing venue, and it often takes a few lifts before you are reconciled with the new feeling in relation to the technique and your practice. Light and shadows also affect the orientation and thereby the balance. The temperature of the space also has a major impact on the body. A space that is too cold can give you strong anxiety and an unwillingness to move, while an appropriate temperature in the space gives you energy and impulses to move. There are many things to consider in the ability to adapt to a new space; it also has to do with your mental shape, and the more often you change location the easier it is to find the space. But you will always be influenced by it.

Conclusion One of the biggest concerns we had for undertaking this project was the fear of examining what had worked for ten years. What will happen when we analyze things that had become routine? Do we really need to know everything? Perhaps some of our working tools have been tacit agreements developed over many years? We still believe that some information needs to be kept private. There is information that would disturb the practice if it were to be discussed at the wrong moment. The key has been to learn what to discuss and when. Also, since the situation of being your own observer is a complex situation in itself, it was pretty clear we had to learn how to keep working like “normal” while practicing and leave the discussions and analytic side to be done in another context than in the training space. It has been a conscious choice to not make up too many hypotheses for how things work; tacit knowledge should remain tacit. We will give you an example of why we keep some information to ourselves. The practice of pair acrobatics involves psychology—overcoming fears and trusting each other. You deal with your own feelings and also have to work with your partner’s feelings. And even though we know each other very well at this point and can feel a lot without talking, we still need to play our cards right to not make the other one doubt. Within the acrobatics, we have different working roles that we very well know how to play right to reach the most efficient way of working. Henrik as a base needs to convince me (Louise) as a flyer that he is stable and has control over the situation; if he, for example, would tell me he has pain somewhere and feel weak just before an acrobatic moment, it would immediately affect me to start doubting his capacity and I would have a harder time letting

Extreme symbiosis  67

go. However, we are happy to say our fear of examining our practice has been replaced by curiosity. And we would like to say it has rather grown and become stronger. The practice of pair acrobatics is largely about the relation between the pair of acrobats, so the dialogue between us plays a central role. To make our relationship visible and reflect on it have helped us to make conscious choices. When we watch a recording or listen to an interview in retrospect, we have been able to look at the situation as observers, which makes it easier to discuss the situation impartially. And the descriptions of our practice become our theories. Maybe we thought in the beginning that the investigation would give us answers, but pretty quickly we realized we had more questions. Or at least those answers or discoveries that did arise were not what we expected. Many of the discoveries during this project have been about our behavior—in training, but also in daily life. Certainly, we were aware of many aspects before, but it has been good to highlight it to ask whether we have acquired bad habits or just a way of making the relationship/practice work. Some of our behavior is hard to track, and we cannot tell where it comes from or why it is there. The behavior that we would call typical for being a flyer or a base was probably somehow already there before we started with acrobatics, but has it grown to such an extent that it oppresses other behavior? We will give you a not so pleasant example of how our acquired behavior brought about major damage once. We were working in Turkey, and on our way to the evening’s performance, we had to cross a road with four lanes—two in each direction, with a refuge in the middle. There was almost no traffic that day and we looked to our left to check that no cars were coming. After crossing the first two lanes we stopped at the refuge in the middle and looked to our right, where a car was approaching very slowly. We decided to cross before it. Henrik took one step out and I (Louise) followed as usual. At that exact point, a car appeared on the wrong side of the road. Henrik stopped but I did not, because I was not looking, I was just following him, and crash! I flew up in the air like a glove in the wind, miraculously landing on my feet again on the refuge. By pure luck, I got away with just bruises and a twisted ankle. Afterward, when we reconstructed this accident, we felt it illustrated how far our working roles have infiltrated our everyday behavior. We are aware that some think the characteristics of our practice involve gender stereotypes—the strong man who lifts a small girl, with the base (in our case the man) for technical reasons being the one in charge. It has never been an issue for us, but it’s rather something that other people project onto us. It is for us just a way of working in the most efficient and practical way. But this does not mean we do not try to examine ourselves as well as our professional roles. We did not have the aim during this project to change anything within our practice. That was never the goal. The interest was more focused on finding out what was there, reflecting on it, and somehow expressing it, to see what it could give to us and to the practice. One major benefit arising from the project is that we have gained new approaches toward and perspectives on our practice. We have formulated

68  Louise von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger

experiences and this has deepened our understanding. When experiential knowledge is formulated, it inspires further questions. New insights are created. We have broadened our understanding of what our practice contains and caught sight of potential areas for further research. It has opened up opportunities within our own practice and we see many ways to move forward with this project. Examples of possible further research include a comparison of the mentality of the flyer and the base. Do they differ? If so, in what ways? What impact does a mentality have on the practice? Are there common personality traits associated with one or the other role? If so, are you born with these or do you acquire them through enculturation? Does physical shape create the mentality? What is the strongest factor in the choice of position in an acrobatic duo—physical shape or mentality? Are men or women attracted to specific roles? Since, in a traditional school, the choice of becoming a base or a flyer may not always be one’s own, how does a coach or authority decide a person’s suitability as a flyer or a base? Is it physical shape, mentality, or both? To explore the psychology of pair acrobatics is an interesting subject, where there remains much to discover. But it is also difficult to approach this as active practitioners. We have touched on certain things, but uncertainty as to how it might affect our practice has made us choose not to address all our interests.

The research methods The first task in the project was to find a research method that could gather relevant information about our practice. The diary came up as a natural way of collecting material from daily life. Quite soon after we started writing diaries, the idea of a daily questionnaire came up. To be able to compare something concrete, we needed some recurring questions. So we made a questionnaire comprising four different questions: How was your physical shape today? How was your mental shape today? How was the physical contact between you? How was the mental contact between you? These four questions were individually answered after every training or performance every day for over two years, and together with the more “free framed” diary notes, it became a way of documenting and reflecting on our daily work. We were answering the questionnaire without knowing what the other one was writing. It was a way to approach the different perspectives of being a base or a flyer: How do we perceive the same situations? What is our focus? Does it differ or is it similar? (You will find extracts from the responses of our daily questionnaire and diaries in the white book [Agger and von Euler Bjurholm 2015]). After almost a year of answering the daily questionnaire, we looked at them together for the first time. We were about to make a first presentation of the project and wanted to use these answers as a part of the presentation. When we were reading them, we both felt that the few lines that were produced said quite a lot: it gave a voice to the daily ongoing process.

Extreme symbiosis  69

Although right after we looked at the answers together, it became harder to answer them. It felt as if we knew how to respond: there was a tendency to take the other into account. So we had to take some weeks off from it. By that time, we came up with our new research method—a daily “confession” in front of a web camera. We wanted it to be different from the questionnaire; to get around ourselves, we felt we needed to get away from that set structure. So we decided the frames should be free; the only rule we had was that it should be done in connection to shows or training, preferably as close to each session as possible. In the beginning, it felt very strange talking to yourself in front of a camera, but after some time it developed into a pleasant ritual. It was kind of nice to sum up the day and talk about whatever flew into your mind. Since the confessions were done in connection to training or show, it was obviously the common theme on most confessions. It was in that sense the same topics as in the questionnaire, a description of the daily practice. It was a good complement to the questionnaire and another way to approach the practice. Today, we have a large amount of collected confessions and we use some of them as a soundtrack in the practical presentation/performance of the project. Recording our training sessions has been part of our practice since the very beginning. Some periods, it has been an important part of the technical analysis, and we have used the camera as an outside eye or like a substitute for our teacher. So, when we started this project in 2011, the film camera was chosen as a research tool. Later on in the project, the recorded material we had collected over all our training years turned out to be very useful material in the search for our practice elements. To look at old recordings not only showed the technical progress that has happened, but also the shaping of our practice and our way of working. We were looking through hours of training, recorded between 2001 and 2012 on all kinds of formats from Hi8 tapes to DV tapes; it was a great deal of work just to transform them to a digital format. Many times during this project, it has been hard to see things clearly while working and then often hard to know for what purpose we were doing it. It feels like we often had to use some kind of intuition, go for it, and then leave it for a while to later look at it again and then understand why. Also, concerning the recorded material that we had collected over all these years for no reason or at least no conscious reason, it suddenly became a treasure. When we understood the value of the recordings, we started to record in a wider sense during our training. We let the camera record even between the acrobatic actions. By doing that, we got a lot of information that we had never seen before. We realized that what is going on when we are resting is also part of our practice and it is as much of a repetitive routine as the acrobatic skills we practice every day. Watching the practice in a new perspective raised many questions, and we found qualities in the practice that represented and expressed our practice as well as the acrobatic skills. The way Henrik moves when he rests

70  Louise von Euler Bjurholm and Henrik Agger

or what expression Louise has before a “take off,” for example, is as much a part of our practice as the acrobatic actions. It may sound obvious, but it was valuable for us to see these things, because it adds even more dimensions to work with. Our practice has shaped a way of being, a condition that we adapt our lives to. After realizing our daily training has an almost ritualistic structure, we started to look at the choreography in it and the idea of making a presentation/performance based on our daily training was born. The writing has been the biggest challenge in this project, but also the most instructive for me. When something that feels clear in thought must be formulated in words, those words often seem to raise complications and contradictions. That is perhaps another reason why some things in a practice might not be translated into words—it just makes them more complicated than they are. But apart from this idea, the writing has been an excellent way of illuminating and processing new and old hypotheses and theories around the practice.

Note 1 Thanks to Rolf Hughes, Sandra Praun, Ingela Agger, Cecilia Roos, Camilla ­Damkjaer, and Lars von Euler. Special thanks to Boris Nikiforovich Belochvostov for sharing your incredible knowledge.

Bibliography Agger, Henrik and Louise von Euler Bjurholm. 2015. Extreme Symbiosis. Stockholm: The White Book/The Black Book.

6 HAMLET To have written or not to have written for the tightwire Louis Patrick Leroux Translated from French by Anna Vigeland and Louis Patrick Leroux1 Introduction “To be, or not to be,” “To have never been,” “To be no more.” As a playwright, stage director, and researcher, I came to doubt everything. Staging Hamlet, if only a fragment of it, requires being confronted with a tutelary figure as both researcher and artist. Hamlet broods, oscillates, ponders, considers, and decides. Deep in an autopoiesis, he is always aware of his own presence: the star of a performance of serial failures, a show in which he would have preferred not to appear. In 2016, I transposed the western canon’s iconic play into a modest stage essay, which was presented at a circus festival. Noting the inevitability of multiple scripts and endless adaptations, and aware that I would never, of course, completely erase the original play, I created a palimpsest of dramaturgical ­strategies—at once textual, acrobatic, sonorous, and spectacular. My multiple roles as director, translator, and researcher entangled themselves with the project’s shifting logic and motion, causing the distinction between text, textuality, and texture to grow increasingly unclear. This ontological blurring of boundaries made way for the creation of a hybrid piece drawing from acrobatic disequilibrium, from the intellectual somersaults of the canonical soliloquy, and from a search for balance between research practices and creative processes. Torn between Shakespeare and circus, between commission and creation, between words and movement, between adaptation and transgression, between English and French, between my role as a researcher and that of a playwright and director, I let the dualistic, vivid, and distracted character become my guide. I channeled his energies onto a tightwire, thanks to the complicity of an outstanding wire walker and a creative team with complementary expertise.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-9

72  Louis Patrick Leroux

Resonant response and explorations of contemporary circus dramaturgy My research examines the performing arts, namely theater, video installation, and contemporary circus, and follows two traditions: one is scholarly and the other is experiential. Depending on the project, particularly in the beginning phases, I analyze and participate in the creative process through a sustained artistic practice that challenges the frameworks of academic research. After having spent the 1990s immersed in an experimental theater practice, in the 2000s I became interested in the creative process in a university setting: its strategies, its resistances, and its forms of staging and writing, both text-based and physical performance. This led to several large-scale projects, including essays and variations on a theme, specifically Hypertext and Performance: A Resonant Response to Baillie’s “Witchcraft,” 2009–2012; see Leroux, 2013a). Other important research-­ creation experiences, which led to the piece discussed in this chapter, include circus-­specific explorations with the National Circus School in Montreal, between 2013 and 20172. For the past decade, I have been directing my gaze toward contemporary circus in an attempt to understand its interdisciplinary poetics and its interweaving of physical codes and references. I have been examining how the highly trained, individualized circus body disrupts the logocentric and discursive theatrical model, which is very often nothing more than words. After creating the video performative installation Milford Haven, triptych in 2012, which was based on the initial creative impulses from a project in 1995, I found myself before Shakespeare once again. The initial 1995 commission for Milford Haven was from the Théâtre Urbi et Orbi and the Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui in Montreal. Thirty-eight Quebec playwrights under the age of thirty-eight were invited to create short single-voice performances inspired by Shakespeare’s thirty-eight plays. I was offered the little-known Cymbeline. The passage that drew me was that of the seduction and unjust loss of Imogen. Many participating artists followed the model of the urban tale, a form favored by Urbi et Orbi under the direction of Yvan Bienvenue. But Shakespeare’s romance pulled me toward a more neoromantic form with multiple narratives. I returned to the short play in 2012 in the context of a video performance at matralab (Concordia), which featured three simultaneous presentations of three perspectives. Each presentation was a fourteen-minute projection and consisted of a single dynamic take lasting twelve minutes. There were three screens on stage, much like digital stained glass windows, from which the distinct voice of Imogen seemed to emerge and enveloped the audience in an octophonic sound environment, leaving the impression of warmth and physical presence (see Leroux, 2013b, 2014). Just as with Milford Haven and Milford Haven, triptych, Shakespeare returned to me in the form of “Hamlet on the Wire” thanks to a preestablished theatrical production context. Never would I have dared to take on such a project with such irreverence. In celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, the City of Montreal wanted to create a series of events to mark the

Hamlet: to have written or not to have written for the tightwire  73

occasion. My former English literature student, Jean-François Bernard, who had since become a doctoral student, a specialist in Shakespeare, and a festival curator, asked me if I wanted to present the Milford Haven, triptych video installation. But I wanted to create something new, to put myself in an unusual situation. I began to think about the artists at the National Circus School of Montreal with whom I worked closely for many years and about how so many of them resisted text, narrative, and even discourse. It was then that the image of Hamlet on the Wire came to me. In 2015, I had already started a research project that was being funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec, Société et culture (FRQSC) entitled “Poétique du cirque contemporain (dramaturgies et grammaires d’une écriture en mouvement)” at the National Circus School (for a summary of the project’s findings, see Leroux et al., 2018). The project collaborated with its creative director, Howard Richard, a team of Concordia university students, and a group of students and teachers from the National Circus School’s professional training program. Having spent much of the year learning the traditions and languages of contemporary circus—through observation and movement deconstruction exercises—the prospect of bringing theater to the destabilizing world of contemporary circus enchanted me and brought me back to my roots. I shared with Jean-François the image of a Hamlet who could only maintain his balance by skillfully moving forward on a tightwire. In his delighted response, I understood that the image struck the imagination of the Shakespeare specialist. A visual theater play would not be enough: It would be necessary to embody, inhabit, stage, and materialize the image of Hamlet on the wire. A  metonymy of Hamlet’s state of mind and breathless action, the wire would give form to the fundamental tension between the bluster and bravado of the Danish prince. The wire would be the platform of his unfinished act, repeated over and over in a frightening sequence of spectacular imbalance.

Hamlet and the exhaustion of referential text “I am not Hamlet. I don’t take part any more. My words have nothing to tell me anymore. My thoughts suck the blood out of the images. My drama doesn’t happen anymore. Behind me the set is put up by people who aren’t interested in it either. I won’t play along anymore,” states Heiner Müller’s actor playing Hamlet, as he must (Müller 1978). In our era of textual and referential exhaustion, Müller’s Hamlet-machine continues to resound. Hamlet is the anxious monument of a literary culture that can’t stop remarking that he is gone. The Bard’s epic antiheroic hymn to failure and ambiguity: inescapably moving toward catastrophe by Hamlet’s own immobility and inability to carry out his quest. This imperfect invention is that of an individual incapable of the action predestined for him. It is the emergence of a free will replete with all its doubts and complexities. How can we not see ourselves in Hamlet’s existential crisis of inaction? Hamlet’s inaction is embellished with rumination, gesticulations, and grandiloquent words. His father had charged him with a single task: to avenge his

74  Louis Patrick Leroux

death and reveal the current usurpation of the throne. But this proves to be complicated for the sensitive antihero with his nuanced sense of repartee. Hamlet was hardly toying with fate; he was too preoccupied with the state of his own soul. Thomas Carlyle, in the footsteps of Novalis and Schlegel, evokes Shakespeare’s “unconscious intellect” (1840) and his drawing from the depths of the human soul. As such, Hamlet appears to be a tutelary thinker-creator with exhilarating self-reflexivity. In his study Hamlet: Poem Unlimited, Bloom claims that “we go back to Hamlet because we cannot achieve enough consciousness, even at the expense of a sickening self-conscience” (2004, 147). He states, “A mediation upon human fragility in confrontation with death, it competes only with the world’s scriptures. […] Hamlet has become the centre of a secular scripture” (2004, 3). The most studied and commented work is much more than a play. It stands out as one of the pillars of the literary canon: “Hamlet is a text that anticipates, enacts, and reflects upon its own end” (Senasi 2018, 155). Consequently, the play continues to inspire innumerable adaptations on the precariousness of humanity and the inevitable tragic infernal machine. The play’s catastrophe is endorsed by its postmodern readers who are all well aware of the crumbling state of their literate civilization. “The fear of losing Hamlet is more than just the fear of losing a 400-year-old play text; it is the fear of losing the humanities—and perhaps even what it means to be human” (Freeman Loftis et al. 2018, 7). Hamlet is both the ultimate scenic and textual reference. By constantly embroidering around it, do we whittle away its strength and relevance? Textual exhaustion in the case of Hamlet, according to Freeman Loftis et al., would betray cultural anxieties about the renewal and perpetuation of the work following centuries of exegesis, rereading, and commentary on the prince’s inaction. In our relativistic era, has the inexhaustible source run dry? How—and, above all, why—should we reread, reassemble, or adapt Hamlet, the most iconic of all the western canon’s dramatic works, when it has already been the subject of innumerable adaptations? Perhaps by moving forward like a wire walker: inevitably, intrepidly, and unconsciously searching for balance, not daring to look back. Can we still stage Hamlet? Flemish philosopher Dieter Lesage asks this question in his work under the same title Peut-on encore jouer Hamlet? (2002). He calls into question Shakespeare’s possible contemporaneity (as presented by Jan Kott in Shakespeare Our Contemporary [1961]) and questions the global universality of the canon. After delving through references from Shakespeare’s time and context, Lesage asks whether the author is “really as contemporary as one might think. Is our era the same as Shakespeare’s? And what universality could a late English Renaissance playwright convey to us?” (Lesage 2002, 8). He argues that “doing Shakespeare” might be a superfluous or even irrelevant creative act: “Doing Shakespeare is a practice that could rightly be called a fetish” (2002, 9). The paradox of our palimpsest of works, “not of an age, but for all time,” to use the line from Ben Jonson’s poem in the first Folio (1623), is that “we continue to play Shakespeare because Shakespeare is still just as pertinent today” (Lesage 2002,

Hamlet: to have written or not to have written for the tightwire  75

23), modernized through our contemporary pastiche approaches. “To ‘work with Shakespeare’ now,” according to Lesage, is to “‘universalize Shakespeare.’ Shakespeare’s works are not universal in and of themselves, but must tirelessly be made universal. Shakespeare’s universality is therefore not so much the reason but rather the consequence of ‘working with Shakespeare’” (2002, 33). Wary of fetishizing the piece into an umpteenth sociocultural transposition, I approached Hamlet by looking to Hamlet himself, that is, by making the inaction of the anti-hero my own, an inaction overflowing with inventiveness, fully aware of what it fails to accomplish.

Scenic textualities I am, as the French say, an écrivain du plateau—a director and playwright who enters the rehearsal room with a text in hand, but then erases it and reworks it on the spot, riffing on the offers and demands of the collaborating artists around me. This can be unsettling for an actor who wants to “do well.” The approach requires participating artists to follow the instincts of the director, to resonate with the piece, with the project, and with the space and stage machinery. In the case of Hamlet on the Wire, the production framework demanded multiple layers of rewriting very early on. Adapting and writing the piece for circus, composing the soliloquy for the wire, avoiding the figurative and the illustrative at all costs, and shaping the work’s textualities (at once pretexts, texts, textures, and referents) into a physical staging presented specific challenges. Staging circus typically involves joining, juxtaposing, or deepening traditional disciplinary practices. The contemporary reframing of these disciplines follows more or less the same impulses as the equivalents in dance and theater: an assumed hybridity and a narrative or discursive disruption. Meanwhile, Emmanuel Wallon reminds us that circus is a composite genre that includes all performance forms, which it “cannot make do with a single form of grammar” (Wallon 2006, 60). We’ve known since Aristotle that theatrical action is based on the imitation of an action and is governed by desire, thus triggering a virtuous circle of drama. In circus, however, action is both potentiality and kinetic force: it takes place not between bodies, as in traditional theater, but on bodies themselves. At the risk of oversimplifying, while theater is mainly dialogical, circus is spectacular and built on prowess. This is not to say that theater doesn’t demonstrate extraordinary feats or that circus doesn’t dabble in dialogue. Contemporary circus is not afraid of theater and its codes but integrates them into its vocabulary, just as it does with dance. The conventions of theater—its narrativity, characters, thirst for action, and stage coherence—are, of course, useful and have their place in circus; but what happens when a theatrical work triggers the creation of a circus piece? In the case of Hamlet on the Wire, the dramaturgy had to be dramatic. The context of multiple rewritings meant that Hamlet on the Wire was the work of

76  Louis Patrick Leroux

several authors and the bearer of several meanings. I led the adaptation, transposition, and staging, but the specialized vocabulary of the wire was left to François Bouvier. I was able to reframe the wire vocabulary with the help of Adrian Martinez, an acrobatics teacher from the National Circus School. Trained in theater in Mexico, Adrian later studied acrobatic instruction in Montreal and was able to translate my stage directions and aesthetic and narrative demands into understandable, technically detailed suggestions, clearly linked to performance tasks rather than character-based intentions. A true translator, he knew how to move from theater to circus with simplicity, demystifying my requests to François and diplomatically modulating my generally hasty expectations. Alison Bowie accompanied me in the dramaturgy and staging, systematically anticipating the paths I inevitably wanted to explore, always having reference documents in hand, providing scholarly (and practical) interpretations of different passages, ensuring a certain orthodoxy with respect to the original text, following my whimsical explorations, and never reproaching me for my mistakes. Sound designer and musician Joel Mason grasped the potential of a true onstage complicity between performer and musical accompanist from the outset, seeing in it a tandem reminiscent of Hamlet and Horatio. And Jean-François, who initially commissioned the piece, began to accompany the process as producer and promoter. The “I” of this essay therefore implies the “we” of a team, except in the wandering mistakes and doubts, which were mine alone. How does one create with a tightwire? According to Pascal Jacob: It’s a question of composing with the void: on the wire, the acrobat is always at the center of something. Their body is an axis, their mobility a means of constructing a sequence. A simple taut wire, with no other artifice, and is a first step toward the mystery of balance, or of controlled imbalance: a living embodiment of the figure of the acrobat as a factor of progress. (n.d.) Each step taken by the wire walker brings them closer to the platform, a moment of stability. Hamlet does not move forward in a straight line: he swells up, gets carried away, wanders astray, gets lost in conjunctions. Through his actions, his gestures, his bravado, and his bifurcations, he reaches a paroxysm of dramatic, distressing, and revealing inaction. And yet, his dramatic action couldn’t be clearer: he must reveal the deceptiveness of his usurping uncle and his opportune mother and, above all, avenge his father. He approaches the task with disproportionate force and never arrives at the finish line. “The wire is demanding. It is a language. It stems from a specific vocabulary, is based on technical virtuosity, and leaves very little room for indecision,” writes Jacob (n.d.). What happens then when a wire walker is asked to communicate using at once the language of the wire of that of an iconic play and that of a timid deconstruction-­ appropriation of Hamlet presented in Quebec?

Hamlet: to have written or not to have written for the tightwire  77

Palimpsest translation Quebec theater has a rich and complex relationship with Shakespeare, as sociolinguists and translation specialists have amply demonstrated, from ­A nnie Brisset’s writings on what she called Quebec’s political “tradaptations” or “translation-­adaptations” (1990) to Jennifer Drouin’s postcolonial and gender studies-influenced perspective (2014), which recalls national historiographies and the ease with which we play (and replay) postcolonial identity protocols in our relationship to the English author. Joël Beddows, for his part, offers both a practical and institutional perspective on Quebec translations of Shakespeare. He outlines a defense of the retranslations of works that have been shown many times on our stages: “The translators invoke the equivocal notion of fidelity to the text, the fact that a local production requires a local translation, and the preconceived idea that every translation has to be redone ad infinitum” (Beddows 1998, 35). Citing the number of commissions for retranslations, sometimes ethnocentric, sometimes resulting from singular interpretations, he concludes that “French-language versions often turn out to be impoverished versions, retaining a limited amount of the onstage interpretations implicit in theatrical texts” (1998, 35). From this perspective, to complete the translation during the directing and staging processes would be to betray the work and its spirit. This I did, without a doubt and without regrets. The French Hamlet sur le fil was first conceived as Hamlet on the Wire. The question of the language of the performance came up late in the process, when considering who was going to play Hamlet. However, the context of our particular Hamlet had less to do with its production on Quebec soil than with its incursion into circus territory, that is, a transnational, cosmopolitan space. The commission was Anglocentric and the presentation context (a series of Anglophile events and presentations at an international festival) favored English. However, the voice of the wire walker had to take shape and make the soliloquy resound. François had no theater training and his mastery of the English text was not “Shakespearean.” The English text was an obstacle to the understanding necessary for the role. In addition, all of the French translations or Quebec “tradaptations” we explored gave the impression of linguistic imposture or imposed language. A functional translation followed, first to make the text understandable to François and second to allow him to verbalize it and, above all, to embody it. I quickly saw that the translation’s textuality would be rooted in the texture of the artist’s deep and uncertain voice. The soliloquy would be whispered, it would float above the audience, across it, and become one with them. It would be recorded and amplified, creating an intimate sound space that would expand onto the stage area. Adding to the blurring of linguistic and cultural referents, as the transgressive translation became readable for the wire walker it also became indecipherable for the unilingual English-speaking musician, who could only make out occasional speech sounds and had to rely entirely on François Bouvier’s

78  Louis Patrick Leroux

body language in order to know how to respond. Alison Bowie, Joel Mason, and I hadn’t mastered the nuances of the wire’s vocabulary. Multiple languages were spoken in this Montreal setting, inspired by both English and French theatrical traditions, both performance and happening, both traditional tightwire and a physical vocabulary rooted in a gestural contemporaneity. The creative process led us toward a plurisemiotic, plurilingual space, imposing a modus operandi of active listening in an environment favoring (re)translation and constant (re)interpretation between text and body, between voice and music, between English and French, and between artistic referents and expectations. Any act of translation, transposition, or cultural and interartistic adaptation of a Shakespeare play is part of a long tradition aiming to “reconfigure the relationship between textual autonomy and historical particulars, pushing beyond conventional understandings of the literary event and the complexities of historical time” (Fischlin 2014, 34).3 This would therefore be a decentered and “wild” adaptation and would engage with the canonical work, as Mark Fortier advocates (2007), not through interpretative doxa, but through the event’s dramaturgical logic. “To be or not to be, that is the question.” In the mouth of our Hamlet, this passage quickly turned into n’être pas. This is not the standard negation of être (ne pas être). Rather, it implies a taking of the self and of the nothingness within the self—qualities to which Hamlet was drawn. Flirting poetically with Hamlet’s descendants—Cioran on the one hand and Camus on the other—the poor young man stretches his foot along the tightwire: “Ne pas avoir été; n’être plus.” Hamlet’s monologue on the wire foreshadows the possibility of immediate tragic death rather than the perspective of the tragedy of death. The immediacy of the act—François putting down his foot before thrusting himself into the void—is carried by the artist’s thoughts, his words, and his precarious balance. It is then that the soliloquy must unfurl and wait for François to grasp hold of it. The canonical text announces its own annihilation. My translation could not deflate Hamlet’s verbal élan and emotional dexterity. It had to twist and embrace the original version, unravel it, and reduce it to phrases that would remerge from the body and sensibility of a twenty-something man from Quebec. I worked toward a referential palimpsest, a translation that brought together pieces of related texts: a tragicomic line from Richard III, a passage from the Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, and, of course, my own moribund Ludwig, resurrected for a few moments and asking to “die, to die as often as I can” in an attempt to defy both his progenitor and his executioner (Leroux 2009). Does the return of a character to his author twenty-five years after his death stem from an associative thought or a referential obsession?4 Ludwig was an obvious choice. I did not try to understand why. He would accompany us, like the Angel of Death; he would walk alongside François, watching out for him, taunting him, as is demanded by the dramaturgy of circus.

The torment of too many questions.

Les dards, fléchettes d’un malheureux destin; Laurier blessé qui se cherche Une mer noire ou s’engloutir, Enfin oublié de tous.

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil Must give us pause.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

There’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life—

Dormir—non, plus jamais dormir Devant la calamité d’une vie Sans doutes, sans questions;

(L’avorton se love dans le creux d’une main Qui n’a plus la force de le retenir.)

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

To die, to sleep— To sleep perchance to dream:                                              ay, there’s the rub,

Mourir à tout ce qui meurtrit, A tout ce qui détourne le regard; Tout ce qui désagrège, Ce qui défenestre, Et m’expose À cet hiver de mon désarroi.

Mourir, mourir souvent s’il le faut…

To never have been; to cease being altogether.

Trop de questions me taraudent.

                                             

To be nor not to be…

Ne pas avoir été; n’être plus.

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep— No more, and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.

(The runt curls up in the palm Of mother’s hand, A hand that cannot hold him Any longer.) (Continued)

To die to everything which maims And bruises and distracts; To expire before everything that comes undone, Unhinged And leaves me exposed To this winter of my distress.

To die; to die often, if I may.

These are the darts, the quarrels Of an unhappy destiny; Wounded laurel leaves floating into A dark oblivion; drowning, At last forgotten, obliterated.

English working translation of the adaptation

Adaptation française Etre; n’être pas…

Shakespeare original To be or not to be—that is the question.

TABLE 6.1  A Resonant Response to Hamlet’s Soliloquy

Hamlet: to have written or not to have written for the tightwire  79

And lose the name of action.

And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

L’ineffable, L’inévitable, La catastrophe.

Suivre la ligne droite vers

Plus de résolutions; que d’actions

Plus d’inaction; que des gestes assumés;

Enfin l’apesanteur—

Suivre la dernière ligne droite La prendre sur soi, elle m’élève:

Inevitable, Inescapable Catastrophe

Walk the line to what is the

Enough with empty resolutions; henceforth I only show resoluteness.

Enough with inaction; Henceforth I only Engage.

There it is! Weightlessness—

Commit to the final stretch, Take in unto myself, allow the wire to propel me:

A lugubrious life of False starts, Endless brooding; Constant iterations. To be allowed—and why not? —to finally allow dreams and Restfulness.

Se donner le droit—pourquoi pas— d’enfin rêver Au repos.

When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin?

Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn                                                                           No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?

To sleep—no: sleep nevermore—before The calamity of a life Without doubt, without questions;

Existence morne des recommencements, Ressassements, Redites.

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient of th’ unworthy takes,

TABLE 6.1  (Continued)

80  Louis Patrick Leroux

Hamlet: to have written or not to have written for the tightwire  81

Textures of breath and natural prosody My decision to use the tightwire limited my options in terms of performers who could play Hamlet. It also revealed an inevitably introspective, thoughtful, shy, and courageous Hamlet. I knew that François, one of my former students at the National Circus School, had a quality of assumed precariousness, a tendency to place himself in dangerous situations so as to regain his balance. Hamlet oscillates between theatricality and interiority, and yet even his interiority becomes a performance, a demonstration. I felt that François might be embarrassed—such is his character—by the show in which he would find himself, and that this embarrassment, this resentment at having to play an uncomfortable role, would contribute to the essence of the Hamlet that we would explore together. François’s former training and practice made it complicated to verbalize the text. Speaking on the wire, saying the lines, and proclaiming Shakespeare’s verses posed challenges. The breath and prosody to deliver Hamlet’s texts require training and technical ability that is not taught to Quebec circus performers. However, the choice of a formally trained actor would have ruled out any credible performance on the wire, a discipline that is acquired over a long period of time. It was thus necessary to reorient the language so that it maintained our balancing Hamlet’s breath, prosody, and physicality. The text used in rehearsal had to be set, as it had become a source of stress for the moving artist. The playwright in me had the text in hand, with my insistent former characters appearing in it. The director in me had to distance myself from the text, to isolate myself from it, in order to set the team at ease and allow for creative freedom.

Text artifact The text became an artifact. Its three erased, annotated pages became both a working and reference document. It became a map on which to draw the various trajectories we imagined to be possible. Totemic, it became a reference, a trigger, separated as it were from the process that was to follow. The text consists of five columns, the first of which sets the tone for the micro-action of the sequence: dissert, tempt, resist, pace, and so on (this was before the text switched to French). The second column translates the division of the Shakespearean soliloquy in the text. The third column offers a liminal and TABLE 6.2  Text Artefact

Action

Shakespeare

Voices

Pace

I know my There’s the course. respect That makes calamity of so long life—

Resonant Response

Task

Existence morne des Reappropriate recommencements, and test the Ressassements wire. Redites.5

82  Louis Patrick Leroux

referential space of echoes resonating intertextually, coming from other scenes in the play or from other plays. The fourth column contains the “tradaptation” (or “trappropriation”) for the wire walker to recite: a resonant response to the soliloquy in French, thus moving away from the canonical text in order to allow the nonactor to make it his own. Finally, the fifth column gives a very brief description of the anticipated movements. This last “writing” reflects a fantasy, the wish of an author-director who has neither circus training nor technique but who nevertheless knows the codes of the discipline and repertoire of the selected wire walker. These stage directions or suggestions were quickly abandoned during the writing process, which imposed its own sequences and grammar, both narrative and physical. Dramatic texts and acrobatic scripts have their own logic and intentions. François didn’t “play” Hamlet. He followed an outline of movements that were conceived according to the progression in the dialogue, which are divided into four simultaneous and complementary components: the logos, the oratio, the corporis, and corpus lingua. The logos, a transgressive adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, served as a trigger, then as an artifact. The oratio or the verses spoken by François established a complicity with the musician and a narrative framework for the spectators. The corporis (or kinetic archive) gave words to the trained body of the wire walker. The corpus lingua was written with François and the assistance of Adrian, who was able to reframe my theatrical requests with technical and practical terms that were understandable to the high-level circus performer. To stage Shakespeare, insists Stephen Greenblatt in his essay “The Interart Movement,” one must recognize that his plays are interartistic, constantly referring to complex systems of words and images that dictate an “acoustics” of the text both in the body and in space (1997, 14).

Sound installation Using octophonic sound technology, Joel—the sound designer and musical performer interacting with the wire walker—and I created concentric hearing zones. Spectators could move through the space by modulating their own sound calibration. From the center, as if emanating from the taut wire, a warm, proximal, and radiophonic voice arose and crossed over us, imbued with the doubts and urgency of François, our Hamlet. We then added a second sound texture to Hamlet’s voice, like an auroral resonance emanating from the character. The sound environment featured industrial sounds, loops, and musical sound extracts. An underlying soundtrack crossed the space and was layered by another track improvised by the composer in response to the movement of the wire walker. In the outer circle, Joel wove in sound noises and ritornellos that populated Hamlet’s mind and our space as spectators. Muted, behind all this, the original monologue sometimes unexpectedly sprang closer to us, delivered with passion and a bit of pomp by an English-speaking Shakespearean actor, but who could

Hamlet: to have written or not to have written for the tightwire  83

only detonate with his pentametric cannonade. The voice of the actor was that of the doxa—that of François’s expectations of himself carrying the spectacular English monologue that the latter would have wanted to deliver. Meanwhile, the acrobat’s monologue in French was more suppressed, more fragile, and rawer, recorded in the intimacy of a muffled, darkened studio, using a microphone a few centimeters from his mouth as he dared to exercise his voice. I implored him to speak from a place of simplicity and intimacy, not to act and, above all, not to declaim. The original “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/ When we have shuffled off this mortal coil/Must give us pause” was reworked for François: “To sleep—no: sleep nevermore—before/The calamity of a life/ Without doubt, without questions.”6 These words needed to be François’s as much as they were Hamlet’s. He would engage with the archetype while also breaking free of him: “To die to everything which maims/And bruises and distracts/To expire before everything that comes undone/Unhinged/And leaves me exposed/To this winter of my distress.” 7 Hamlet lets Ludwig inhabit him, invade him. François doesn’t know this other character who wants to be channeled by him. At his lowest depth, Ludwig puts on the garments of Richard III. In what ways is this existential questioning our questioning? The wire walker’s words were mediated to a large degree by the musician, whose role was in many ways to make Hamlet speak one sentence at a time and to constantly adjust to the rhythms of the acrobat who could fall at any moment. His verses were extracted, isolated on the keys of the keyboard to allow for repetitions and iterations in the heat of the action. A fixed soundtrack would have allowed no room for error, deviation, risk, or breath. In order to appear authentic and immediate, the voice of Hamlet/François had to be textured and manipulated by Joel, behind his keyboard, who watched for any gesture, hesitation, or variation as he walked the wire.

To have written or not to have written for the wire In a Montreal circus context that recognizes (and demands) both great technicality and a demonstration of prowess, the proposal of a Hamlet wire walker was intriguing and no doubt disappointing. Circus audiences would have preferred more risk-taking; theatergoers would have liked less sonic and physical distractions from Hamlet’s soliloquy. What was really at stake in this prowess? Could it have been the gamble of a risky (re)scripting or that of being caught learning in front of an audience? Did I create something truly for circus or for the wire? Surely, but very much within the limits of a cocreation with a wire walker, insofar as his mastery of the codes and limits of his discipline were able to meet my own knowledge of the codes of immersive and hybridized theatrical representation. I (re)created and (re)wrote the performance while on the rehearsal set, and the production conditions dictated both the language and the materiality of the

84  Louis Patrick Leroux

experience. The piece’s textualities were metamorphosed as per the modes and languages behind them. In addition to the essential contribution of François, the performance was formed and textured through the visions and careful rereadings of the entire team: assistant director and dramaturge Alison Bowie, composer and musician Joel Mason, acrobatics consultant Adrian Martinez, and the instigator of the project Jean-François Bernard, my coproducer and accomplice. The staging exercise was transformed into one of translation, rewriting, cowriting, transposition, and hybrid spatial design. I believed throughout this process that the monumental Hamlet remained poised and unchanged and that I was only shining a new light, redirecting the gaze. Meanwhile, the impetus for my writing came from an imbalance of yesteryear. My own former characters came to haunt me. The drama became truly interesting to me when François carried Hamlet and Ludwig within him at once, and when I allowed erasures and scribblings to fill the script, to swell up with water, and then disintegrate. François’s voice crossed the space and the bodies of the spectators at the same time as he became Hamlet, his foot wavering along the taut wire. The patient wire walker lent himself to the game: he took the risk of speaking, took the fate of his character upon himself, and gave himself over to the experience. A year later, I saw him in another show. I recognized movements and positions that were repeated with the effects we had been working on. Of course, these movements, these positions, this technique belong to him: he has lived inside them for many years as they were laboriously acquired during his training at the National Circus School and during his professional experiences, including a tour with the company Not Fit State under the direction of Firenza Guida. These movements constitute his own physical and gestural archive. They form both his technique and his style, the difference in the case of this production being that we worked on a self-­supporting wire platform whose adjustable tension affected François’s technique. As I had previously done with Seth Schuner and Yoshi Endo in other circus explorations, I drew on François’s palette in an attempt to connect the artist’s essence and technique to the subject matter. In this case, it was a question of bringing Hamlet to life on the wire, of turning the wire into an unmistakable Hamletian topos. The entire piece would undoubtedly require a cohabitation and juxtaposition of many circus disciplines, but the soliloquy demanded the wire. In Hamlet on the Wire, layers of shades and tones of corporal textualities were brought into composition with Shakespearean tonalities, those of my practice and those of the musician. Such is the case for all performance writing, but the cornerstone of this project is a script that asks viewers to become one with a wire walker. The unbalancing act is still not fully written; the soliloquy was only a rehearsal. The wire remains taut in front of Hamlet, at once our unconscious intellectual and our actor-author who is too self-conscious to perform. Hamlet always resists me, even if he keeps a foot on the wire, forever offering the spectacle of his individual, cultural, and societal annihilation. The performance is iterative. One never tires of announcing its ending: inevitable catastrophe.

Hamlet: to have written or not to have written for the tightwire  85

Notes 1 The article was first published, in French, in Percées. Explorations en arts vivants, nos 1-2 Spring-Fall 2019: https://percees.uqam.ca/fr/article/hamlet-ecrire-ou-ne-pasavoir-ecrit-pour-le-fil-de-fer. It is printed with permission and has been translated by Anna Vigeland and the author. 2 My Name Is (2013) came to form out of an exploration combining circus, dramaturgy, and technology. Part of a year-long project, it brought together circus students from the National Circus School of Montreal, professionals from The 7 Fingers, technicians and designers from Geodezik, and researcher-creators and students from Concordia University. Several short performances were developed, including My Name Is, which I wrote under the artistic direction of Samuel Tétreault. The monologue was written and the play was created specifically for trapeze artist Seth Scheuner and was presented at Concordia University in 2013. Whereas Signatures was one of three short pieces that emerged from a research-creation exercise conducted at the National Circus School of Montreal in 2016–2017 led by Howard Richard, Alisan Funk, and myself. Signatures was my contribution and was inspired by the physical imprint and signature of individuals in a social space. The dramaturgy of movement followed that of Yoshi Endo, a Chinese pole artist, with whom we explored the transposition of Japanese characters (or kanji, 漢字) into a series of movements in space. I pushed my desire for polysemous writing to its paroxysm, deepened through a co-creative process with Endo. 3 “Transcultural, inter-cultural, multicultural, and cross-, mixed-, or trans- and intermedia adaptations of Shakespeare reconfigure the relationship between textual autonomy and historical particulars, pushing beyond conventional understandings of the literary event and the complexities of historical time.” I have cited the part in italics, but am including the entire sentence for reference. 4 Ludwig was the anti-hero of a trilogy of plays written in the 1990s, La Litière (1994, translated as Embedded), Rappel (1995, translated as Apocalypse) and Ressusciter (1997, translated as Resurrection). The first two plays were originally published in Implosions (1996). The original English language publication of all three plays was titled Ludwig & Mae in 2009. 5 In English: “A lugubrious life of / False starts, / Endless brooding; / Constant iterations.” 6 In the original French: « Dormir, non, plus jamais dormir / Devant la calamité d’une vie / Sans doutes, sans questionnements ». 7 In the original French: « Mourir à tout ce qui meurtrit, / A tout ce qui détourne le regard; / Tout ce qui désagrège, / Ce qui défenestre, / Et m’expose / A cet hiver de mon désarroi ».

References Beddows, Joël. 1998. Pour Une Poétique Du Texte de Shakespeare: Les Formes Métriques Utilisées Par Antonine Maillet et Jean-Louis Roux. L’Annuaire théâtral 24: 35–51. Bloom, Harold. 2004. Hamlet: Poem Unlimited. New York: Riverhead Books. Brisset, Annie. 1990. Sociocritique de La Traduction : Théâtre et Altérité au Québec (1968– 1988). Longueuil: Le Préambule. Carlyle, Thomas. 1840. On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History. London: ­Robson and Sons. Drouin, Jennifer. 2014. Shakespeare in Québec: Nation, Gender, and Adaptation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Fischlin, Daniel. 2014. OuterSpeares: Shakespeare, Intermedia, and the Limits of Adaptation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

86  Louis Patrick Leroux

Fortier, Mark. 2007. Wild Adaptation. Borrowers and Lenders 3 (1): 1–8. Freeman Loftis, Sonya, Allison Kellar, and Lisa Ulevich, eds. 2018. Shakespeare’s Hamlet in an Era of Textual Exhaustion. London: Routledge. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1997. The Interart Moment. In Interart Poetics: Essays on Interrelations of the Arts and Media, eds. Ulla Britta Lagerroth, Hans Lund, and Erik Hedling, 13–18. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Jacob, Pascal. n.d. Le funambulisme. Les arts du cirque, l’encyclopédie. https://cirquecnac.bnf.fr/fr/acrobatie/fil/le-funambulisme Jonson, Benjamin. 1623. Eulogy to Shakespeare in the Preface to the First Folio. In Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies. London: Isaac Jaggard and Ed. Blount. For contemporary reference: http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/firstfolio.html Leroux, Louis Patrick. 2009. Ludwig & Mae (Shelley Tepperman and Ellen Warkenten, Trans.). Vancouver: Talonbooks. Leroux, Louis Patrick. 2013a. Hypertext and Performance: A Resonant Response to Baillie’s Witchcraft, http://resonance.hexagram.ca/witchcraft/#/home Leroux, Louis Patrick. 2013b. El investigador-creador Frente a sus Respuestas Resonantes. Apuntes de Teatro 138: 69–83. Leroux, Louis Patrick. 2014. Répliques, Réplications, Réponses: Milford Haven Repris. Aparté 3: 41–45. Leroux, Louis Patrick, Alisan Funk, Alison Bowie, Marie-Eve Skelling-Desmeules, Alice Brand, Sorrell Nielsen, Sarah Poole and Mathilde Perallat, 2018. “Embodied research-creation into contemporary circus” a series of scientific posters, Concordia University and Montréal Complètement Cirque (MICC), https://spectrum.library. concordia.ca/987550/ Lesage, Dieter. 2002. Peut-on Encore Jouer Hamlet? (Monique Negielkopf, Trans.). Paris: Les Impressions Nouvelles. Müller, Heiner. 1978. Hamlet-Machine. Travail Théâtral 31: 3–8. Senasi, Deneed. 2018. After Words: Hamlet’s Unfinished Business in the Liberal Arts Classroom. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet in an Era of Textual Exhaustion, eds. Sonya Freeman Loftis, Allison Kellar, and Lisa Ulevich, 155–169. London: Routledge. Wallon, Emmanuel. 2006. Inscription de Cirque. Arts de La Piste 37–38: 60–61.

7 VERTICALITY, GRAVITY, SENSE OF BALANCE. TRANSMITTING A TECHNIQUE, CONVEYING A SENSATION Practices and discourses of circus arts teachers Agathe Dumont Gravity “Getting up, staying upright, moving: no movement is possible without involving gravity and engaging in an exchange with it,” says Ushio Amagatsu, choreographer, teacher, and iconic figure of butoh dance in Dialogue avec la gravité (2000). He continues, describing a fifth surface: the stage plane. A tangible construction element, it consists of the imaginary planes that diverse works will create taking it as a starting point. It is the horizontal plane that appears when the artist has straightened up, started walking with their own two feet, when they have discovered their own verticality; it is the archetype of horizontality that is found everywhere. It is the seat where the dialogue with gravity is tested through our feet touching the floor. “Lean on what you lack?”1 Whether on the ground, in the air, or even in a weightless environment, the body is always anchored to a point. Gravity is a physical phenomenon that no one can escape and it acts almost as a landmark. If the body defies gravity, it constantly brings it back to its physical reality. If someone imagines going higher, gravity carves their gestures and imprints its mark on their figures. Circus is sometimes defined as the art that defies gravity. However, when practicing, acrobats feel the impact of gravity on each gesture, they deal with it, but they can never escape it. Choreographer Kitsou Dubois2 is one of the rare artists who really tried to distort the effects of gravity on the acrobatic gesture by experimenting with movement in “nongravitational” spaces: water and even parabolic flights. Her work explores what the body “remembers” from this unknown experience of weight and verticality and how this memory could modify one’s sensations and movements back in a “normal” gravitational space. Apart from this very specific exploration, circus artists generally have to deal with gravity and to build their verticality and DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-10

88  Agathe Dumont

sense of balance with this constraint, from handstands to aerial acrobatics, from hand to hand to propulsions, even the juggler constantly explores how gravity affects the sensation of weight and space in their hands, on the object, or on the whole body. Many acrobats constantly return to this idea of fighting against gravity and insist on training the body to face it. Indeed, inverted postures or off ground supports are frequent in the circus and are not part of our gravitational habitus. “I feel the need to go on my hands every day,” explains a student learning how to handstand. To find one’s verticality and equilibrium must be practiced daily; the training is physical, cognitive, and psychological and begins each time the body leaves the ground or goes into a reversed posture. Acrobat Jean-Baptiste André describes his relationship to training in the journal Stradda, “If I did not do my training as a handstand acrobat, I would feel a physical lack, I would have the sensation of losing my identity” (Dumont 2011, 17). We could say that there is an embodied knowledge of how verticality and balance are built in relationship with gravity, a sensation that most circus artists need to reappropriate daily but which is hard to verbalize even though it is part of their gravitational identity. In circus schools, young acrobats learn how to stand on their hands, on a trapeze, on a rope, how to fly on a teeterboard, or on a trampoline. Finding a way to convey this sensation is fundamental in their apprenticeship. This chapter will focus on the sensation of building verticality and balance in gravitational spaces, and on the way circus teachers try to transfer their knowledge, know-how, and above all their experience of gravity to circus students. It is based on the observation of training sessions for circus teachers designed by the European Federation of Professional Circus Schools and on interviews with various teachers of circus techniques and dance from different European schools. A great deal of pedagogical knowledge in circus has not yet been formalized and is often empirical. Circus teachers often experience difficulty verbalizing their “sensations” and “experience” in an effort to create formal knowledge. Many circus teachers whose professional backgrounds are in gymnastics will define themselves as “only technique teachers,” which leads to the separation of technical or athletic endeavors (referring to the mechanical and anatomical principles of movement) and creative endeavors. However, if we look at their teaching approaches, we notice that the artistic dimension of movement is always present through the use of sensations and images, which help students understand the construction of verticality and balance in relation to gravity. We will explore how technical and artistic stakes are intertwined in the way circus teachers verbalize instructions and interact with students in professional schools.

Methodology The approach taken here analyzes practices and discourses according to the methodologies of “movement analysis” and the social sciences. The interviews

Verticality, gravity, sense of balance  89

were conducted with five women and nine men during training weeks. They took place at specific times, separated from the usual rhythm of the teachers, which allows them to reflect and share their practices. The interview questions focused on the approach of pedagogical practices of notions (verticality, weight, propulsion, balance, alignment) and on the tools used by the teachers. The segments of interviews highlighted aim to clarify certain practices and discourses in teaching.3 Movement analysis is performed to consider all the stakes related to the body (its constructions, perceptions, and sensations) and their interactions in a specific context. Movement analysis is usually considered an embodied practice. In France, Hubert Godard has theorized and analyzed the conflictual relationship between the body and the gravitational pull of the earth in order to determine the ­parameters—both functional and expressive—of posture and gesture. For Godard, the most important thing is weight. Weight embodies how we relate to gravity and therefore how we relate to our environment or symbolically to the world. The way teachers verbalize the integration of verticality and balance in relationship to gravity is therefore of fundamental importance. From a symbolic viewpoint, Godard writes about gesture construction on the earth-sky axis determining our body awareness. He claims that the “dialogue with gravity” constitutes our gravitational identity; our posture carries our history and our emotions: “Behind each posture, each gesture, we can see a watermark of the psychophysical organization that established our relationship with verticality and gravity” (Godard 1994, 63). Erwin Strauss explains in Phenomenological Psychology, “Our posture sets our attitude towards the world. It is a specific mode of being-in-the-world” (Strauss 1966, 27). Teaching practices are nourished by this relation to the world that the teacher conveys to the student. In this chapter, we have chosen to categorize and analyze the discourses in teaching through the four notions that are frequently used by circus teachers: space, images, sensation, and touch.

Space In circus practices there are basically three levels of space: the external space in which the body evolves, the performer’s kinesphere4 (i.e., the space that they can reach without any weight transfer), and the internal or body space. Of course, these three levels are interdependent, and we could also include the space-tospace relationships between performers or between a performer and objects or equipment. To describe verticality, circus teachers first refer to the relationship between the body and its environment (external space). In the words of one teacher, “It is first of all about the body in space. But not just the human body, also the equipment. It means using and creating space.” Another states, “It is an axis to look for support. It is a reference point in space.” In both examples, the awareness of space is immediately stressed, sometimes even before referring to

90  Agathe Dumont

the body itself. The environment in which the acrobatic trick will be performed becomes a kind of security net for both teachers and students. Understanding space seems to be the first skill to embody. Once competent, the body can disorganize while keeping some landmarks. To describe the construction of verticality in space, some teachers resort to a comparison with the other arts, as if the essence of the acrobatic gesture is too hard to verbalize. But if we compare, for instance, dance and circus, it becomes apparent that they are not working with the same body or in the same spaces. Dancers will turn their attention to the horizontal plan; they try to perceive the dimensions of the plateau and test the quality of the floor. Circus artists raise their eyes to the vertical to consider the height of the stage. They look above the three dimensions of space to “measure” the void. A circus teacher explains the idea of a three-dimensional perception of space, “In dance, we have the horizontality of the floor and the verticality of the body but in circus, the vertical, the horizontal, and the diagonal are all equally important!” Therefore, verticality is a reference point, both in relation to one’s body and to elements in space. The circus forces us to question our verticality, to lift it off the ground, and reinvent it. As another circus and dance teacher, who is also a stage director, describes, “Everything is related to verticality and weight. Verticality is above all a shift between different levels: the floor, standing and working on the equipment.” This way of looking at verticality as an understanding of spatial organization is beneficial, since it allows teachers to approach circus techniques through the consciousness of space and to refer to geometrical or architectural principles that can then be transposed into mechanical principles. Though space is important for teaching verticality and balance, only using external space as a reference point circumvents the body and its internal spaces and perceptions. Verticality and balance are constructed in relation to space but are also phenomena of internal consciousness. Body awareness also works as another way to find landmarks by shaping the deep structures of the body. For example, students practice focusing on the space inside the body before the external space, which helps them to understand the body’s points of support and the forces involved. In The Thinking Body. A Study of the Balancing Forces of Dynamic Man (1959), originally published in 1937, Mabel Todd explains: The human being is an assemblage of forces in equilibrium. Preserving the integrity of its supporting structure by causing the least possible tension on the elements involved is a question of adapting the body to external forces, above all mechanical ones. It is through balance that man retains nervous energy and thus directly fosters all his activities, mental as well as physical. (Todd 1959, 54) Her text subtly points out how outside and inside forces need to interact in order to find this sense of balance. Only referring to one or the other aspect could lead

Verticality, gravity, sense of balance  91

to an imbalance. Students must be given the tools to find their own strategies for building personal reference points in external space and for exploring the kinesphere and their internal and more intimate spaces.

Images Using images to engage a movement is one of the main tools of instruction. These images are often very different in nature and do not refer to the same conceptions of the body. In the analyzed discourses and practices, we identified two major categories of images: those referring to the anatomical and physiological principles of the body in order to achieve a technical trick and the metaphorical images seeking a quality of movement to inform the technical gesture. Neurophysiology and cognitive science have shown that the use of mental imagery can enhance performance and creativity. Research shows that imagery is more effective when using multiple senses and relating to different types of visualization or imagination. Moreover, research in dance pedagogy has shown that the use of mental imagery helps to counteract the idea of perfectionism very present in young dancers but also among circus artists (Nordin-Bates et al. 2014, 382–391). The positive effect of using mental imagery has been explored in dance science studies, but is still in its infancy in circus studies. Alain Berthoz has studied the perceptual mechanisms at work in the play of movement as the sixth sense or kinesthetic sense. He explores in particular the mechanisms of equilibrium, the various neurophysiological theories, the history of their discoveries, and aspects such as the notion of a “scheme” of the body. He explains that there is probably not one bodily scheme but multiple bodily schemes adapted to a particular function in the same way that there are multiple representations of the body (Berthoz 2008, 234–352). Working on mental imagery is therefore a useful technique, as it constructs a more complex vision of the body and makes use of the idea of multiple body “schemes” related to the different representations underlying circus as an art form. Complex, paradoxical, or absurd images can be beneficial for understanding physical principles and stimulating creativity. While training on the aerial rope, a teacher tells her student, “It is this idea of ‘going down upwards.’” A handstand teacher recommends “listening to your hands on the floor” while looking for the balance point. Providing a mental image to the student is indeed a very useful strategy to stimulate a physical reaction. Such images are obviously fundamental, as circus techniques are sometimes quite close to “impossible movement” when talking about kinesthetic empathy. In the article “Le spectacle vivant, arène de la modélisation,” Sally Jane Norman writes about the appearance of the first flying trapeze acts in 1870: This apparatus allows Léotard [ Jules Léotard, one of the first French trapeze artists] to evolve in an aerial space by adopting a way of moving that

92  Agathe Dumont

would normally be impossible; he therefore reaches the status of what we could call the impossible body. (Norman 1996, 17) Teaching the experience of the “impossible body” is extremely problematic. Verticality, gravity, and balance are a question of perception and feeling. Many of our senses are involved in order to learn them: sight, touch, kinesthetic sense or kinetic sense, and haptic sense (grouping together kinesthetic sense and touch). In a holistic vision of teaching, images may encompass one or more of these senses and thus multiply the possibilities of modes of entry into an acrobatic trick. In circus teaching, the feeling of “being in the air” is probably the most difficult experience to share. Trampolinist Mathurin Bolze tries to explain how it feels to be in the air: What I look for is a state of suspension in the body. Reaching a light point where the body remains still and hangs in the air. The suspension is an interruption of the ascending movement. It means working on tension, release, even a certain form of violence depending on the position in which the body is suspended, depending on the figure, the image that is created in the air. (Bolze 2002, 26) Helping students find this momentum is a real challenge for teachers. In comparison to other disciplines, propulsion teachers (e.g., trampoline, teeterboard, banquine) refer to images frequently. Most of the action being in the air, the teachers have little control. Even if they are unaware of it, many of their instructions build a repertoire of images for students to use once in the air. A trampoline teacher explains: My aim is for them to feel the movement developing from an image, triggering an action. In a rotation, for example, the feet must always go up. We are going to shoot up in a balloon. The student will try and go forward on their tiptoes, which will trigger a rotation, and if it is activated in the right place, it will continue until the end. This gives a feeling of action and a quality to the movement. An image can therefore be a concrete means to engage a movement pattern, but it can also be metaphoric to invoke a movement quality, which is two different ways to approach technique. Another teacher works on the teeterboard looking for specific qualities: A good technique is one where we use specific muscles at the right time, and which requires a lot less effort. I work with images. On the teeterboard, for example, I ask them to imagine that they have a weight on their body, on the sternum, and that weight moves down to their feet at the time of pushing. With that image, they must bring the teeterboard to the ground. On the other hand, we work on the opposite, which is lightening

Verticality, gravity, sense of balance  93

the weight. On the one side, a hammer, on the other, a feather. The idea is to understand that the feather must become lighter so that the hammer can go down. Little by little, we feel that push and lightening. I know how to make myself feel heavier or lighter. This approach is less focused on the efficiency of physical principles in favor of helping the student find the right key to set off the right processes of balancing. Beyond images, the voice of the teacher or the “sound” are sometimes used to cue when the body takes off: In a sequence, if you have a good rhythm, if you listen to what is happening with your reference points, you understand a lot. I work a lot on the puck,5 on the rhythm pam pam. I give images so the students understand how the shoulders must be locked in so that the pelvis can develop lift. Here, on the trampoline, the pam pam does not refer to a principle or a quality but emphasizes the musicality of the trick, the rhythm that allows the body to organize itself. This use of imagery reveals that circus teachers refer frequently to what dance theorist Susan Foster describes as the “perceived body.” She identifies three bodies in the dancer’s experience: the perceived body that is built by the experience of training; the ideal body that is the body fantasized by the practice of a specific technique and relates more to an athletic body; and the demonstrative body which is the performing body onstage. The performer aspires to the ideal body day after day. It becomes a model or a goal, but it also remains fantasized. How can it be identified with? In the discourses of the teachers, images were used to teach a technical goal primarily referring to this ideal body. This dimension of a body built on specific standards based on the “right” posture, the “right” technique, is very present in their utterances. Most of them refer to principles as if there was only one way to learn a technique. However, the use of images shows that the transfer of their knowledge to students is, in fact, more complex and involves the perceived body. According to Susan Foster, it is here that the ideal body and the perceived body are constructed together: Any of these sensations of the perceived body may be incorporated into the dancer’s ideal body, where it combines with fantasized or kinaesthetic images of a body, images of other dancer’s bodies, and cinematic or video images of dancing bodies. (Foster 1997, 238) Do circus teachers view training as only conditioning based solely on these biological systems or as a physiological, technical, symbolic, and expressive preparation that encompasses more widely the circus performer as an artist and athlete? Through teaching, a vision of the circus body is constructed, and one needs to be aware of incorporated standards such as performance, virtuosity, and discipline, among others. Moreover, formalizing this work with mental imagery could also

94  Agathe Dumont

lead to the development of the artistic sense of movement and the refining of intentions. Words, metaphors, and images can open up an imaginary world, and each will resonate differently for each acrobat, building not only their technical skills but also developing their artistic language.

Sensations Sensation is neither perception nor proprioception. It can be described as a phenomenon through which a physiological stimulation (external or internal) causes, in a living and conscious being, a specific reaction. The notion of “sensation” is very present in the discourses, even though the ways sensations are conveyed to the student are rarely formalized. “Balance does not exist, we control imbalances,” summarizes a handstand teacher, who is explaining the sensation a circus artist has when mastering a handstand technique. If there is no sensation of balance but only a capability to master the fall, what types of sensations are mobilized in this action and how can a teacher use them in their teaching to improve technique and open new pathways and movement patterns? When describing verticality and balance, some circus teachers never refer to physics or biomechanics (alignment, forces, etc.), but rather to internal sensations. “Verticality is an internal, continuous process. It is going upward, continuing to climb, lifting yourself up,” an aerialist explains. “Gravity is what permanently affects us when going downward or upward. We need to understand that there is a force pulling us downward and that we need to fight,” a Chinese pole teacher states. “We need to fight” is a strong and biomechanically correct image, as gravity is indeed a force. Of course, a mathematical demonstration could prove exactly what this “fight” is on the level of physics, but more interestingly, it is the word that induces a movement quality, a specific tension in the body. The idea of something almost transcendental in building one’s relationship to gravity is also present in some discourses. A tightwire teacher explains, “We come from cells; all evolution of species takes place through a vertical process. This vertical dimension also has a spiritual dimension. Symbolically, a vertical line joins the earth and the sky.” While circus teachers frequently mention working on sensations, the modalities can, in fact, be very diverse and will not have the same results. Research has shown, for example, that different movement quality is brought about by internal versus external focus. Gabriele Wulf has studied balance in acrobats in both situations. In terms of an internal focus, which refers to the body as an anatomical entity, “Balance is when the total weight of the load is maintained above its bearing surface.” In terms of an external focus, which refers to the environment and causes sensations, “Balance can be described as a way to find the perfect harmony between the body, the mind and our environment. It is thinking space in 3D and feeling all the forces that hold the body in space” (2008, 319–325). Seeking the same thing, these two instructions do not refer at all to the same cognitive and neurophysiological mechanisms. In the teaching situation that we observed, the use of one or the other strategy did not seem to depend on a real analysis of the context but relied on trying different modalities

Verticality, gravity, sense of balance  95

of what it would be like “to feel it” in order to achieve a result. However, formalizing the use of sensations when teaching in order to work on these different types of attentional focuses could be interesting if technique is seen not as an end in itself but more as a means to develop this very specific relationship to balance and verticality in the circus. Playing with gravity oscillates between the fear of jumping into the void and enjoying the unsteadiness. For kinaesthetic empathy, the audience is confronted with a body that plays on the emotional ability to receive or perceive this game with gravity. However, as Magali Sizorn, a sociologist and specialist in circus arts, observes about the trapeze, there are different perceptions between the person above and the person watching them. Images of the trapeze artist or memories of a thrill felt during a flying trapeze act, the lightness and possibility of a perceived flight, mark the fundamental difference between the one spinning above and the one who is looking down. (Sizorn 2008, 80) One of the challenges when teaching circus, specifically aerials, therefore, is to create this double sensation of force and lightness, tension and relaxation, which is part of the circus technique as well as its dramaturgical construction. A teacher explains during a session on the tightwire, “If you anchor yourself, you can grow. The weight is your roots, and you can go further out on the branches. Then you have oscillations, vibrations, and breaths.” A trapeze artist and teacher talks about how her journey through circus techniques and then through martial arts has taught her to let go: I worked a lot with strength, with my muscles. The swinging trapeze is a discipline that can be painful. In this sense, I generally denied the sensitive aspect. The more complex thing on an aerial piece of equipment is feeling the hold-release, the essential movement principle in the air. […] When I teach, I talk about pullups as a relaxation exercise. I ask students to sleep while doing pull-ups, in order to train a huge effort in one place and a huge rest in another place, right next to it. Releasing is a huge effort. It’s crazy the amount of energy we use to do that. What martial arts gave me as well as is a ternary body awareness. For example, push-ups and pull-ups are not binary, they are not straight but there is a spiral in there. The living, the DNA, everything is made of spirals, one must work in a spiral. Even in the spine, there is one direction for going up and one for going down. This more complex approach of building verticality and balance relates to an intricate vision of the body that enriches the pedagogy of the circus, with a technical approach that creates landmarks as the body finds its own way through tricks, able to face a multifactorial environment while creating a material of its own. Indeed, observing practices, when the spiral is named, indicated, and explored, the body finds other supports, a form of relaxation and often more power. In doing so, students engage in movements that feed on the spiral force (up/down) in a dynamic vision, letting the flow of sensations pass, and not in a static vision of the acrobatic trick. Somatic practices or martial arts are a way of

96  Agathe Dumont

opening up the potential of gesture by approaching other sensations and thus crossing boundaries that are both physical and symbolic.

Touch In light of sensations, the sense of touch can also be very useful in acrobatics, as it is informally used in many teaching situations. To transmit the “feeling” or “sense” of balance and verticality in circus arts, teachers often use touch to give directions to students as a counterpoint or in addition to words. In fact, interactions between teachers and students involve verbal and nonverbal communication. In recent research on teaching physical activities, statistics say that words count for only 7%, voice for 38%, and nonverbal for 55% (Boizumault and Cogérino 2015, 73–87; 2016, 24–25). All of these forms of communications have an impact on the student’s involvement, learning, progress, relationships with peers, and on their affective relationship with their teacher. Of course, touch is used to feel a position (alignment, a support); to give the direction of a movement or a quantity of force or muscular engagement; to induce a quality of movement; and to spot. We have observed that learning how to spot (e.g., a partner on the teeterboard) is also a way to incorporate sensations into the acrobatic tricks themselves through kinaesthetic empathy. Not only does the teacher support the student in order to protect them from any risks, but they also give small indications by touching the student: the position of the body on the teeterboard, the alignment, the quantity of push or pull, and playing on the quality and density of touch. For teachers and students alike, communication by means of touch also addresses the issue of trust, of “risk-sharing.” The idea of “risk-sharing” is found, for example, in contact dance techniques, which rely entirely on trust in the other to give up one’s weight while supporting the other.6 Making the student “feel” something through touch is part of the nonverbal communication. Obviously, contact is not always easy because it raises questions of censorship in our relation to the body and taboos, specifically with young students. Though teachers are often uncomfortable with the idea of evoking “touch,” they use it a lot in their classes. For some teachers, the hands can make students feel the “gut of balance” (a tactile sensation?), which can be very useful at the beginning of learning. The fingers also make it possible to emphasize the flow and the direction of the movement that the student must feel in balance, as explained by a handstand teacher: To balance on one hand, you can use three fingers to give feedback and go to the right position in the shoulder. The shoulder is a triaxial joint and giving this feedback allows one to develop the proprioception of the right place of the shoulder. Touch is used here to inform the body and stimulate an internal awareness: to understand the anatomy of a joint and feel the energy of a movement. Some

Verticality, gravity, sense of balance  97

teachers even recommend working with the eyes closed to enhance proprioceptive ability7 and improve the quality of the touch on the floor, on a partner, on the equipment. In his book La Saveur du Monde. Une anthropologie des sens, anthropologist and sociologist David Le Breton dedicates a chapter to touch and its different modalities: The sense of touch encompasses the body as a whole in thickness and on the surface, it emanates from the whole of the skin, unlike the other senses, which are more closely localized. Permanently, on all the places of the body, even when sleeping, we feel the world. It’s the first sense involved in the tactility of things, the contact with others or objects, the feeling of having feet on the ground. Through its innumerable skins, the world teaches us about its constituents, its volumes, its textures, its contours, its weight, its temperature. (Le Breton 2006, 175) Touch is therefore another way of sharing experience and can play a role in teaching verticality and the sense of balance in a global vision of acrobatic activity involving physical, cognitive, psychological, and expressive or artistic components. Of course, the gesture must be subtle and its quality will give the tone of the correction. A small correction to induce a tiny adjustment movement is done by a light touch. On the contrary, to correct bad posture, the teacher may be more interventionist and manipulate the body. In all cases, touching involves more than just technical instruction. What the teacher shares through touch is an experience of the body: a consciousness of oneself and their internal perceptions. Finally, the question of the virtuosity of the circus body is very present in teaching through a certain number of technical standards. In most of the examples we have analyzed, it is a matter of going back-and-forth between what is shown and what is hidden, of considering the materiality of the virtuoso gesture in what is most physically visible, only to make it more perceptible. There are therefore thresholds between a virtuosity of the visible and a virtuosity of feeling, conferring other powers on the virtuoso gesture. The circus student is caught between these two poles and it is undoubtedly in this tension that they invent their own virtuosity.

Conclusion We could say that the variety of images, sensations, and perceptions used by circus teachers to convey a relationship to gravity, verticality, and the sense of balance reflect a multitude of approaches. When analyzing the discourses and practices behind each teaching situation, the most striking is that what is generally considered merely “technical” by many circus teachers actually bears a creative and artistic approach, undoubtedly unavoidable. These strategies, which have not yet been formalized, should be further explored to clarify the uses and

98  Agathe Dumont

even the aesthetic or athletic visions of circus bodies and how teachers and their students relate to verticality, gravity, or balance. Beyond these pedagogical strategies, we can then identify ways of considering acrobatics: artistic commitments, aesthetic constructions, intentions, and sensitivities. Contemporary circus performers cross several techniques and motor skills but also several corporealities: those of sport, of circus, of dance, of theater. Is it “too much” body or “lack” of body? This overflow that many circus teachers point to could also be the starting point for a reflection on what is transmitted in each of these practices and how cross-fertilization might be a way to vary the approaches and maintain a global and complex view of the activity. Vertical exploration through gesture, whether danced or acrobatic, would respond in our opinion to a desire far away from an “aesthetics of the thrill” (Fourmeaux 2006). Exploring the possibilities of gesture above and beyond codes awakens new sensations, “those states in which my consciousness of the body and the intimate perception of movement are disturbed” (Clidière and De Morant 2009, 56). We could go further into the idea of a sensitive virtuosity, where the question of challenging gravity is woven into the infinitely small body. Virtuosity is then extreme because it disturbs the performer in the deepest structures of their gesture, the perception of their body in space, balance, and inner sensations. Faced with this observation, the virtuoso movement is twofold. On the one hand, the exploration of gravity leads to mastering the technique. On the other, it acts on perception in the quest for another possible body or an impossible body. The question of sensation is absolutely central here. The work of Myriam Peignist on the acrobatic body sheds a unique light on this issue. Opposing the vision of an extreme body, she proposes to explore an acrobatic of “feeling”: “Can one think of acrobatics apart from the artifices of spectacularization, the search for effect, the power to assert it and a strategy of seduction.” Reiterating the words of Michel Bernard, “What is the intensity of an acrobatics lived in its sensitive and carnal presence, in its gestural subtleties and its dynamic of desire?” (Peignist 2009). The idea of having “rare sensations” through these vertical explorations seems completely possible in light of our examples. These virtuoso sensations are no longer of the orthostatic order and are only made possible by a loss of reference points. Circus teachers and students could immerse themselves in a new sensory environment in which the weight of each segment of the body is perceived differently, where each support is in itself a conquest.

Notes 1 “S’appuyer sur ce qui fait défaut,” interview with Maria Donata D’urso and Laurent Goldring (2014. Repères-Cahiers de danse 33: 10). The choreographer refers to a text by the Taoist philosopher Zhuang Zou. 2 Kitsou Dubois: http://www.kitsoudubois.com/. 3 All quotes by teachers are based on interviews carried out between March 2015 and March 2017 within the framework of the Intents Workshops organized by the European Federation of Circus Schools. The interviews were conducted by the author.

Verticality, gravity, sense of balance  99

4 The “kinesphere” refers to Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). Laban considers human movement as a living architecture. He considers that space generates movement and he imagines a volume called the kinesphere. The kinesphere is a cube with four diagonals and twenty-six divergent directions (from the center of the dancer toward the space they can reach without any weight transfer). He also theorized the “dynamosphere”, a concept to describe the dynamics of movement. The dynamic components of movement are space, time, flow and weight and can be associated with the directions of the kinesphere. 5 The “puck” is a term used on the trampoline to designate a semi-tucked shape, a position where the knees are bent and drawn into the chest and the upper body is folded at the waist at the angle of greater than 45° from the upper legs. 6 Contact-dance is a technique and philosophy first explored by Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark-Smith in the USA in the 1970s. 7 The proprioceptive sensors guarantee the direction of movement in space and balance and are located in the tissues of the body, as well as in the optic nerve and in the ankle.

References Amagatsu, Ushio. 2000. Dialogue avec La Gravité. Arles: Actes Sud. Berthoz, Alain. 2008. Le Sens du Mouvement. Paris: Odile Jacob. Boizumault, Magali and Geneviève Cogérino. 2016. Le Toucher en EPS. Revue EP&S 371: 24–25. Boizumault, Magali and Geneviève Cogérino. 2015. Les Touchers en EPS: Entre Usages et Réticences? Revue Française de Pédagogie 191: 73–87. Boizumault, Magali and Geneviève Cogérino. 2016. Le Toucher en EPS. Revue EP&S 371: 24–25. Bolze, Mathurin. 2002. Interview. Arts de La Piste 23: 26. Clidière, Sylvie and Alix De Morant. 2009. Extérieur Danse. Essai sur La Danse dans ­L’espace Public. Paris: Hors les Murs. Dumont, Agathe. 2011. Échange de Bons Procédés. Stradda 19: 16–17. Foster, Susan. 1997. Dancing Bodies. In Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies in Dance, ed. Jane C. Desmond, 235–287. Durham: Duke University Press. Fourmeaux, Francine. 2006. Le Nouveau Cirque ou L’esthétisation du Frisson. Ethnologie Française 36.4: 659–668. Godard, Hubert. 1994. Le Geste Manquant. Interview with Daniel Dobbels and Claire Rabant. Io—Revue Internationale de Psychanalyse 5: 63–75. Le Breton, David. 2006. La Saveur du Monde. Une Anthropologie des Sens. Paris: Métailié. Nordin-Bates, Sanna, A. P. Hill, J. Cumming, I. J. Aujla, and E. Redding. 2014. A Longitudinal Examination of the Relationship between Perfectionism and Motivational Climate in Dance. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology 36: 382–391. Norman, Sally Jane. 1996. Le Spectacle Vivant, Arène de La Modélisation du Corps. In Du Corps au Corpus Technologique, Proceedings of ODYSSUD Meeting, Blagnac. Peignist, Myriam. 2009. Acrobaticus et Corps des Extrémités. M@gm@ 7 (3). Sizorn, Magali. 2008. Une Ethnologue en Trapézie. Sport, art ou Spectacle? Ethnologie Française 38: 9–88. Strauss, Erwin. 1966. Phenomenological Psychology. London: Tavistock. Todd, Mabel Elswoth. 1959. The Thinking Body. A Study of the Balancing Forces of Dynamic Man. London: Dance Books. Wulf, Gabriele. 2008. Attentional Focus Effects in Balance Acrobats. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sports 79 (3): 319–325.

8 READING CIRCUS Dramaturgy on the border of art and academia Franziska Trapp

Belgian dramaturge Marianne van Kerkhoven (1946–2013) stated, “Dramaturgy is always concerned with the conversion of feeling into knowledge, and vice versa. Dramaturgy is the twilight zone between art and science” (Kerkhoven 1994a, 142). This statement was written in white chalk on the black dance floor of the University of Münster Theater in Germany, where the project “Reading Circus. Dramaturgy on the Border Between Art and Academia” (2019) was held. “Reading Circus” was a collaboration between the artists of the Tall Tales Company and graduate students of Cultural Poetics of Literature and Media (University of Münster, Germany). They collaborated to read circus as a dramaturgical praxis based on a dialogue between art and science, practices (academic and artistic), knowledges (academic and artistic), and traditions (academic and artistic). For one week, fifteen graduate students of the study program Cultural Poetics of Literature and Media joined the Tall Tales Company in the creation of the contemporary circus performance Square Two. The objective of the collaboration was inspired by Kerkhoven’s famous essay “Looking Without Pencil in the Hand,” namely “to bring art and science, theory and practice, closer together by picking up the idea of dramaturgy as a ‘bridgebuilder’” (1994b, 10). For this project, the revival of interest in the “bridgebuilding” abilities of dramaturgy is derived on the one hand from the progressive establishment of circus research as an interstitial discipline, which calls for, among other things, distinct communication between researchers and practitioners. On the other hand, it originates from an understanding of contemporary circus as an art form located on borders—between genres, contemporaneity and tradition, art and entertainment, ideology and critique, body and discourse—and thus demanding specific requirements for dramaturgical work.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-11

Reading circus: dramaturgy on the border of art and academia  101

This chapter investigates the advantages of using a cultural-poetic reading not only in theoretical work ex post but also in the act of creating a contemporary circus performance. First, the main premises that lead to the idea of transferring an academic theory to artistic praxis are set into focus: a predominance of metadiscursive and intertextual strategies that characterize contemporary circus performances. Second, the five steps of reading contemporary circus as a feedback method are described using the creation of the performance Square Two. Finally, the chapter critically discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using a method based on the dialogue between art and science, practices (academic and artistic), knowledge (academic and artistic), and traditions (academic and artistic).

Contemporary circus: a twilight zone between bodily practice and cultural discourse Over the last decade, interest in circus as an object of academic research has grown significantly. Scholars from various disciplines (e.g., performance studies, sociology, pedagogy and educational studies, sport studies, and medicine) are showing an interest in the art form for the first time. Especially in the field of performance studies, researchers have to work closely with practitioners due to the fact that research material is in most cases only accessible in the collectives’ private archives or through fieldwork and surveys. Therefore, even before starting a research project, circus scholars are required to establish a dialogue between academia and artistic tradition. One of the main characteristics of circus research is its feedback function, which mediates the communication between scholarly discourse and artistic vocabularies. Contemporary circus performances are engaged in a continuous dialogue with historical, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts. One might be tempted to understand circus primarily as a “body-based performance” (Tait and Lavers 2016, 1), in which physicality, skillfulness, agility, energy, and nonverbal communication based on affection are at the center of interest. While this might be true of traditional circus, such an understanding is too simple for contemporary circus. What unites contemporary circus performances—which can be traced back the premiere of “Le Cri du Chaméléon” in 1996—is the use of metadiscursive and intertextual strategies in the Kristevian broad sense on the levels of reception and creation. Though contemporary circus has established itself as one of the most popular forms of live performances and is often featured at arts festivals (Lavers et al. 2019, 2), it is still subjected to a number of ideologies and presumptions, which are reinforced by media, literature, advertisement, and popular culture. Circus in the public imaginary reflects the peak phase of traditional circus at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century ( Jürgens 2016, 16). The general disregard of the emergence of the new and contemporary circus concretizes a romanticized image of a stagnant circus. Contemporary

102  Franziska Trapp

circus performances often react to this dominant romantic image by creating metadiscourses (i.e., discourses on circus arts). The aim of metadiscourse is not to establish an “homage to the circus” but to create fictional worlds and to activate narrative frames through the means of circus and not the means of theater (e.g., theatrical costumes, mimic, gesture) (Trapp 2020, 185). Through these metadiscursive strategies, contemporary circus situates itself in the interstitial space between bodily practice and cultural discourse. As the authors of Routledge Circus Studies Reader stated, “Contemporary circus is an increasingly hybrid art form, in which circus skills are melding with diverse disciplines from opera, to dance, to postdramatic theatre, physical theatre, through to commedia dell’arte” (Lavers et al. 2019, 2). The majority of contemporary circus performances are based on intertextuality (Trapp 2020, 184). Because literary texts, dance performances, movies, and political discussions are used in their creation, contemporary circus performances are engaged in a continuous dialogue with their contexts. These aspects of contemporary circus pose challenges for artists and dramaturges alike. In every performance, the bodily phenomenological dimension must be taken into account alongside the cultural context, as both are fundamentally intertwined. The theoretical investigation and the practical dramaturgical work therefore benefit from approaches merging the two perspectives.

Cultural poetics as a means to analyze contemporary circus performances Cultural poetics postulates that any cultural representation can be read as a text situated in relation to other contexts. A text is anything that can be stored, repeated, and read, that is, it can be attributed meaning through comparison (Baßler 2007, 356; translation by the author). Using “thick description” (Geertz 1973) as a main strategy, cultural poetics seeks to reveal “individual connections” and trace “individual threads of discourse in different regions of the cultural-­h istorical fabric” (Baßler 2005, 42; translation by the author). Actions, media, subjects, power relations, images, rituals, bodies, communication, observation, memory, artistic practice, and experience, among others, are taken into account and understood as being a central part of the textual context. In this framework, textuality and performativity are not to be understood as oppositions; rather, the “culture as text” approach offers a common tableau on which all elements of a cultural representation are linked and readable (Baßler 2005, 9). Cultural poetics is to be understood as a theoretical framework that “demands interfaces to other models and theories due to certain characteristics of the concept of text” (Baßler 2005, 10; translation by the author). Using this approach to analyze contemporary circus requires, first and foremost, the acquisition of specific knowledge, be it the scholarly knowledge of diverse academic disciplines (e.g., theater studies, dance studies, sport studies) or the practical, embodied knowledge of practitioners (e.g., artists, dramaturges, producers).

Reading circus: dramaturgy on the border of art and academia  103

Because cultural poetics focuses on intertextuality and the entanglement of text and cultural context, it is particularly suitable for analyzing the “interstitial art form” of contemporary circus.

Cultural poetics as dramaturgical practice Is this method also beneficial when creating a contemporary circus performance? If so, how can cultural poetics be used as a tool for discussion? These questions guided the project Reading Circus. The project was built on the hypothesis that cultural poetics provides significant techniques and strategies to understand how a performance can construct its audience’s reception. Despite the insights offered by this approach, it is often only used ex post in the analysis of the final product, be it a literary text, a performance, or a computer game. The final artistic work is observed from an outsider’s perspective, from the perspective of the researcher (the first spectator) (c.f. Helbo 2016, 348), and the semiotic structures are uncovered and analyzed. From my perspective in-between practice and reflection, as a dramaturge and researcher, I argue that we, artists, directors, and dramaturges, might also benefit from an understanding of these techniques and strategies to make sense of our own process of meaning creation. This is especially true for performances located in the interstitial space between bodily performance and cultural-historical discourse. Artists, directors, and dramaturges who are able to “read” their own performance can make decisions throughout the process of creation (more) consciously. For dramaturgical purposes, one must indeed be able to read and anticipate the interpretations of others. In this context, the reading takes place during the actual process of creation and is a structured, reflexive process, introducing a metadiscourse to artists, directors, dramaturges, and researchers alike.

Reading circus—a feedback method In order to develop and test a feedback method for artistic creation based on the text-contextual reading of contemporary circus performances, three jugglers (Harm van der Laan, Maartje Bonarius, and Joris De Jong) and one visual artist (Don Satijn) from the Tall Tales Company were invited for a one-week residency at the University of Münster Theater, Germany. While working on the performance Square Two, the artists were accompanied by fifteen graduate students enrolled in the study program Cultural Poetics of Literature and Media.

Creating Square Two Square Two is the story of three jugglers and their audience who follow a trail through a distinctive building, neighborhood, or unusual location and find the physical and numerical world coalescing into one. Based on the mathematical artwork of the Dutch visual artist Don Satijn, the performance explores how

104  Franziska Trapp

codes can serve as the basis of movements and juggling. The aim of the show is to “translate juggling to abstract visual art and bring visual art to life in slowly transforming living kinetic sculptures” (Tall Tales Company 2019).1 For further information and reflections on Square Two see Trapp and Van der Laan 2021. The fact that Square Two is a contemporary circus performance is evident in its two main characteristics. First, it is situated in the interstitial space between circus technique and cultural context as well as between circus arts and visual arts. Second, the topic of the performance is inherently related to the act of juggling, thus creating a metadiscourse. In the 1990s, a notation for juggling patterns called Siteswap was developed. It became possible to reduce juggling to a string of numbers, which caused a revolution in the discipline. For the first time, jugglers were able to communicate in the same manner as musicians through notes. In the last decades, thousands of patterns were created that were first calculated by computers and then juggled. A major part of the work of jugglers consists of calculating, combining, and transforming these patterns. Square Two clearly demonstrated that contemporary circus performance is an embodied practice in which language and discourse are crucial. The creation of Square Two took over a year (February 2019 to June 2020) and was divided into three phases. In the first phase (February 2019 to May 2019), the artists experimented with different approaches to transfer the visual art to juggling and vice versa. They developed new juggling patterns and new artworks (sculptures and paintings) inspired by juggling. The second phase (May 2019 to January 2020) was dedicated to the creation of the performance. Since the artist residency at the University of Münster was meant to focus on the interplay between circus technique and cultural context, it was placed at the very beginning of this phase. In the third phase (February 2020 to June 2020), the final version of the performance was completed. After the international tour was canceled, originally planned for the summer of 2020, and the onset of the lockdown, Tall Tales Company was inspired to create “Square 2.1,” a forty-five-minute digital circus performance in which the three jugglers and the visual artist Don Satijn take the audience on tours of their own homes. As spectators watch the performance on their own technical devices (laptop, mobile phone, or tablet), they are asked to move from room to room (entrance hall to kitchen to bathroom to bedroom, etc.) in order to experience their own home—where they had already been confined for weeks—in a new light. After the first lockdown, Tall Tales Company went on to create a corona-proof version of Square Two, in which sanitary regulations (to ensure that the audience keeps the distance) became a part of the artistic work itself.

Five steps of reading circus as a feedback method During the one-week residency in Münster, the reading of contemporary circus was divided into five consecutive steps: 1 Analyzing the syntagma

Reading circus: dramaturgy on the border of art and academia  105



2 3 4 5

Analyzing the paradigms Elaborating wanted and unwanted paradigms Understanding the paradigms Reworking the syntagma

These steps will be explained in the following with regard to the “Cube Scene”2: A cubed sculpture is placed in the middle of the entrance hall in the Philosophicum of the University of Münster, a building flooded with light. A female artist, dressed in black jeans and a black polo shirt, sits in front of the sculpture on a white round stool with wheels; she holds a white juggling ball in her right hand. She starts moving to minimal music in straight, rhythmical patterns, changing the position of ball and body. A second artist stands in a diagonal direction to her behind the cube and follows her actions synchronously. Suddenly, he turns the cube, which makes the woman turn her body from a straight to a diagonal position. The rhythmical ball pattern continues. How do you read this scene taking place in the performance Square Two? Let’s start with an easier question: How do we read a literary text? How do we read the sentence “The child sleeps?” Roman Jakobson, a pioneer of structural linguistics, argues: If “child” is the topic of the message, the speaker selects one among the extant, more or less similar, nouns like child, kid, youngster, tot, all of them equivalent in a certain respect, and then, to comment on this topic, he may select one of the semantically cognate verbs—sleeps, dozes, nods, naps. Both chosen words combine in the speech chain. ( Jakobson 1997, 73) Conversely, we could say that when we read a text, we are looking not only at the combination of words (“The child sleeps”) but also wondering what words could have been used instead. This might seem unusual at first. Consider how the sentence “The youngster nods” is very different from “The child sleeps.” “The child” only acquires meaning in comparison with equivalent expressions (the youngster, the kid, etc.). Such equivalent expressions form a paradigm. When reading a literary text, individual text elements are perceived in relation to preceding and succeeding text elements (syntagmatic level) and further compared to elements that could stand in their place (paradigmatic level) ( Jakobson 1997). This comparison is an automated, unconscious process. That a text can be read and understood in very different manners owes to the various comparative elements that could be consulted. What happens when these reading strategies are transferred to a contemporary circus performance? The reading of performances differs insofar as they use more than one sign system. In addition to linguistic signs, relevant sign systems in circus include the circus discipline itself (e.g., juggling, acrobatics, tightwire walking), the apparatus, paralinguistic signs, mimic, gestural and proxemic signs,

106  Franziska Trapp

sounds, music, mask, hairstyle, costume, spatial concept, decoration, lighting, and signs of movement (c.f. Fischer-Lichte 2007, 28). Thus, the combination of signs happens not only during the sequence, but are also simultaneous, which makes our reading of it even more complex.

Step 1: What do we see? Analyzing the syntagma To apply these reading strategies to the creative process, we first analyzed the syntagma, that is, the combination of elements. Artists and students mapped the equivalences in the Cube Scene that were created through various sign systems. They were asked to focus on the state of the performance at that time, which was made accessible through a video recording of the work in progress. What do we see? What is actually performed? Which sign systems are dominant in the creation of meaning? Since the next step involved comparing the findings with the impressions of the artists themselves, both students and artists were asked to read the performance using an outsider perspective, which helped them to avoid justifications and explanations of artistic choices. In their analyses, they relied on a diversity of approaches (e.g., Boenisch 2002; Fischer-Lichte 2007) to do justice to the performance’s multitude of sign systems; the key points of the analyses are presented briefly in the following. The audience, seated on the floor of the theater, looks through the open doors into the entrance hall where the sequence is taking place. Their position as observers is clearly set: The spectator is on the outside looking in. The audience sits in the dark and the performance space is engulfed in daylight. These oppositions, black and white and dark and bright, are repeated throughout the performance. The black costumes of the artists, the dark grey metal sculpture, the shadows on the floor (creating a parallelism between sculpture, space, and artist) stand in opposition to the white stool and the white juggling balls. There is also a repetition of cubic, geometrical forms established through diverse sign systems: (a) the audience space and the performance space are cubes, (b) the doors and windows in the theater and entrance hall are cubes, and (c) cubes are created by the specific incidences of daylight. The (d) body signs3 mimic the cube: (I) only the upper body zone is activated; (II) it is anchored and stabilized not only with regard to the body signs but also with regard to their spatial quality. The two human bodies and the sculpture form a diagonal following the golden ratio without changing their position in space; (III) The dynamic qualities of body signs can be described as bonded, direct, and firm. The movement quality therefore becomes a very structured appearance that is repeated by the synchronous movement of both artists and forms a parallelism with the cubic sculpture. Last but not least, the cubic form is repeated in the juggling, which is even eponymous, the jonglage cubique (Carasso and Lallias 2010, 40), a three-dimensional way of juggling. Furthermore, the balls are not thrown but are rhythmically placed onto the body, visualizing juggling—and its notational system Siteswap—in its most basic form.

Reading circus: dramaturgy on the border of art and academia  107

In summary, the geometrical form of the cube is repeated in all sign systems, that is, the space/stage concept, the sculpture, juggling, the body signs, the costume, and the lighting. The only twist is created by the change of angle, which is initiated by the male artist, who turns the cubic sculpture and causes the female artist to turn her body from straight to diagonal, which forms another parallelism between artist and sculpture. What relevance does this thick description of a performance have at a specific moment in its creation? This approach allows us to consider the performance in its current state, detached from other ideas and intentions. It identifies the status quo. The use of academic language discloses the basic semiotic structure of the performance, beyond its technical and disciplinary implications (in this case, the description of juggling patterns via Siteswap). Despite, for example, its focus on specific juggling patterns (“I am juggling: 411-411-31-31–41”), the focus is on the general quality of the juggling/body signs. The elaboration of the status quo forms the basis for the second step in which the paradigm, created by the current state of the Cube Scene, is analyzed.

Step 2: What do we understand? Analyzing the paradigms Why do we search for equivalences in our analysis? In the essay “Linguistic and Poetics,” Jacobson proclaims: Briefly, equivalence in sound, projected into the sequence as its constitutive principle, inevitably involves semantic equivalence and on any linguistic level any constituent of such a sequence prompts one of the correlative experiences which Hopkins neatly defines as ‘comparison for likeness’ sake and ‘comparison for unlikeness’ sake. ( Jakobson 1997, 75) In a textual analysis, it is necessary to search for structural equivalences and oppositions, as they refer to possible semantic equivalences. By relating elements to each other in the course of a comparison, that is, by becoming equivalent, the corresponding text elements form a paradigm, that is, they semanticize each other. In other words, the repetition of cubic elements in all sign systems (juggling, lighting, scenography, etc.) in the Cube Scene alludes to specific paradigms, whereby the paradigm of “visual arts” is particularly eye-catching. The juggling act itself is transferred to ephemeral sculptures that are observable at a distance, similar to the sculptures in a museum (the parallelism between sculpture, space, and artist). Second, the parallelisms between the change of music, the change of position of the sculpture, and the change of movement of the female artist draw attention to the paradigm “arithmetical codes and programming.” In this way, the sequence immediately positions itself in the context of codes, robotics, programming, and cyborgs. The artist’s gender then becomes relevant. The students

108  Franziska Trapp

and artists found that the question of agency is raised not only in the context of the relation between human and nonhuman, but also between man and woman, for the male artist manipulates the cube initiating the movement of the female artist. They therefore emphasized “gender hierarchies” as a third paradigm established within the performance. The goal of the second step is to reveal the processes of meaning creation at an early stage of the creative process, as this would demonstrate possible dysfunctionalities. Which elements of the performance are responsible for specific readings? Which signs are relevant? Why do we have specific associations? Are there elements that complicate the process of reception? While an analysis of a final artistic work would always link the first two steps, the idea of separating the analysis of the syntagma and the paradigm is due to the fact that the functioning or dysfunctioning of the status quo becomes more visible in isolation.

Step 3: What do we want? Wanted and unwanted paradigms In the next step, the artists were asked to comment on the readings of the work in progress. Did the readings reflect their own intentions? Were there discrepancies or new insights? The Tall Tales Company came to the following interim results, which determined the next course of action: First, the status quo of the performance, the paradigm of visual arts, is already quite clear. But what is not at all readable within the sequence so far is the level of meaning of Don Satijn’s sculpture: the paradigm of “life.” At this stage in the Cube Scene, the sculpture entitled Lines XXII (80 × 80 × 80, weathered steel, 2007) is received as simply a cubic sculpture representing the visual arts in general. Lines XXII, however, symbolizes the choices we make in life and the consequences we face. It is based on the idea that a cube contains more paths from one corner to the one diagonally opposing than one would be able to draw in a lifetime. This layer should be visible within the final version of the performance. Second, as the Tall Tales Company stated, the paradigm of control and programming was not intentional in this scene, but its presence became quite visible while analyzing the status quo. It could be strengthened within the scene to attribute a further layer. Third, they felt the gender associations should be avoided. The scene should not at all allude to associations of men controlling women or vice versa. In the overall performance of Square Two, the personality, gender, and appearance of the artists should disappear and they should be received as neutrally as possible. This third step resulted in a concrete working plan. The awareness of paradigms in need of elaboration (life, programming, and control) and of those that should be reduced (gender hierarchies) provide the starting point for the next two steps.

Step 4: Where are we situated? Understanding the paradigms This step is dedicated to the collection of material that enriches the creative process on a discursive level. It is based on the cultural-poetic premise that a

Reading circus: dramaturgy on the border of art and academia  109

text constitutes its meaning only through comparison with its surrounding (diachronic and synchronic) co-texts and contexts. From the recipient’s point of view, the paradigm and thus the possible meanings of a concrete text can only be specified by searching for equivalent elements in other transmitted texts of its time (Baßler 2007, 358). A collection of texts of a given culture is called “the archive” in cultural poetics. The archive is reconstructed by a recipient/researcher in order to understand a text in its own context. To apply cultural poetics to the creative process, this procedure must be reversed. By collecting texts (of all genres) dealing with a specific paradigm, the awareness of the cultural-historic archive can influence creation. Concerning the Cube Scene, the collected material ranged from scholarly discourses on codes, robots, artificial intelligence, and new media (e.g., Abend et al. 2017; Haraway 2006; Kittler 2007; Manovich 2001; Meyer et al. 2006; S­ eyfert and Roberge 2017; Striphas 2015; Wiener 1988) to literature, architecture, movies, video games, series, music, technological innovation, visual artworks, artistic movements, artistic concepts, mathematics, and dance.4 Step four doesn’t necessarily differ from other approaches to dramaturgy in which the dramaturge and the artists enrich the creative process with material. However, the previous analysis of the semantic structure of the status quo made us aware of the creation of paradigms through the use of specific sign systems; it also disclosed how the performance intermingles with the cultural context. At this point, it becomes very clear that the cultural poetic approach to performance cannot be understood as a “one-dimensional, information-theoretical procedure […] that conceives of theater as a linear machinery for conveying meaning between a sign-producing and authorizing sender (the stage, the director or choreographer) and a recipient consuming these signs (the audience)” (Boenisch 2015, 36; translation by the author)—a common objection to semiotic-oriented approaches. In cultural poetics, though, meaning is constructed through comparisons with the cultural co-text and context. In this regard, the fourth step pursues a twofold goal: to create an awareness of the position of this performance in culture and to include individual texts in its creation.

Step 5: What can we change? Reworking the syntagma In a fifth step, the artists and students proposed supplements or changes to the scenes in order to direct the reading of the Cube Scene in the desired direction. All sign systems were hence brought into focus, from rewriting scenes (e.g., changing movements and juggling) to adding new material (costumes, artworks, texts, etc.). Concerning the Cube Scene, several strategies to guide a specific reading were tested by (a) changing elements in the overall performance in order to prepare a specific reading of the Cube (e.g., creating a bridal scene in which critical pamphlets were thrown from the staircase in order to exaggerate the feminist reading to change its appearance in the Cube Scene) and (b) working on the scene itself (e.g., changing the position of the cube in order to change the

110  Franziska Trapp

overall appearance of the scene; adding a third person in order to reduce the idea of manipulation and control; and making the cube move independently). Furthermore, one idea that was tested and used for the final version was the use of poetry to guide the audience’s reading toward the paradigm of life. During the residency, the students taped a sentence to the opened door of the theater, “Life is a series of choices like lines growing in a cube,” which fundamentally changed the reception of that scene. Like the fourth step, this one doesn’t differ from non-semiotic dramaturgical work. Due to the preceding semiotic reading of the status quo, the cornerstones (the focus on the paradigm of life and control) had been identified. Furthermore, it created an awareness about how the simple adding or deleting of elements in different sign systems can change the overall reading of a performance, that is, there is a difference between “The child sleeps” and “The youngster nods.” Therefore, this project provided the artists reference points to make conscious decisions within the creative process. This awareness became a tool to help them decide between the infinite number of possibilities.

The impact of the reading on the creation process When I asked him how the project Reading Circus influenced the creative process, artist and cofounder of the Tall Tales Company Harm van der Laan told me, “It transformed the way we approached the creation of the performance. We became much more aware of the paradigms that feature in the piece and especially their relative importance in how they are perceived by the audience. We used this newfound awareness to make important changes. The changes led to, among other things, the digital performance Square 2.1 and the covid-proof version of Square Two.” Square 2.1 is a virtual circus performance in which the Tall Tales Company take the audience on a tour of their own home via a technical device (laptop, mobile phone, or tablet). In this performance, the original scenes of Square Two are used and applied to the new context; the Cube Scene takes place in the entrance hall. It is introduced by the following text, which is read by a deep male voice: Welcome to your own home. What’s the first thing you do when you come in? Do you hang your coat up? In the same spot every day? Do you take your shoes off? Or do you keep them on? Do you head to the kitchen for a drink? Or do you pay a quick visit to the bathroom first? Humans are creatures of habit. We like to follow the same path, the same patterns. Why is that though? Because it’s easy, efficient, because then we don’t have to make a decision? In a cube there are a near infinite number of possible routes from point A to point B. With four choices at every turn. Going right, left, up, or down. Will you follow me? (Square 2.1 2020)

Reading circus: dramaturgy on the border of art and academia  111

The repetition of cubes in Square Two is maintained in Square 2.1: The audience, standing in the cubic entrance hall of their own home, look through their cubic technical device into the cubic performance space. The performance space is filled with cubes, which are created by the arrangements of doors, the window, the tiles, and the geometrical arrangement of mirrors. Furthermore, the same body signs are used. Nevertheless, the actual reading of the sequence differs substantially from the status quo discussed in Münster: The focus now lies explicitly on the idea behind the conception of the sculpture Lines XXII. Through linguistic signs, props (shoes, coats), the audience’s setting (at home), and the performance space (the entrance hall, which is where one always enters and leaves the home) underline the paradigm “life.” And in Square 2.1, the audience is able to visit an exhibition of Satijn’s artworks, which are presented with titles and short explanations, so that the main idea of his artwork (paradigm “life”) is readable. Not only does the work now force a reading of the Cube Scene in terms of the paradigm “life” but also draws attention to the paradigm “programming,” which highly influenced the creative process—this time the creation of the corona-­ proof version of Square Two. In other conversations, van der Laan explained to me: For example, the theme of “programming” was much more central to the piece than we realized as performers. When creating a corona-proof version of the piece we used this to our advantage. By assigning every audience member a specific number and “programming” them to move only when they hear the number (the audience wears headphones) we both ensure social distancing, and more importantly, the audience becomes part of an algorithm themselves. And: Similarly, in Square 2.1, we wanted to play with the paradigm of programming. A voice is controlling the actions of the audience through the screen, very politely at first, but over the course of the performance, they gradually turn into commands. Toward the end of the performance, we make this explicit by asking the audience who or what will control their actions when they finish the show. Which patterns will they follow? We wouldn’t have been aware of the importance of this paradigm to our piece if we hadn’t spent time in Münster. It sparked many interesting conversations about how we are programmed in our daily lives (did you know that sidewalks and streets are designed to make you walk faster or slower by the type of tiles, their width, and the amount of greenery?). This chapter only focuses on the Cube Scene. During the residency, however, the group applied the five steps to many scenes with different corresponding paradigms, all opening diverse connotations and possibilities. According to the

112  Franziska Trapp

artists, their knowledge of the work’s semiotic structure enabled them to develop the performance even in a way that respects the restrictions and requirements of the pandemic. In retrospect, the early use of semiotics in the creative process guided the artists through the subsequent steps of creation and recreation.

Reading circus—advantages and disadvantages What are the limits of applying cultural poetics to contemporary circus and its creative process? Does a semiotic approach adequately capture and articulate the dialogic processes of contemporary circus performances? What if, for instance, the students had simply given verbal feedback? Would their comments have brought about the same changes in the development of the work? Is the creative process in need of conscious decisions? To address these questions, we have to understand how the students and artists perceived this approach. Their feedback on the project was without exception positive. In particular, they found that the dialogue between art and science, between practices (academic and artistic), knowledge (academic and artistic), and traditions (academic and artistic) was enormously enriching.5 Students and artists were given “lab time” to experiment with theory and practice, with artistic and academic approaches. All steps were continuously evaluated by the groups, and if necessary, adjusted to the specific needs of the groups. Nonetheless, a discussion of possible objections should be included, especially since the contemporary circus scene, like academia, is very interested in using this method in various settings in the years to come. The development of the feedback method has been recorded in a documentary film (Benda Film Productions 2019), which is now being exhibited internationally at circus festivals and academic conferences.6 This project is based on a comprehensive understanding of circus as an embodied practice for which the cultural discourse is crucial. The approach thus aims to take into account both the phenomenological and contextual dimensions of contemporary circus performances. However, Reading Circus focused on creating reference points for conscious decisions within the creative process that are guided by cognition, not the emotions and intentions. For this reason, it might not be interesting for certain artistic personalities or contemporary circus performances or for specific moments within a creative process, which is also not the intention here. A heterogeneous art form with a diversity of artistic personalities requires a diversity of dramaturgical approaches. To understand the creative process of Square Two, we did not deny nonscientific forms of knowledge production but proposed a common tableau on which situated knowing becomes readable within its cultural context. The romanticized image of creation as one that is virtuous and chaotic is thereby not mandatory. The use of academic language in this method is a means to temporarily distance oneself from one’s own performance; the overall approach of the performance becomes the focus. As the title of this article suggests, though, the basic idea of the project also takes up the initiative introduced by van Kerkhoven “to

Reading circus: dramaturgy on the border of art and academia  113

bring art and science, theory and practice, closer together” by picking up the idea of dramaturgy as a “bridgebuilder” (1994b, 10). In this context, Reading Circus is based on the idea that sharing knowledge (academic and artistic), traditions (academic and artistic), and vocabularies (academic and artistic) as a powerful feature of collaborative artistic practice.

Notes 1 The Rotterdam-based Tall Tales Company was created in 2013 by Maartje Bonarius and Harm van der Laan to introduce the Netherlands and the world to circus as an art form. In 2019, Bonarius and Van der Laan were the second circus creators to be selected for the prestigious “new makers” program of the Dutch Arts Council. 2 In order to be able to focus on the points that have been proven to be particularly relevant in the ongoing creative process, the reading of Square Two is not going to be presented in detail. The same applies to the theoretical method of the semiotic reading of contemporary circus performances that is presented in detail in Lektüren des zeitgenössischen Zirkus (Trapp 2020). 3 Analyzed according to Boenisch (2002). 4 For example, literature (“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet” [Shakespeare]); architecture (the Parthenon at the Acropolis, the University of Salamanca, the Guggenheim Museum in New York); movies (Blade Runner, Guardians of the Galaxies, Star Wars); video games (BioShock); series (DARK); music (the Piano Sonata No. 279, No. 1 of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Floppotron); technological innovation (morse code, SOS, digits, bytes); visual artworks (Leonardo Da Vinci, Jan Vermeer, Andrew Rogers); artistic movements (­retrofuturism, minimal art); artistic concepts (Golden Ratio, Golden Rectangle, Golden Spiral, Golden Angel); mathematics (Fibonacci Numbers); and dance (Fresco Dance Company). 5 This article focused on the use of academic concepts in artistic processes. It is possible to write a second article about the same project focusing on the benefits of artistic knowledge, language, and tradition for scholarly teaching and research. Reading ­Circus. A Documentary about Dramaturgy on the Border between Art and Academia (Benda Film Productions 2018) focused on both directions (see the documentary). 6 Tour and Workshops: October 2020—Cinema Muenster; January 2020—­Internationale Kulturbörse Freiburg; April 2020—Circusstad Festival Rotterdam | Postponed due to Covid-19; May 2020—Cologne Dance and Circus Festival | Postponed due to Covid-19; June 2020—La Strada Bremen | Postponed due to Covid-19; August 2020—­General Meeting Circustrada, Letni Letna Festival Prague | Postponed due to Covid-19; September 2020—New Circus Weekend Vilnius, Lithuania; July 2021— Summer School on research-creation at Concordia University of Montréal; October 2021—­International Conference of the German Association for Semiotic Studies; October 2021—­Symposium of Circus Thinking, New Zeeland; October 2021— Reading Circus, Circunstruction Rotterdam; December 2021—Reading Circus, Aires Libres Bruxelles; April 2022—Reading Circus, Circusstad Festival Rotterdam; October 2022—Reading Circus, Fundacia Sztukmistrze Lithuania.

References Abend, Pablo, Marc Bonner, and Tanja Weber, eds. 2017. Just Little Bits of History Repeating: Medien, Nostalgie, Retromanie. Münster: LIT. Baßler, Moritz. 2005. Die Kulturpoetische Funktion und das Archiv. Tübingen: Narr Francke.

114  Franziska Trapp

Baßler, Moritz. 2007. Kontexte. In Handbuch Literaturwissenschaft: Gegenstände und Grundbegriffe, ed. Thomas Anz, 355–370. Stuttgart/Weimar: J. B. Metzler. Benda Film Productions. 2019. Reading Circus. A Documentary about Dramaturgy on the Border between Art and Academia. Production: Benda Film Productions. Regie: Daniel Huhn. Camera: Benjamin Leers. Cut: Daniel Huhn. Idea and Concept: Franziska Trapp. Münster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvSlGJSDg4M (10.2.2023) Boenisch, Peter M. 2002. körPERformance 1.0: Theorie und Analyse von Körper- und Bewegungsdarstellungen im zeitgenössischen Theater. Munich: ePODIUM. Boenisch, Peter M. 2015. Tanz als Körper-Zeichen: Zur Methodik der Theater-Tanz-­ Semiotik. In Methoden der Tanzwissenschaft, eds. Gabriele Brandstetter and Gabriele Klein, 35–52. Bielefeld: Transcript. Carasso, Jean G. and Jean-Claude Lallias. 2010. Jérôme Thomas: Jongleur d’âme. Arles: Actes sud. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. 2007. Semiotik des Theaters: Eine Einführung. Band 1: Das System der Theatralischen Zeichen. Tübingen: Narr. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Haraway, Donna. 2006. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-­ Feminism in the Late 20th Century. In The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments, eds. Joel Weiss, Jeremy Hunsinger, Jason Nolan, and Peter Trifonas, 117–158. Dordrecht: Springer. Helbo, André. 2016. Semiotics and Performing Arts: Contemporary Issues. Social Semiotics 26 (4): 341–350. Jakobson, Roman. 1997. Linguistics and Poetics. In Twentieth-Century Literary Theory: A Reader, ed. K. M. Newton, 71–77. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Jürgens, Anna-Sophie. 2016. Poetik des Zirkus. Heidelberg: Winter-Universitätsverlag. Kerkhoven, Marianne van. 1994a. Looking Without Pencil in the Hand. Theaterschrift 5–6: 140–149. Kerkhoven, Marianne van. 1994b. On Dramaturgy. Theaterschrift 5–6: 8–33. Kittler, Friedrich. 2007. Code Oder Wie Sich Etwas Anders Schreiben Lässt. In Reader neue Medien: Texte Zur Digitalen Kultur und Kommunikation, eds. Karin Bruns and Ramón Reichert, 88–96. Bielefeld: Transcript. Lavers, Katie, Louis Patrick Leroux, and Jon Burtt. 2019. Contemporary Circus. New York: Routledge. Manovich, Lev. 2001. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Meyer, Urs, Roberto Simanowski, and Christoph Zeller, eds. 2006. Transmedialität: Zur Ästhetik Paraliterarischer Verfahren. Göttingen: Wallstein. Satijn, Don. 2007. Lines XXII, 80 x 80 x 80, gathered steel, Rotterdam. Seyfert, Robert and Jonathan Roberge. 2017. Algorithmuskulturen: Über Die Rechnerische Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit. Bielefeld: Transcript. Striphas, Ted. 2015. Algorithmic Culture. European Journal of Cultural Studies 18 (4–5): 395–412. Tait, Peta and Katie Lavers. 2016. Introduction: Circus Perspectives, Precedents and Presents. In The Routledge Circus Studies Reader, eds. Peta Tait and Katie Lavers, 1–11. London: Routledge. Tall Tales Company. 2019. Square Two. Rotterdam: Dossier. Trapp, Franziska. 2020. Lektüren des Zeitgenössischen Zirkus: Ein Modell Zur Text-­KontextOrientierten Aufführungsanalyse. Berlin: de Gruyter. Trapp, Franziska and Harm Van der Laan, eds. 2021. Turning the Cube. Perspectives on codes through juggling and visual art. Rotterdam. Wiener, Norbert. 1988. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. New York: Da Capo Press.

9 UPSIDEDOWN CIRCUS AND SPACE Graphic Recordings by Andreas Gärtner

FIGURE 9.1 Graphic

Recording #1 of the international conference UpSideDown. Circus and Space at the University of Münster 2017.  Copyright by Die Zeichner. Andreas Gärtner.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-12

Recording #2 of the international conference UpSideDown. Circus and Space at the University of Münster 2017.  Copyright by Die Zeichner. Andreas Gärtner.

FIGURE 9.2 Graphic

116  Graphic Recordings by Andreas Gärtner

Recording #3 of the international conference UpSideDown. Circus and Space at the University of Münster 2017.  Copyright by Die Zeichner. Andreas Gärtner.

FIGURE 9.3 Graphic

UpSideDown circus and space  117

Recording #4 of the international conference UpSideDown. Circus and Space at the University of Münster 2017.  Copyright by Die Zeichner. Andreas Gärtner.

FIGURE 9.4 Graphic

118  Graphic Recordings by Andreas Gärtner

FIGURE 9.5 

 raphic Recording #5 of the international conference UpSideDown. Circus and Space at the University of Münster 2017. G Copyright by Die Zeichner. Andreas Gärtner.

UpSideDown circus and space  119

Recording #6 of the international conference UpSideDown. Circus and Space at the University of Münster 2017.  Copyright by Die Zeichner. Andreas Gärtner.

FIGURE 9.6 Graphic

120  Graphic Recordings by Andreas Gärtner

UpSideDown circus and space  121

FIGURE 9.7 Graphic

Recording #7 of the international conference UpSideDown. Circus and Space at the University of Münster 2017.  Copyright by Die Zeichner. Andreas Gärtner.

PART III

Circus culture

10 CIRCUS BETWEEN TECHNIQUE AND TECHNOLOGY Heideggerian “enframing” and the contested space of free expression Sebastian Kann

Introduction Contemporary circus is a field organised around and by a set of techniques: juggling, aerial, balancing, and so forth. At the same time, for a new generation of artists concerned with following through on contemporary circus’ claims to expressivity, circus technique appears as a site of acute anxiety. There is a sense that circus has yet to follow through on its potential as an artistic medium, and this feeling of frustrated promise prompts us to look closely at what is called circus “technique,” wondering what precisely it is and what relation it has to creative expression.1 This paper asks if today’s circus techniques (sometimes fail to) usher the body into the space of free expression.2 Through a Heideggerian lens, I propose to problematize some specific conventions which would seem to determine the effect of the trick in advance of its creation and performance. My argument is that the preemptive application of normative criteria concerning what a circus trick does forecloses, to some extent, the coming-to-appearance of a poetic (or poietic) agent in and through the process of technical research. By challenging the naturalness of these normative criteria—in other words, by adopting a critical stance toward the commonsense parsing of “trick” or “not-trick”—we can move toward a paradigm in which the technical represents a channel of creative promise for the circus body rather than an obstacle to its becoming expressive.

Circus technique as a revealing I will begin here with Heidegger’s “Question Concerning Technology,” a 1954 essay in which Heidegger traces the branch of knowledge known as technē. I choose Heidegger as a starting point because his technē asks us to think technique and technology simultaneously, while at the same time drawing a new distinction DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-14

126  Sebastian Kann

between poetic (poietic) technique and modern technology. Heidegger’s conceptual proposition is interesting for circus because it redivides technē—techniques and technologies—according to their different performative functions (what they do or produce) rather than according to the materiality of the processes they govern. So for Heidegger, the lay use of the words technique and technology— the first referring to practiced skills and the second to objects which augment human capacities—occludes a more “essential” distinction: poetic techniques “reveal” presences, while modern technologies “reveal” commodities or tools. “The Question Concerning Technology,” read through a circus studies lens, forces us to ask a follow-up: could the anxiety around circus technique be due to a kind of categorical confusion, a collective case of mis-recognition whereby a modern technology has been masquerading as a poetic technique? To understand the thrust of this question, it is important to elucidate Heidegger’s use of the concept of “revealing” (das Entbergen). For Heidegger, all technē—both techniques and technologies—perform poiēsis, or “bringing-forth.” Technical activity, be it the manufacture of a car or the pirouette of the ballerina, actualizes states of affairs: it is a process which results in the introduction of something new in the world. This need not be new in the sense of groundbreaking or never-before-seen (although, of course, it also can be). Rather, what is revealed is simply that which did not appear before: a new car or the dancer’s movement and its resonating affect. So much is clear and is already contained in a vernacular definition of technical knowledge as know-how concerned with practices, with doing or making. Thinking again of the example of manufacture, Heidegger’s insistence on “revealing” seems not to add too much to the conversation: in the case of a material making, the link between technē and poiēsis is already apparent, and Heidegger’s proposition appears something of a truism. But where “revealing” differs conceptually from “creation” (a word which Heidegger doesn’t use in this particular text) is the rather mysterious priorness it would seem to imply: revealing “comes to pass only insofar as something concealed comes into unconcealment” (Heidegger 1977, 11). It is this difference which lends mobilizing force to revealing as a lens for understanding technē. Where is the concealed before it is revealed? I propose that we understand this “something concealed” along the lines of the virtual in Deleuze or potentiality in Agamben (and Aristotle): it is a non-actual but real entity, dwelling in the space of possibility manifested by complex environments, in the promise of immanent production—or not—suggested by the properties and capacities of the network of agents at play at any scale.3 To playfully invoke Heidegger: “But where have we strayed to?” (Heidegger 1977, 12). Revealing as the essence of technē asks us to think of the technical as governing the relation between the potential and the actual. It is curious then that the relation between potentiality and actuality as enacted in circus practice has (to my knowledge) never been systematically articulated. In my MA thesis, “Taking back the technical,” I defined circus as the “performance of unusual relations between bodies and their material environments”

Circus between technique and technology  127

(Kann 2016, 14). Although I would be equivocal now about the “unusual” as a definitional qualifier, I retain the conviction that circus primarily stages ways of dealing with material environments.4 The circus artist researches not by asking the question “what can I do,” but rather “what can I do with….” The conventional taxonomy of circus disciplines, organized according to the material environment of inquiry (tightwire, aerial hoop, Russian swing, etc.), discloses precisely this preoccupation with the material other. Although Modernist humanism trains us to see circus performance as the actualization of the artist’s potential and hers alone, from a contemporary vantage point, the elision of her environment’s material agency seems to require some impressive conceptual acrobatics. Whether performing with an object, with a partner, or alone on the floor, the artist constructs a field of potentiality not as a discrete subject but through her encounter and entanglement with her environment; indeed, as a component of an agentic “body-environment.”5 After Deleuze, we can understand the virtual (or the potentiality, or the “concealed”) of any assemblage as a continuous zone of intensities.6 That is, before the virtual is actualized in thought or action, it exists (or “subsists”) as a specific and inexhaustible infinity. Any actual event selects and delimits a segment of the virtual in a movement of exclusive disjunction, simultaneously ruling out a range of variation stretching from the minute to the unthinkably drastic.7 Although Heidegger’s formulation predates Deleuze’s writings on the virtual by several decades, he foreshadows Deleuze with his concept of “concealment” and his emphasis on technical revealing as the contingent selection and actualization of some—but not all—of that which is concealed: technē reveal whatever “does not yet lie here before us, whatever can look and turn out now one way and now another” (Heidegger 1977, 13). If circus can be imagined as an invitation to investigate the field of potentiality emergent in the encounter between bodies and environments—if circus can be formulated as a staging of technicity in general or of bodies from the point of view of their technical practices in general—a field more broadly inclusive and less attached to specific aesthetic and affective genres becomes thinkable. Indeed, choosing to focus on the technical as that which gathers together the diverse practices which we call circus suggests a certain limitlessness to the form. Thought in this light, circus becomes less a closed and convention-bound set of practices and more a dramaturgical perspective, a way of staging just about any human practice such that attention is drawn to the technicity of the practice, to the sense in which it reveals any potential whatsoever contained in the encounter between bodies and environments. The technical as the horizon of the circus field turns out to be the furthest and broadest horizon imaginable. Even if we limit circus’ field of potentiality to that constructed by the relation between bodies and conventional circus apparatus, any attempt to represent it as a complete set of possibilities would necessarily fall short. With this in mind, anxiety within the field of contemporary circus about the shortcomings of technique as the basis of an expressive practice appears

128  Sebastian Kann

misguided, if not nonsensical. Rather, to get at the irksome feeling of constraint or lack that hovers at the point of articulation between the circus training hall and space of artistic creation, we should turn our attention to the way circus technique (the “trick”) is structured by conventions which overdetermine the technical as a more general category. Circus technique does not reveal potentials concealed in body-environments such that they can “look and turn out now one way and now another”; rather, the circus field as it stands today subjects technique to strict normative restriction such that, in an important respect, the revealed always appears only one way: as refined fuel for the production of value.

Production of value To get a handle on circus technique as fuel for the production of value, it’s important to consider the way normative restrictions governing the actualization of circus technique exclude the boring. My use of the term “boring” is intentionally provocative, and I oppose it here to the “captivating,” which should be read to include all its connotations of forceful seizure: capture, captive, and so forth.8 From the punctual attentional captures of propulsive disciplines like teeterboard and hoop-diving to the sustained attentional bind of chair-stacking and high wire (and even though it goes beyond the scope of this paper, to the aversive attentional capture of the freak show), technical relations which are conventionally included in circus today are still subject to attentional criteria: to be circus technique, it has to grab our attention. The strategies used to perform this attentional capture are implicit in the way we think of what a trick is and what it is not. From my own observation, the following four strategies are almost always at play 9: 1 Abstraction: circus training trains precision, which is to say repeatability. There is a sense in which the trick reframes the subject-body as an object-­ instrument for the manifestation of an abstract form, which is itself always the same. This shift into abstraction introduces a certain temporal confusion, insofar as repeatability introduces both the past and the future into the present. The abstract body also takes on the form of a promise, which reads, “I am not performing just any action, but precisely this action, and if you watch me I promise you will learn why.” 2 Visibility: closely related to abstraction, visibility applies to the trick not in terms of its repeatability but rather in terms of its clarity. The circus trick has one clear attentional focus. The entire body is subordinated to the manifestation of this central task, and in training the artist works on eliminating visual “noise” (floppy feet, bent knees, preparations and recoveries which are too weakly delineated from the trick itself, etc.). This prevents any confusion on the part of the spectator about where to look. 3 Difference: self-differing is the antidote to the boredom of repetition. This is why swinging trapeze artists are obsessed with erasing the “neutral swing” and tricks are rarely performed twice during one performance. The

Circus between technique and technology  129

intimation of difficulty also invokes difference, but difference from the normative Other and her “normal” physical capacities rather than difference from oneself. The constant activity of differing from self and other produces a kind of distracted captivation, an effect akin to that which Walter Benjamin attributes to cinema in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (Benjamin 2008 [1936]). 4 Climax: the circus act is made of a series of small climaxes of varying intensities, libidinal expenditures which exhaust both the spectator and the performer. This structure appears because of the emphatic “preparation-­climax-recovery” phrasing which continues to characterize the circus trick. The climactic structure (whose formal proximity to the arousal-ejaculation-­refraction cycle of the male genitals is unmissable) unfortunately continues to define what is worth paying attention to for most people in the contemporary world. Abstraction, visibility, difference, and climax as typical qualities of the circus trick—as qualities without which body-environment relations tend to lose their appearance of “trick-ness,” without which their status as trick becomes debatable—­ a ll point toward the trick as a particular actualization of body-­ environment relations such that the spectator is positioned as the captive subject of attention. Even alone in the studio, the artist is subject to the normative power of these criteria, having internalized the spectator’s gaze insofar as its effects are concretised in both the historical and contemporary works which provide a model for her research and in the circus-pedagogical traditions which train for particular ways of manifesting the actual. It is this consistent subjection to attentional criteria which suggests circus tricks as fuel for the production of value. According to early twentieth-century theorist Gabriel Tarde, whose writings on the relation between attention and value have recently been taken up by Maurizio Lazzarato and Tiziana Terranova: that which is valuable is first what is attended to and not vice versa. As Terranova succinctly explains, “The labour of attention enables social cooperation and is thus the real source of the production of value” (Terranova 2012, 10). Tarde’s theories are, of course, newly relevant, given the “immaterial” economy at play in the contemporary western world: in 2017, at the time of writing, YouTube is only the most blatant example of the way viewing translates directly (even algorithmically) into value for the viewed. The concept of attention as value production lays bare the mechanism which binds spectacle to commerce. It suggests that in the context of contemporary circus, the field’s commercial past is not so easily erased by a change in staging conventions: as long as the zones of potentiality designated as “boring” continue to be excluded from technical actualisation—and as long as that exclusion is erased and naturalized in discourse and practice—the technical process will produce a circulation of value rather than manifestations of presence and the circus stage will fail to appear as a space of free expression. To understand why, we must once again turn to Heidegger and “The Question Concerning Technology.”

130  Sebastian Kann

Standing-reserve Of central importance in Heidegger’s essay is the distinction between poetic technique and modern technology. At the risk of oversimplifying Heidegger’s very complex philosophical work, technique here is constructive, while technology is extractive or abstractive. “[L]et us ponder a moment the contrast that speaks out of the two titles, ‘The Rhine’ as dammed up into a power works, and ‘The Rhine’ as uttered out of an art work, in Hölderlin’s hymn by that name” (Heidegger 1977, 16): his point is that the Rhine as the object of extraction or abstraction is reduced by the power works to a single aspect (which is to say, energy potential), while the Rhine as an element of poetic construction—in the work of Hölderlin—is revealed in its depth (indeed, arguably complexified). In poetry, the river is a presence engaged in multiple relational networks by virtue of an array of unique properties and capacities, but in industry, the river is “challenged-­ forth,” “regulated,” and “secured.” “[O]rdered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering,” the river no longer “presences” as an object (Heidegger 1977, 17); it is, in some sense, no longer present, no longer available to the observer. Rather, the river is revealed as a site of extraction, something which exists merely so that something else might be taken from it; the river is, in Heidegger’s terminology, “standing-reserve” (Bestand) and the activity of its technical revelation as such is deemed an “Enframing” (Gestell). For the arts—and especially for performance—questions of presence are evidently paramount, and the concept of presence which Heidegger begins to unfold here certainly bears further elaboration in the context of aesthetics. Suffice it to say that his rather radical proposal—that objects which participate in extractive assemblages are somehow less than fully there—throws the status of the circus trick as a material for artistic composition into question. For if the normative definition of the circus trick restricts the body-environment to value-­generating actualizations, then the circus artist is left trying to compose with elements which preempt her composition, which, in fact, challenge her forth, appearing to demand a certain treatment a priori. The (infinite) potentiality of the body-­ environment is overdetermined by the conventions of the trick, conventions which ensure that every technical actualization is matched to a function even before it is materialized and which rebound back on the body-environment itself, draining it of presence and reconstructing it as standing-reserve. It would be ludicrous to claim that the specificity of each trick has no effect on the performativity of circus works as a whole. Certain differences between given tricks are palpable, and these differences propose themselves readily as raw material for the composition of a certain range of dramaturgies: even if they are primarily machines of attention capture, it would be plausible to argue that each trick captures attention differently according to its own formal specificity. It would be, moreover, willfully speculative to dream of a technē suited to actualize any and every zone of potentiality immanent to a given assemblage; technē are not

Circus between technique and technology  131

neutral channels but active and in some sense normed or conventional mechanisms for revealing. My contention is rather that the particular way in which conventions make circus technique a specific technē happen to limit what is revealed from the point of view of the value—in terms of money or prestige—it might or might not produce in performance. As opposed to the poietic techniques, which in Heidegger’s view reveal presences as presences, circus as a technē would seem to reveal the body-environment as that which does not presence but rather refers to value-production, gesturing toward something other than itself. If we are to follow Heidegger, then today’s circus technique is a technē whose revealing is an Enframing: that revealing which characterizes not techniques but technologies.10 Moreover, insofar as Enframing produces not only material effects but also psychological or imaginative effects—that is, insofar as it reduces our capacity to imagine body-environments in their full complexity, insofar as the human component of Enframing is also “set-upon” and “challenged-forth”—it seems credible to assert that circus artists might be working under conditions of limited access to the Heideggerian “truth” of their material.11 This, in turn, would explain the frustration which is currently rife in contemporary circus and the anxiety surrounding technique as a carrier of meaning. For, as Heidegger points out, “man [sic] becomes truly free only insofar as he belongs to the realm of destining and so becomes one who listens and hears [Hörender], and not one who is simply constrained to obey [Höriger]” (Heidegger 1977, 25): as long as the imperative of usefulness appears nonnegotiable, indeed definitional of the circus trick, the artist is “constrained to obey.” Under such conditions, prospects for the appearance of spaces of free expression would appear to be particularly slim.

Spaces of free expression What indeed are these spaces of free expression and what would they look like in the context of circus creation? To elaborate on freedom, I will turn to a philosopher who writes in quite a different key, but whose contemporaneity with ­Heidegger makes his work an interesting complement to her own. That philosopher is Hannah Arendt: her short essay “What is Freedom” (originally formulated as a lecture in 1960) offers a description of freedom which is far more elaborate than Heidegger’s enigmatic treatment in his “Technology” essay and which also appears to present an affirmative counterpoint to his rather dire musings. For Arendt, as for Heidegger, freedom is not about doing or getting what one wants: in Heidegger’s words, “The essence of freedom is originally not connected with the will or even with the causality of human willing” (Heidegger 1977, 25); in Arendt’s, “Action insofar as it is free is neither under the guidance of the intellect nor under the dictate of the will” (Arendt 2000, 445). This is because, in both cases, human desire is understood as a product of circumstances and forces external to itself. In the case of the circus trick, for example, we cannot deny that an artist may want to actualize technique according to the criterion of usefulness, but as Heidegger’s technological Enframing is meant to demonstrate, we would

132  Sebastian Kann

be hard-pressed to call this actualization a free action. Arendt’s claim is rather that freedom bespeaks the ability: to call something into being which did not exist before, which was not given, not even as an object of cognition or imagination, and which therefore, strictly speaking, could not be known. Action, to be free, must be free from motive on one side, from its intended goal as a predictable effect on the other. This is not to say that motives and aims are not important factors in every single act, but they are its determining factors, and action is free to the extent that it is able to transcend them. (Arendt 2000, 444–445) The echoes of Enframing are here unmistakable. While technology performs a “destining,” channeling revealing so as to prevent that it “run off into the indeterminate” (Heidegger 1977, 16), freedom or free action is characterized in Arendt as precisely the opposite. Revealing is free inasmuch as it is free from both distinct motive and predictable effect, inasmuch as any performative process evades the preemptive determination of its final result by conventions, restrictions, and norms. The exclusion of the boring in circus, however, names precisely the mechanism which binds the “intended goal” and “motive” to circus technique as a specific technē and yet which itself remains unspoken and unacknowledged as a contingent limitation to all that performative b­ ody-environments might manifest or become. In this sense, we have not yet “prepared a free relationship” to circus technique: the function of the trick is determined in advance. Freedom, by contrast, appears in movement, which does not yet know what it wants or where it is going.12 It is only the space of not-knowing and not-wanting, a kinetic space cleared of the exigencies of life-sustaining labor, which provides the architecture necessary for the appearance of a truly active subject, or perhaps more precisely in this context, for the appearance of a collective agent.13 For in the event that the technical process in circus is divested of determinant motives or desired effects, the motor of revealing is most precisely said to be the hybrid assemblage of artist and object, a dynamic, de-subjectified material thinking disowned by purely human interest groups. In this scenario, it would not be the artist as sovereign subject running the show; rather, it would be the hybrid body-environment taken truly as an agent in its own right. I take the eventual appearance of this hybrid agent to signal the emergence of circus as a political practice. Arendt, after all, equates the space of freedom with the space of the polis, which “provided men [sic] with a space of appearances where they could act, with a kind of theatre where freedom could appear” (Arendt 2000, 447). Without predetermining the content of this politics, we can identify its principles as post-human, its orientation compositionist, and its ethics as Spinozan.14 But quite aside from such academic concerns, a field which makes space for creative agency is a field which is by definition good for artists and which delivers their creative practice from the exigencies of value-production.

Circus between technique and technology  133

A call for the inclusion of the boring in circus might seem perverse or deconstructive. This is not at all my intention. It is rather to name the exclusion which is silently performed by the criterion of value-production in circus. It is to highlight the contingent equivalence of circus technique with attention-­capture, a contingent equivalence, which nevertheless appears to many artists and scholars of circus as not only given but also desirable. For those committed to the circus as a stage of presence, however—for those committed to body-­environments as profound sites, poetic, and productive beyond “productivity” in the neoliberal sense—it would seem that nothing is farther from the truth. For as Heidegger puts it, “Freedom is that which conceals in a way that opens to light, in whose clearing there shimmers that veil that covers what comes to presence of all truth and lets the veil appears as what veils” (Heidegger 1977, 25). The criterion of value-production in circus is the veil concealing the true presence of the body-environment, removing it from mystery and constructing it as a site of flatness, frustration, and anxiety. Acknowledging in language and in practice the separation between technique as such and the use to which circus technique is conventionally—although not necessarily—put might be the key to the inauguration of the circus stage as a space of free expression.

Notes 1 For an example of such an inquiry, see Flemish circus-maker Bauke Lievens’s “Between Being and Imagining.” Part of this multifaceted project was a series of curated “encounters” wherein Lievens gathered forward-thinking circus artists in order to work through some of the issues plaguing the field. It is perhaps paradigmatic of artistic fields to posit themselves as still “in-progress,” open to redefinition and revision, but the explicitly progressive tone of Lievens’s gatherings—not to mention her polemic “open letters”—suggests that, at least in the opinion of some circus artists, circus has never yet been artistic or is still teetering on the edge of becoming so (Lievens 2015, 2016). 2 What would it mean for expression to be truly “free?” Free of constraint, self-­ interest, cliché, norm, or genre? I don’t intend to imply that free expression is a real possibility, but rather that it names something toward which many circus artists seem to aim in one way or another. I elaborate on the notion of free expression in the last section of this paper. 3 This interpretation of “the concealed” is further supported by Heidegger’s insistence on a reevaluation of causality. Referring back to Greek and Roman thinkers, Heidegger points to their expansive, impersonal definition of causality, which he considers to have been covered up in modernity and which he wants to revive. Ancient western thinkers consider the form, matter, properties, and capacities of the revealed as causes of the revealed, not merely effects of the process of revealing. If we take, for example, in the case of the marble sculpture, the marble itself to be also a cause of the sculpture, then we seem to be dealing with material agency. The sculpture is made not only by the sculptor but also by the marble itself, insofar as the material suggests and resists, provides and delimits. Such agency would also be assumed of the cultural assemblage in which the sculpting is taking place, which supplies models, contexts, infrastructure, and so forth. Poietic causality is therefore attributed to a complex field, whose possibilities for (inter)action are plausibly infinite. The concealed can only be the sum total of these possibilities, an impossibly detailed sampling of what could be, defying representation in its sheer boundlessness, or as Brian Massumi puts it a

134  Sebastian Kann

propos Deleuze’s virtual, “vanishing into self-variety” (Massumi 2002, 133). See also ­Balksus (2010) on potentiality in Agamben. 4 Because the unusual always implies comparison to a norm, circus as the performance of unusual body-environment relations would seem to rely upon and shore up the continued societal prevalence of strong normative restrictions regarding possible relations between bodies and environments. I would prefer to imagine circus as a practice which resists the reification of these norms; indeed, which imagines the end of their relevance. 5 I am using the phrase “body-environment” to refer to the distributed agent of technical actualization in circus. 6 Obviously, Heidegger’s “concealed,” Deleuze’s “virtual,” and “potentiality” as a more broadly deployed philosophical concept differ from each other in several important ways. If I use these terms relatively interchangeably in this paper, it is because I am interested in something in each which is common to all; that is, their capacity to name the “not-yet” which hovers around that which is. An examination of how the difference between these three terms would suggest different strands of technical research in circus would be the task of a future investigation. 7 For a concise review of the virtual in Deleuze, see Massumi’s User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1992, 34–46). 8 My thinking on attention capture is indebted to the taxonomy of attention James Ash proposes in “Attention, Videogames, and the Retentional Economies of Affective Amplification” (2012). In this article, he divides attentional experience along two axes: aversive and attractive, captive and voluntary. Although his proposition is that the effective management of attention requires an even and compelling distribution of these modes rather than a sustained use of any one mode, the relation between technique (captive attention) and representational narration (voluntary attention) in many contemporary circus works would seem to support his thesis. Indeed, it helps us make sense of the oft-repeated claim that technique is important in theatricalized circus works because it “raises the stakes” of the narrative action: technique and theater form two attentional poles, the movement between these poles provides the variation necessary for avoiding spectacular fatigue. 9 Some of these strategies are arguably employed in the staging of the trick and not the trick itself. I contend however that even in the studio, the trick is never in a “neutral” state. Making the distinction between the trick as an essence and its staged variants installs the first instance of actualization as somehow neutral (in terms of speed, phrasing, etc.), whereas, of course, what appears as neutral to the circus artist is rife with normative and ideological meaning. The trick never appears without a certain dramaturgy. 10 Heidegger argues that the technological tendency, which he calls Enframing, is an impersonal force immanent to the modern western nature-cultural assemblage as a whole. Enframing is not something which people do to objects; rather, Enframing gathers both subjects and objects into a relation which reduces them equally to the not-yet of the stockpile. Enframed, the human becomes pure labor-potential and her environment becomes pure resource-potential, each “on call for duty,” “in its whole structure and in every one of its constituent parts” (Heidegger 1977, 17). 11 Heidegger calls the full presence of a revealed object its “truth”: the unconcealment in accordance with which nature presents itself as a calculable complex of the effects of forces can indeed permit correct determinations; but precisely through these successes the danger may remain that in the midst of all that is correct the true will withdraw. (Heidegger 1977, 26) 12 To clarify, this is not about making no plans, but rather planning-on-the-fly: it is freedom as a practice of experimentation rather than execution. For an elaboration

Circus between technique and technology  135

on what they call “fugitive planning,” see Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013). 13 After Jacques Rancière: “Politics, by contrast to the police, consists in transforming this space of moving along, of circulation, into the space for the appearance of a ­subject” (Rancière 2010, 37). 14 See, for example, Braidotti (2013), Latour (2010), Deleuze (1988).

References Arendt, Hannah. 2000. What is Freedom? In The Portable Hannah Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr, 438–461. New York: Penguin (Original work published 1960). Ash, James. 2012. Attention, Videogames and the Retentional Economies of Affective Amplification. Theory, Culture, and Society 29 (6): 3–26. Balksus, Elizabeth. 2010. Examining Potentiality in the Philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. Macalester Journal of Philosophy 19 (1): 158–180. Benjamin, Walter. 2008. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, trans. J. A. Underwood, 1–50. New York: Penguin. (Original work published 1936). Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1988. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (Robert Hurley, Trans.). San Francisco: City Lights Books. (Original work published 1981). Harney, Stefano and Fred Moten. 2013. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. New York: Minor Compositions. Heidegger, Martin. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology. In The Question ­Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt, 3–35. New York and London: Garland Publishing. Kann, Sebastian. 2016. Taking Back the Technical: Circus Dramaturgy Beyond the Logic of Mimesis (Unpublished MA Thesis). Utrecht University. Latour, Bruno. 2010. An Attempt at a “Compositionist Manifesto.” New Literary History 41: 471–490. Lievens, Bauke. 2015. First Open Letter to the Circus. “The Need to Redefine.” ­Etcetera: Tijdschrift voor Podiumkunsten. https://e-tcetera.be/first-open-letter-to-thecircus-the-need-to-redefine/ Lievens, Bauke. 2016. The Myth Called Circus. Etcetera: Tijdschrift voor Podiumkunsten. https://e-tcetera.be/the-myth-called-circus/ Massumi, Brian. 1992. A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari. London and Cambridge: MIT Press. Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. London and Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rancière, Jacques. 2010. Ten Theses on Politics. In Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Steven Corcoran, 27–44. New York and London: Continuum (Original work published 2001). Terranova, Tiziana. 2012. Attention, Economy, and the Brain. Culture Machine 13: 1–19.

11 CHAPLIN, BRECHT, FO Toward a concept of epic clowning Gaia Vimercati

Introduction I remain just one thing, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician. (Charlie Chaplin, The Observer, June 1960)

Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Grock, Oleg Popov, the Marx brothers, Jacques Tati, Slava Polunin, Paolo Nani, and Leo Bassi are just a few singular instances in an enduring dispensation of western cultural history: the clown. When it comes to tracing the origins of the clown, the question raises several controversies and hardly finds a straightforward answer, as the clown is the converging point of several artistic tendencies, culturally specific factors, and personal reinterpretations. What can be taken for granted is that in western culture, the clown is a constant and becoming presence who amuses spectators and challenges scholars, who still sway between considering it a mere character of entertainment or a prophetic messiah of truth. The clown has a great ability to adapt to differing contexts, openness, lack of straightforward answers about origins, and an enduring charm. Despite its progressive establishment and the increasing interest elicited by it, especially in modern times, the concept of clowning has been confined to the framework of popular culture and has often been marginalized as a matter of minor academic interest. When the Italian performer Dario Fo won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, a huge number of academics, journalists, and politicians took umbrage with the decision of the Swedish Royal Academy to award such an important prize to a clown, a fool, and a “jester of the working class” (Farrell 2001, 271). This world-famous episode makes clear that the field of clowning deserves if not an immediate exhaustive explanation, then at least a sharper understanding. The primary purpose of this chapter is to offer a close DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-15

Chaplin, Brecht, Fo: toward a concept of epic clowning  137

reading of the performativity of two major clowns of the twentieth century, Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) and Dario Fo (1926–2016) by using Bertolt Brecht’s notion of the epic as an interpretative tool. Far from claiming to provide any exhaustive explanation, this short chapter is an attempt to contribute to the research on clowning by proposing a very specific reading of the worlds of Fo and Chaplin. In the twentieth century, the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht revolutionized the world of performing arts by theorizing epic theater, which seems to have interesting connections to the world of clowns. Verfremdungseffekt and Gestus, key concepts in his narrative view of theater, are core features held by many clowns on stage throughout centuries and across different cultures. Brecht “simply adapted clown technique … shifting its use away from the comic mode and toward a serious debate,” according to McManus (McManus 2003, 54), in order to encourage the viewer to reconsider the content of a play under altered circumstances, thus suggesting that clowning has played a significant role in Brecht’s theories on theater. On the one hand, Brecht regards Chaplin as a key character in his conception of theater, stating, “The actor Chaplin, incidentally, would in many ways come closer to the epic than to the dramatic” and that epic theater “has to apply the only [natural] form of acting: the epic, story-telling kind. Chaplin is one of its masters” (1964, 56–58). On the other hand, Dario Fo has often been regarded as a Brechtian or epic clown. Ron Jenkins, former clown and one of Fo’s American collaborators, defines his style as “epic clowning,” his acts as “epic comedy,” and Fo himself as a “Brechtian clown” (1986, 171–173). Then, Fo’s commentary on Chaplin closes the circle: There is no better example than Charlie Chaplin of the way in which an artist can play on all the deepest memories filed away, perhaps in complete disorder, inside our minds. A great man of stage, an extraordinary storyteller, Chaplin knew how to make use of all conventions and stereotypes at the most appropriate pace and in the most effective way. (Fo 1991, 59) The clown is the storyteller and the one who breaks the mimetic convention to interact with the audience. Clowns tell their own version of the story by subverting paradigms through laughter. Like the Harlequin, the clown is “the only member of the core characters who is free to pass from space to space maintaining his clown persona” (McManus 2003, 96). By transcending the above conventions, the clown breaks the illusion of the scene and tests the limits of imposed convention, which undoubtedly turn out to be mimetic, but also social, and thus inevitably political. Brecht’s notion of epic might be a tool to discover more about the clownish substratum behind Chaplin and Fo’s acting; it might also serve to pave the way to a further reading of the clown archetype. Chaplin and Fo, who have very different

138  Gaia Vimercati

styles of acting and are barely comparable at first sight, seem to possess three common features: dialectics, political presence, and alienation, which are also three features constituting Brecht’s notion. Do other clowns display an “epic substratum?” Might these three characteristics be regarded as the discrimen between a clown in its noblest meaning and as a mere entertainer? Whatever the answer might be, Chaplin, Brecht, and Fo have taught us a thing so far: clowning is no laughing matter.

Chaplin and the epic: Gestus, montage, and narrativity Chaplin had an immense impact on the development of Brecht’s theories. The connection between Chaplin and the Brechtian epic has been commented on by Brecht on several occasions. In Brechtian theater, “the way the clowns speak … embodies an act of alienation” (Brecht 1964, 91). Thanks to the use of gestures and pantomime, Chaplin’s style narrows the aesthetic gap between cinema and theater by bringing, through Gestus, the cinematographic, narrative style to theater. This is why “the actor Chaplin, incidentally, would in many ways come closer to the epic than to the dramatic” (Brecht 1964, 91). It has been argued that the epic characteristics can be categorized into four general groups: character, narrative, performance, and spectatorship (Flaig 2010). A key element that Chaplin’s clowning leaves to the epic is the use of Gestus: how actors show that they are consciously playing a role, thus preventing the audience from falling into complete identification with the happenings on screen. Chaplin’s use of display, music, montage, and makeup created a completely alienated (verfremdet) world, which had a vital influence on Brecht’s theater. Even in Chaplin’s The Tramp, the question of identification deserves a more exhaustive explanation, as the clown is both the subject and the object of his representation (Willeford 1998, 109). And The Great Dictator is a remarkable work of alienating performance, of epic acting. In this film, alienation reaches a climax as Chaplin impersonates Dictator Hynkel. As Brecht points out about Chaplin’s Gestus, “If Chaplin were to play Napoleon he wouldn’t even look like him; he would show objectively and critically how Napoleon would behave in the various situations the author might put him in” (Brecht 1964, 68).1 In the Great Dictator, the audience observes not Hitler on stage, but Chaplin performing Hitler. Chaplin performs an alienated representation of Hitler through several details which build his overall Gestus, that is, the use of puns, fake symbolism, and gibberish. Chaplin does not adopt Hitler’s name, but shares the same initials, “Adenoid Hynkel.” Something similar happens to the other characters and their historical ascendants: “Benzino Napaloni” stands for dictator Benito Mussolini, “Garbitsch” for “Goebbels,” and “Herring” for “Göring.” Similar puns affect toponyms, for example, Germany and Italy become “Tomainia” and “Bacteria.” Since the characters are represented in a non-naturalistic way, the effect of alienation, brought about by blurring the lines between history and fiction, is enhanced. Viewers are aware of the fact that they are not watching Hitler but Chaplin acting as Hitler would. A gap is created.

Chaplin, Brecht, Fo: toward a concept of epic clowning  139

From the uniforms to the fake swastika, everything represents Nazi symbolism by not representing it entirely. This gap is essential for the satire to flourish and for the audience to receive its content critically. Even language undergoes a process of alienation. When addressing the masses (min. 14:35), Dictator Hynkel employs a sort of gibberish, nonsense language modeled on German cadence. It evokes Hitler’s demeanor on the level of the signifier, but it fails to completely bridge the gap to the signified. Hynkel talks using meaningless sounds but gives the impression that his expressions have an actual meaning, thus destroying the possibility of signification of language and satirizing the emptiness of propaganda. Chaplin’s epic personification of Hitler is successful not because he exaggerates, but because he shows how Hitler would have behaved on a given occasion with an absolute “economy of means” (Robinson 1996, 115). According to Chaplin, Brecht, and later Fo, the secret of epic acting is “not to overdo a thing” (Robinson 1996, 119) but to stick to the minimum segment of signification and make it recognizable. The most relevant feature of Chaplin’s Gestus is that it turns an individual set of gestures into a complete social attitude. As Brecht states, “A language is gestic when it is grounded in a gest and conveys particular attitudes adopted by the speaker towards other men” (1964, 104). Laughter springs automatically from the gap between the historical, pretentious Hitler and the genuine, innocent Chaplin epitomizing Hitler’s attitudes toward other men and society. In Chaplin’s comedy, Charlie the Tramp, Hynkel, and Monsieur Verdoux are busy interacting with the surrounding society and environment. The clown, like Chaplin, exists in an obstinate relation to a phenomenological otherness, whether it is a personified entity, pure chance, or accidental. This is why the resolution of trivial conflicts is the fulcrum of the clown’s experience, who exists for and with others. As Flaig points out: the gag-centered structure of Chaplin’s films, usually centered around a simple fable-like plot, are less concerned with the Whys of different relationships, but the Hows, the method and form of social linkages: if a tramp befriends a rich man, adopts an urchin or works in a factory, then the following X, Y or Z take place according to the accepted (and inevitably disrupted) norms of each given situation. (Flaig 2010, 45) This can be connected to the features of the epic as conceived by Brecht, who states: The main subject of the drama must be relationships between one man and another as they exist today … I show them in parables: if you act this way the following will happen, but if you act like that then the opposite will take place. (Flaig 2010, 45)

140  Gaia Vimercati

Chaplin’s gestures are not merely of a mime or pantomime, but reflect social attitudes and ways of relating to the outside world; they unveil the tricks of political powers. Chaplin is Brecht’s master of Gestus because he manages to convert “pratfalls, gags and stumbles into the very means for producing knowledge of social hierarchies, focusing on those hierarchies’ points of exclusion as well as those places most laughably weak and capable of reorientation” (Flaig 2010, 39). Montage and narrativity are strictly related. Chaplin’s movies consist of a horizontal development of scenes, “from actorly gesture to narrative form, from humorous gag to trampish character” (Flaig 2010, 39). Each scene is an autonomous entity with its own rules, but thanks to the technique of montage different episodic happenings take a broader sense as a whole. The spectator becomes the observer of Chaplin’s vicissitudes and connects the separate incidents together by observing Chaplin “absorbing them in the broad flow of his performance” ­( Brecht 1964, 56). To help the spectator do this, director Chaplin uses introducing captions to unify the fragmented scenes into a cohesive unit, the captions clarifying the relationship between events, especially in view of the silent character of the movies. But such a choice has a collateral effect, which implicitly bears on the movie’s “epic quality” or “narrativity.” Chaplin’s cinematographic style casts the protagonist’s adventures following the course of “a page of a book.” As Benjamin summarizes: Chaplin’s [Gestus] is not really that of an actor. [He] dissects the expressive movements of human beings into a series of minute innervations. Each single movement he makes is composed of a succession of staccato bits of movement. Whether it is his walk, the way he handles his cane, or the way he raises his hat—always the same jerky sequence of tiny movements applies the law of the cinematic image sequence to human motorial functions. (Benjamin 2002, 94) Moreover, in his theory of theater, Brecht describes the mask as one of the main weapons of alienation, as it brings the audience away from the dimension of real life (Brecht 1964, 102). Chaplin’s white makeup alienates him from the human world he desperately wants to adhere to.2 It “estranges a seemingly natural habit from its context, highlighting both the ridiculousness of the gesture as well as the social conventions that arbitrarily inform the habit” (Flaig 2010, 44). As Peacock (2009, 14) states in her Introduction: The style of clown costumes usually works with the mask or make-up to reinforce the sense of otherness. Often the elements of a clown costume will be recognized as everyday dress but the way they are combined will separate the clown from the world of everyday fashion. The juxtaposition of his mask with an ordinary, bourgeois costume destabilizes the spectators’ perception of him. On the one hand, its conventional attire

Chaplin, Brecht, Fo: toward a concept of epic clowning  141

connects Chaplin to the human community, and on the other, the mask highlights his oddity and ensures his immunity to human social mechanisms. In this way, spectators see him as both human and nonhuman. But as an alter ego of humankind, they accept and welcome the irruption of Chaplin’s chaos into their own ordinary lives. The gap between actor and spectator opens up. Spectators witness the realization of a human development with which they can only partially identify. They have to accept the subversion of norms that they are being made a part of.

Dario Fo and the epic: the political role of the clown Fo’s fervent satire and histrionic verve was meant to undermine the established order for decades to come and to enrich the whole history of popular culture. His clowning gives voice to contemporary urgencies and establishes a fil rouge between the popular culture of the Middle Ages and the popular needs of the working classes in the twentieth century. From the Middle Ages to the Commedia dell’arte, Fo turns Harlequins, jesters, fools, and madmen into avengers of the proletarian hunger: “clowns, like minstrels and ‘comics’, always deal with the same problem—hunger, be it hunger for food, for sex, or even for dignity, for identity, for power. The problem they invariable pose—who’s in command, who’s the boss?” (Fo 1991, 268). Clowns epitomize and at the same time make visible the paradoxes of the contemporary capitalistic world because: In the world of clowns there are two alternatives: to be dominated, and then we have the eternal underdog, the victim, as in the Commedia dell’Arte, or else to dominate, which gives us the boss, the white clown or Louis … He is in charge of the game, he gives the rules, he issues the insults, he makes and unmakes at will, while the various Tonys, the Augustes, the Pagliaccios live on their wits, occasionally rebelling but generally getting by as best as they can. (Fo 1991, 268) In his Marxist approach to epic theater, theater is a tool of revolt against the narcotic entertainment provided by mainstream or “commercial” theater. His purpose of changing society by changing theater takes its strength from the ­Brechtian belief that economic and religious elites rely on the culture industry (Kulturindustrie)3 of entertainment to exert their power: Power bends over backwards to ensure that people’s native imagination atrophies, that they eschew the effort involved in developing alternative ideas on what is occurring around them from those purveyed by the mass media, that they cease to experience the thrill of opposition, abandon the vicious habit of searching a reasoned detachment from immediate things,

142  Gaia Vimercati

foreswear the tendency to sum them up, reconsider them and above all to portray the essence of them in styles that are different. (Fo 1991, 118) Theater should not be a prokinetic drug to assist digestion, but on the contrary, must interrupt the social order by questioning people’s perception of society. Accordingly, theater should not “tame” (“ammaestrare”) but “instruct” (“educare”) the audience because, as Benjamin states: The general educational approach of Marxism is determined by the dialectic at work between the attitude of teaching and that of learning: something similar occurs in epic theatre with the constant dialectic between the action which is shown on the stage and the attitude of showing an action on the stage. (Benjamin 2002, 11) The audience should attend challenging shows whose impact endures and pervades their private lives afterward. In this sense, Fo “expects them to continue rethinking even the day after, when they go back to work in their factories. The performance never ends” (Maceri 1998, 12). In this conception of theater, the clown plays a fundamental role in making the audience aware of the capitalistic hierarchies of power that need to be subverted. Clowns, Harlequins, and jesters are themselves personifications of the grotesque, whose essential principle is “degradation, that is, the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract; it is a transfer to the material level to the sphere of earth and body in their indissoluble unity” (Bakhtin 1984, 19). Clowns escape the mechanisms of power and remind people that the best way to exercise power is not to resist it, but laugh at it. In the Middle Ages, the jester was not simply a character of entertainment, but an inherently political protagonist, as he embodied the alter ego of the king and was the only one immune from punishment. In this way, the clown discloses the relationship between the individual and power, thus putting the audience into a moral frame of mind: A moral subject is under discussion, in the sense that the work sets out the indication for a concept of life, of behaviour, of the idea of being and becoming in relation to God and his teaching, but also in relation to the society of men with all their laws and conventions. (Fo 1991, 148) As expressed in the Ancient Greek sense of polis, each citizen has a moral sense of obligation to fellow citizens, which make them a political actor. Hence, the important role of the clown: The plays [giullarate] contain, in addition to instruction regarding Divine Law, a viewpoint on the proper rules of social life, and a condemnation of

Chaplin, Brecht, Fo: toward a concept of epic clowning  143

injustice and wickedness. Morality, then, also takes in politics. There does not exist in ancient theatre, be it religious or secular, a drama which does not set out to include as a fundamental presupposition the teaching of a principle held to be moral and civil. (Fo 1991, 148) To expose these relations, Fo uses laughter and the grotesque as his primary weapons, which Bakhtin defines in the following terms: The grotesque image reflects a phenomenon in transformation, an as yet unfinished metamorphosis … of growth and becoming. … The other indispensable trait is ambivalence. In this image we find both poles of transformation, the old and the new, the dying and the procreating, the beginning and the end of metamorphosis. (Bakhtin 1984, 24) Since the classical aesthetics of completeness still bears on our perception of power—from the Renaissance to Neoclassicism and to the totalitarian regimes of Italian Fascism and Nazism—the use of the grotesque mocks power and shatters people’s perceptions of it. In this regard, Franca Rame posits that the greatest achievement of power was to inculcate a nonsensical shame of the body in people’s minds and an enduring sense of guilt, which was widespread throughout the Christian doctrine in order for the institutions to keep the status quo. Restoring the genuine dimension of incompleteness and corporality in the figure of the clown is, for Fo, the way to reconnect the popular spirit with its roots and empower people with a new awareness of despotic powers and capitalistic norms. Laughter is also a great weapon. According to Bakthin, “laughter degrades and materializes” (Bakhtin 1984, 20). Therefore, as Fo points out, “authorities, any authorities, fear above all other things laughter, derision or even the smile, because laughter denotes a critical awareness; it signifies imagination, intelligence and a rejection of all fanaticism” (Fo 1991, 109). Laughter, which is a rational process, puts a distance between emotions and fears and relativizes conventions (Verfremdung). Laughter delegitimizes and dethrones kings. Through bathos, the clown generates a “temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions” (Bakhtin 1984, 10) and readmits the spirit of “carnival” in society, where not only order and power are made ineffective, but lose their right to exist. Carnival, the living dimension of the clown, is “the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal. It was hostile to all that was immortalized and completed” (Bakhtin 1984, 10). According to Fo, “laughter is sacred” (Farrell 2001, 277), as it must be “not an individual reaction … but the laughter of all the people, … universal in scope” and must show “the entire world … in its droll aspect” (Bakhtin 1984, 11). Fo’s

144  Gaia Vimercati

main goal was to turn his audience into self-conscious spectators and to push them toward “a new outlook on the world, to realize the relative nature of all that exists, and to enter a completely new order of things” (Bakhtin 1984, 10). Laughter is the proper means for achieving this: In laughter, the human being becomes fully conscious of his own potential, of his individuality and his ability to assert his autonomy from convention and rule. Laughter denotes a critical awareness; it signifies imagination, intelligence and a rejection of all fanaticism. In the scale of human evolution, we have first homo sapiens, then homo faber, and finally homo ridens, and this last is always the most difficult to subdue or make conform. (Farrell 2001, 257) The distancing, alienating power of laughter is one of the principles from which the Brechtian Epic takes its strength. This is assumed in theory by Brecht and remarkably turned into practice by Fo.

Dario Fo on stage: Gestus, grammelot, and situation Above all, Fo praises Chaplin’s storytelling skills ( fabulatore) and his great ability to manipulate conventions and stereotypes. Seeing as Brecht takes inspiration from Chaplin, and Fo’s narrative theater is deliberately closer to the epic than to the dramatic, it seems reasonable to establish a parallel between them. These features cover a wide range of types. The elements connecting Fo to Chaplin are the principles of the “economy of means,” the importance of the situation, the need for human observation as theoretical premises for a theater based on life, and the use of gibberish that he calls “grammelot.” Among the features that are specifically Brechtian, there is the use of the Gestus, montage, mask, narration on stage, detachment from characters, use of laughter, and clowns as means of evoking alienation, along with the breaking of theatrical conventions. However, the most substantial trait d’union is their desire for a properly instructive theater with primarily political aims, which can be realized only through the introduction of narrativity. In Fo’s works, reality becomes a reenactment of facts—never a direct representation of them. Chaplin’s cinematic approach is of essential importance in understanding Fo’s clowning. Fo’s theater relies on the fundamental premise that the human mind receives external input like a video camera, capturing events by juxtaposing them and reconstituting their meaning according to narrative sequences that are ordered according to a set of priorities. The epic actor stresses particular passages of the representation so that the audience connects the events in the desired sequence: “we all carry inside our skulls a machine which no technical mechanism can equal” (Fo 1991, 97). Given that “we are frequently, often without being aware of it, able to zoom in on a subject, pick out a detail, widen the field of vision, range over a vast panorama,” the audience becomes “video-dependent …

Chaplin, Brecht, Fo: toward a concept of epic clowning  145

on the actor” (Fo 1991, 97). This occurs in Chaplin films as well, which appear to have anticipated some kind of epic practice. In the epic theater, montage helps tell a story, as disparate segments take on meaning only once they are related and coordinated. The same situation can have different meanings depending on which elements are highlighted in the editing process. Montage represents the concrete possibility of creating meaning by dissecting and reassembling identical situations into different orders and hence distinct sequences of meaning. In the same way, the human mind changes the arrangements of context to determine the sense of a given situation. The clown is constantly “in situation.” As Sartre argues, “there is no theatre without situation” (Fo 1991, 90). Fo believes the ability to create situations is what keeps the spectator interested. The epic comedy is a sequence of situations that the audience synchronizes as a meaningful entity. The Gestus is significant because it shows the relationships between characters and relates them to specific situations. It creates a sense of urgency and liberated from any inhibitions and, most of all, conventions. If the Gestus dies, so does the pantomime. The clown’s relations within the situation are in this way flattened under an aseptic representation of reality. For Fo, like Chaplin, the Gestus must not be merely mimetic. On the one hand, it should enhance the creation of imagery; on the other, it should be used to comment on events after they have occurred. Fo employs gestures to shape the Gestus: he puts the mime at the mercy of the pantomime. He never relies on sophisticated scenarios or musical apparatuses, but creates everything on stage through his clown persona. The musical rhythm springs from his voice and the Gestus accompanies these sudden changes in rhythm.4 It has a visual impact—it helps to represent the fact happening on stage—and a musical one, as it draws the audience into the situation. Through the Gestus, the clowns recreate life a posteriori. Mimetic gestures should not imitate life but recreate it by reinventing it.5 Pure technique leads to an aseptic theater far from reality and from human life—neither didactic nor political. Technique must always be interwoven with real urgencies and set into a situational context, whether ideological, moral, or dramaturgic. As Fo states, “it is a grave mistake to separate technique from its ideological, moral and dramatic context” (Fo 1991, 144). All conventions must be destroyed; the only rule to be respected is a complete adherence to human life, which is inherently political. “It is important to begin from reality and not from the conventions of reality” (Fo 1991, 144). On stage, Fo fragments characters and their Gestus. One character’s Gestus is deconstructed and recomposed into a myriad of different small sections. He breaks his body parts into individual units and then recomposes them to give birth to new grotesque characters, which are built up through disparate, incompatible elements. Echoing Benjamin on Chaplin’s ability to disarticulate life, Fo states, “In mime, it is a good rule to publicise gestures and articulations … This ‘over-gesturing’ serves to give clarity, to establish the style of the action, to make it less banal and to give it a certain spaciousness” (Fo 1991, 145). Indeed, it is the

146  Gaia Vimercati

human mind which has the task of recomposing the content of representation in a meaningful sequence of images. The supreme task of the epic clown is to disarticulate and disrupt reality in order to give the audience a chance to recompose it. To some extent, grammelot is part of the Gestus. According to Fo’s definition, it indicates the onomatopoeic flow of a speech, articulated without rhyme or reason, but capable of transmitting rhythms and sounds (Fo 1991, 56). This fictional language is based on the onomatopoeic reproduction of morphemes belonging to a given linguistic system and, along with the Gestus, has a fundamental role in breaking the illusion of realism. Both grammelot and Gestus are the main instruments of Fo’s V-Effekt. By breaking down any naturalistic representation of life, even in its most conventional human expression, namely language, the audience gains self-awareness as spectators and a detachment from reality takes place. Along with the breaking of the fourth wall and a massive use of asides, the fulcrum of Fo’s theater consists precisely in this mutual relation with the audience: Raising the voice and projecting it has the effect of widening the space and of involving the audience almost physically, so that they become like a chorus, or like full on-stage participants. This is typical of the approach of epic theatre. The spectator must be given the role of public bystander, fully aware of his own position. (Fo 1991, 98) The use of the voice broadens the stage space; spectators must always be involved and challenged. They must feel uncomfortable while watching the show, and this is what Fo’s theater aims to do: retell a story so as to tell the truth. Without falling into a mere recounting of facts, theater must reenact reality to deal with controversial themes. By broadening the theatrical space, the stage becomes a forum for discussion and a mutual relationship between actor and audience begins. Spectators become witnesses, but are asked to bear the consequences of their roles by participating actively. A theater is political when all the members of the polis actively respond to their duties as individuals in front of their community. The clown functions to remind us of our responsibility to others. To achieve the epic, Fo’s characters are taken from the Middle Ages. The temporal gap makes spectators aware of the true happenings and their reenactment on stage. Medieval characters also give Fo the chance to revive the spirit of the fool and the grotesque body by triggering a carnivalesque laughter. Finally, they revive precapitalist ages and allow Fo to criticize the current system through decontextualization. It is no wonder that the protagonist of “Morte accidentale di un anarchico” is a madman revealing the truth hidden by the authorities, in which “Mistero buffo” (Fo 2014) displays Lazzaro, Jesus Christ, and Boniface VIII or in which “L’anomalo bicefalo,” the Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi, has a grotesque body. Laughter intervenes through the grotesque and makes people aware of a deeper reality by distancing them from the contingencies of fact. In Fo’s plays, laughter is not cathartic or liberating, but alienating, as it triggers a sense of bitterness toward the facts being narrated. The audience is conscious of

Chaplin, Brecht, Fo: toward a concept of epic clowning  147

the fact that a jester is elevating them to a higher level of truth by warning them and inciting them to act. The representation of Berlusconi and Putin in “L’anomalo bicefalo” takes the grotesque shape of a popular tale, never resembling a news report. The audience laughs at their abnormal representation, thereby consciously acknowledging the temporary victory of the jester on politics.

Fo: an instance of anti-epic theater? Although he declared allegiance to Brecht, Fo pushes some of the features of the epic so far that they could be considered anti-epic. By basing his clowning on the alienating function of the fool, Fo’s theatrical piece becomes a street performance, where the gap between actors and spectators dissipates and is negotiated. Spectators are not merely regarded as observers, but as creators of meaning. Like the carnival, there is no “outside” and everyone participates in the collective rite of the performance; laughter is the glue holding them together. All of Fo’s theatrical scripts are open texts. According to the most rooted clown tradition of Commedia dell’arte, Fo adapts the text to the particular circumstances of a given performance. The text evolves and responds to the public’s needs. Improvisation and interaction are the ruling principles of his plays, and they often turn a world-renowned performance like “Mistero Buffo” into an absolutely original and stand-alone performance based on the imprevisto (unforeseen), the spontaneous play with the audience. A great example of this can be seen in “L’Anomalo bicefalo,” where Franca Rame mispronounces a word and Fo takes this occasion to obstinately mock her, thereby creating impromptu an exhilarating comic addition to the show. Fo turns his audience into deuteragonists: the rule is this: keep your eye on a certain forceful and prominent individual in the stalls so as to understand exactly what kind of audience you will be dealing with in a few moments, and, above all, do all you can to make people relax. (Fo 1991, 115) By turning his shows into clown performances, not only does he destroy conventions, but even acts as if they are nonexistent, which makes us wonder if his epic theater is indeed an instance of anti-epic theater. About “The Tale of a Tiger,” Farrell says: There he gave a demonstration of his own, non-Brechtian style of epic acting, switching effortlessly from one character to another, turning lightly to address the audience as though the fourth wall were an alien imposition to be ignored rather than destroyed, transforming himself from man to beast and filling the stage with armies which only the crassly unimaginative could fail to see. (Farrell 2001, 215)

148  Gaia Vimercati

Fo’s clowning is so radical that it could be regarded as anti-epic acting, which not only transcends theatrical conventions, but ignores them. In this sense, Fo transcends Brecht: he pushes the Brechtian theatrical conventions so far that he overcomes his master. Fo does not deny the rules, he ignores them. Just as the clown ignores the rules of tragedy, Fo transcends them by doing the same. Like the Harlequin (Bakhtin 1984, 8), he does not need a stage to play the fool, because he is already the fool before, during, and after the representation; he is on stage at all times. As Peacock says, “Interestingly, whilst the clown performer, in common with any theatrical performer, exists in the limen, unusually the clown can step over the threshold into reality to acknowledge the audience and can then step back again” (Peacock 2009, 11). This radicalization of some Brechtian features is, however, the climax of Fo’s being epic. In assimilating Brecht and negating him, Fo proves to be truly dialectic.6 In the dialectic proceeding of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, Fo represents the mediating step, the negative moment which has to be overcome in order to ensure the proceeding of art through the reaffirmation of the positive. When he criticizes the schools of theater for training their actors according to static canons with no adherence to life, he states that “people of this stamp have a short life, because they lack the capacity of renewal” (Fo 1991, 60). Fo’s unconditional faith in the idea of a dialectical progression of the arts means that in negating his master, he is epic indeed. As Brooker notes, “a theatre today which copies Brecht, or which adheres to his production, is not Brechtian” (Brooker 1988, 7–8).

The clown and the epic: political, dialectic, alienating Despite the different contexts, Chaplin and Fo’s clowning share three features of Brecht’s theory of epic theater: the constant presence of dialectics, politics, and alienation. Fo’s negation of Brecht makes of him an epic clown and fosters a progression in theater. In dialectic terms, Fo accepts, negates, and reassembles his forerunner’s precepts into a new theater responding to historical needs. Like Brecht, Fo is persuaded that theater should be “for innovations, against renovations,” and that the most important thing for theater is to stick to the present moment even when dealing with the past. To be innovative, the past must be negated and rehabilitated into new forms. Fo becomes the negative step in a necessary process toward reaffirmation of a positive moment in the final phase of synthesis. Only by negating Brecht can a true progression of theater be achieved, this being the most essentially epic outcome that Brecht could have expected from a successor like Fo. In this sense, Fo proves to be truly epic whenever he performs in an anti-Brechtian way, as critics say. The survival of the clown through different phases of history, together with his reaffirmation under new shapes (jesters, fools, buffoons, etc.), show that negation is necessary for a strong reaffirmation of the self. The clown’s inexhaustible “creative transformation” ensures his survival and great adaptability to different cultural contexts. The clown rejects fixed forms of mimetic representation in art

Chaplin, Brecht, Fo: toward a concept of epic clowning  149

and negates the conventions of illusion. By eluding artistic convention, the clown is freed from the tyranny of these restrictions. Clowns are not simply artists or performers, but rather “performing artists” (Kimber 2000, 85) expressing themselves openly, fluidly, and innovatively. As Kimber points out of Chaplin: Charlie embodies art as performance, and the artist embodies art as representation. Performance suggests improvisation, flux, continuity with life: representation suggests deliberation, fixity, separateness from life. Charlie’s practice of art as a function continuous with life is beautifully expressed in The Vagabond in the scene of his serenading of Edna. (Kimber 2000, 85) The clown puts life into art and art into life. Chaplin, like Fo, does so with different expressive means. He “can’t, and doesn’t want to, distinguish the energies appropriate to each” (Kimber 2000, 85). As Peacock suggests: This is a central and vital difference between the actor and the clown. Whilst Turner contends that the actor cannot be aware that he is aware, I would contend that the clown has to be aware that he is aware, as it is this awareness that facilitates a direct communication with the audience. (Peacock 2009, 11) Such a balanced mixture of art and life, of mimesis and performance, imbues the clown with this innate dialectic essence, which has ensured survival and powered success thus far. The clown survives throughout history because, like the Harlequin, “he is himself despite his travesty” (Willeford 1998, 108). The red nose, which does not turn the clown into another person but deforms their personality, allows the clown to personify their own role. According to Peacock: The clown is not an interpreter. In his or her performance the view and reaction to the world is the same for the creation (the clown persona) as for the performer. It is for this reason that actors who clown must be treated rather differently from clowns. (Peacock 2009, 14) The second step of this analysis consists in defining the epic as political.7 As pointed out in many passages by Fo himself, mimesis and power are on the same level, as mimetic conventions might be read as corresponding to the rules of political order. For this reason, the “clown is first and foremost a political performer, a performer who reacts to the power structure of whatever culture he lives in” (Farrell 2001, 116). Coming from the outside and claiming a seat in the center, the clown “destroys and suggests a utopia which lies outside/beside the world he is trying to disrupt” (McManus 2003, 34). The clown questions the rules of the polis: the conventions on which power is built is questioned as

150  Gaia Vimercati

well as its interference with the relationships among members of the community. In this sense, Rame states that “all theatre is political, all art is political. It is when someone wants to hide the political value … that we have the most strident political value” (Farrell 2001, 195). The final step of our analysis of the epic concerns the notion of alienation. The clown uses laughter to alienate the audience and draw them in. Laughter establishes the clown’s own realm. According to Bergson, laughter is a rational activity as it does not affect feelings but is derived from the interruption of a mental automatism.8 Because “laughter demolishes fear and piety before an object, before a world, making of it an object of familiar contact and thus clearing the ground for an absolutely free investigation of it” (Bakhtin 1981, 23), it becomes a weapon of alienation and gains an anti-cathartic function. By detaching the audience from the content of representation, laughter cultivates a collective consciousness by making individuals aware that the only possible catharsis must be achieved outside of the theater through political engagement. Epic clowns perform an anti-cathartic function, in the sense that they warn others that “cleansing can only come through political action: theatrical action is meant to spark political action, not to provide the purification itself ” (McManus 2003, 69). Through laughter, the clown shatters, detaches, and reverses the paradigms of reality in the name of irrationality, thereby forcing the audience to reconsider the new relationships from overturned perspectives. This attitude is a constant of clowns. Rame has remarked on the relationship between clowns, laughter, and rational activity: “I have always wanted to make people laugh while thinking, and to think while laughing” (Farrell 2001, 188–189). Power fears laughter because it frees people from the emotional inhibition of fears on which any despotic power relies. This is why the laughing personality “is always the most difficult to make conform” (Farrell 2001, 258). Laughter creates immunity from power.

Conclusion Chaplin and Fo share an epic substratum and this might lead to the question whether the fil rouge between different clowns could consist in the systematic occurring of these three epic features (dialectics, politics, alienation) covered by the clown archetype or if such an analysis could be further applied to other clowns. By developing an innovative notion of epic, Brecht widely enriched theater by implicitly revaluating the role of the clown and separating it from that of actors, thereby reallocating clowns to their ultimate task “to give the audience a genuine insight into the dilemmas of the human condition” (Brooker 1988, 2). In turn, this might make audiences “see the contradictions in the existing state of society: it might even make them ask themselves how it might be changed” (Esslin 1984, 127). Thanks to Brecht and his development of theater, which openly invites its successors to negate it for the sake of artistic, political, and social progress, the clown is elevated to a supreme metaphor of negation. Starting from the assumptions that there is no clowning without situation (as the clown play happens

Chaplin, Brecht, Fo: toward a concept of epic clowning  151

necessarily in situation) and that for Sartre “there is no theatre without situation” (Fo 1991, 90), we may now carry the proposition one step further: if there is no theater without negation, then there can be no theater without clowns.

Notes 1 Note that Brecht (1964, 69) released this comment in 1934. The Great Dictator was released in 1940. 2 See Brecht (1964, 95) for the importance of makeup. 3 This term was coined by Adorno and Horkheimer. Their main assumption is that culture produces standardized goods that are used to turn citizens into passive consumers. See Adorno and Horkheimer (1997). 4 An example of Fo’s rhythmic language can be found in “L’anomalo bicefalo” at min. 44:19. 5 “The art of mime is the art of communication by synthesis; it does not aim to imitate natural gestures slavishly, but to hint, to indicate, to imply, to goad the imagination” (Fo 1991, 148). 6 For a full understanding of the importance of this concept in context, see Benjamin (2002, 11–25). 7 The term “political” should not be taken literally but as conceived by the ancient Greeks, who spoke about the polis as a community of members that each individual is responsible to. Therefore, we should distinguish between the terms political and politicized. On stage, the clown’s performance can be politicized when it deals with politicians or public figures. However, the choice to politicize their clowning on stage does not add or detract anything from the political essence implied by the term epic. 8 For a full explanation of this concept, see Bergson (2014, 46).

References Adorno, Theodor W. and Max Horkheimer. 1997. Dialectic of Enlightenment ( John Cumming, Trans.). London: Verso Editions. Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. Epic and Novel. In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Trans.), ed. Michael Holquist, 3–40. Austin: University of Texas. Bakhtin, M. M. 1984. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Benjamin, Walter. 2002. Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings (Michael W. Jennings, Trans.), ed. Howard Eiland. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. Bergson, Henry. 2014. Laughter. An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Connecticut: Martino Fine Books. Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic ( John Willett, Trans. and Ed.). London: Methuen. Brooker, Peter. 1988. Bertolt Brecht: Dialectics, Poetry, Politics. London: Croom Helm. Esslin, Martin. 1984. Brecht, a Choice of Evils: A Critical Study of the Man, His Work, and His Opinions. London: Methuen. Farrell, Joseph. 2001. Dario Fo and Franca Rame: Harlequins of the Revolution. London: Methuen. Flaig, Paul. 2010. Brecht, Chaplin and the Comic Inheritance of Marxism. In Brecht, Marxism, Ethics, ed. Friedemann J. Weidauer, 38–59, The Brecht Yearbook (35). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

152  Gaia Vimercati

Fo, Dario. 1991. The Tricks of the Trade ( Joe Farrell, Trans.). London: Methuen Drama. Fo, Dario. 2014. Mistero buffo: Giullarata Popolare di Dario Fo. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore. Jenkins, Ron. 1986. Dario Fo: The Roar of the Clown. TDR 30 (1): 171–179. Kimber, John. 2000. The Art of Charlie Chaplin. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. Maceri, Domenico. 1998. Dario Fo: Jester of the Working Class. World Literature Today 72 (1): 9–14. McManus, Donald. 2003. No Kidding!: Clown as Protagonist in Twentieth-century Theater. Newark: University of Delaware. Peacock, Louise. 2009. Serious Play: On Modern Clown Performance. Chicago: Intellect Books. Robinson, David. 1996. Charlie Chaplin. The Art of Comedy. London: Thames and Hudson. Willeford, William. 1998. Il Fool E Il Suo Scettro: Viaggio Nel Mondo Dei Clown, Dei Buffoni E Dei Giullari. Bergamo: Moretti & Vitali.

12 TO WALK THE TIGHTWIRE Ante Ursić

To walk the tightwire There are intrinsic connections between art and life. Art often functions as a metaphor for life, linking the individual to the changing and expanding world, assisting in comprehension and navigation. As one social philosopher suggests: Our world lies between two extremes. We balance along the metaphoric bridge, our life is modeled upon our art; and our arts are modeled upon our life. We are in transit between life and art as much as we are between life and death. (Shiff 1978, 122) Art and artistic performances therefore offer a unique angle on our understanding of reality. The tightwire1 artist’s perspective in particular might be used as a subject for social analysis.2 An artist on the wire embodies eternal tensions between life and artistic expression due to the ultimate underlying presence of the timeless void, that is, death. The tightwire performer’s act illuminates crucial questions of western modernity: paradoxes around individual freedoms, territorial and spatial conquest, and the role of the subject (in this case, the artist) and audience. Combining my own experiences along with the acts of other artists and social theory, I address several social, theoretical, and political issues in an analysis of western modernity, urbanization, and body and dance politics through the lens of the tightwire artist. I argue there is a compelling alternative to the pressures of efficiency and pragmatism—the crucial elements of the modern western “spell”—and that it is a “small dance” approach that resists domination by imposed regulations and allows living life in the present.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-16

154  Ante Ursić

The imagery of the balanced tightwire performer (also known colloquially as the tightrope walker or high-wire performer) is often used to symbolize a challenging endeavor, as in the idiom, “it’s a high-wire act.” This dangerous undertaking is understood to conclude by definition in binary terms—in either “success” or “failure”—and the two outcomes are located literally within a millimeter of each other. In such a risky situation, the protagonist (the hero) must make decisions intuitively, as any misstep can lead to a literally fatal consequence. Still, the thrill of the walk combines two elements: the transcendence of the rope (symbolizing navigation of a path through a difficult situation via skill and luck) and the danger of failure (the fatal fall into the abyss). While this common expression of a balancing act on a thin line might be useful for analysis, the main emphasis in this essay is on the image of the tightwire artist as a symbol of modernity.3 Two famous high-wire artists—Nik Wallenda and Philippe Petit—aptly illustrate this approach. Wallenda, a member of a famous dynasty of high-wire performers, distinguished himself by crossing the Grand Canyon on June 24, 2013, without a harness or safety net.4 The twenty-­ two-minute walk performed 1,500 meters above the Little Colorado River Gorge was broadcast live, worldwide, exclusively by Discovery Channel. It was the most tweeted event of the day. The wire used by tightwire performers deserves special attention because it is made of material of a specific significance. The “rope” used by tightwire walkers is not just a simple string, but several thin steel strings woven into one durable, immensely tight, and nearly indestructible cable. The thickness varies between two and five centimeters, depending on the distance that has to be covered. Additionally, while the wire is the most visible element of a walk, it is only one part of a complex engineering system that sustains a crossing. The system involves industrial ratchets, pillars, anchors, shackles, and, of course, manpower. These materials and tools are manufactured for highly industrial purposes, especially for building infrastructure like bridges, streets, freight harbors, and tunnels. In other words, the tightwire is a product of the modern industrial era. In the Wallenda case, an entire industrial construction kit was brought up to—and installed—in the natural setting of the Colorado Plateau in order for him to complete his feat. Without modern materials and manufacturing, his conquest of the gorge would be impossible. Wallenda’s crossing of the Grand Canyon might therefore be seen as symbolizing the western hegemonic action of conquering space, in part for self-­ engulfment and self-grandeur and in part for capitalist consumerism and striving for profit.5 For the success of his undertaking, the tightwire walker must accomplish a task that is congruent to the task of the colonizer. Both start by surveying new ground and mapping the topography of the landscape. Furthermore, the artistic endeavor attempts to dominate space, both vertically and horizontally, and thus serves as a critical metaphor for the western concept of colonization, which desires to “extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos” (Lem 2002, 82).

To walk the tightwire  155

According to the Australian philosopher, historian, and artist Paul Carter, after a successful survey, the next step of the colonizer is to inaugurate and establish new ground. The very specific characteristic of this ground is creating a two-­d imensional flat surface. The realm of the flat surface demands that all obstacles be removed, bulldozed, and tunneled, and then replaced by newly erected temples of modernity (Carter 1996a, 3). As Carter notes, “Progress, it seems, is built on the ruins of process; in order to stand erect, man must, it seems, stamp the earth flat, turning it into a passive planisphere” (1996a, 9).6 Since the colonized space must become profitable as soon as possible, its infrastructure must be built as efficiently as possible in a very specific way, that is, in a linear fashion. Just as the colonizer who desecrated native lands with total disregard for tradition, ritual, and local culture, Wallenda’s walk symbolizes domination over sacred Navajo land. As he crosses, he constantly praises the Lord and thanks Jesus for every step on the wire, and finally kisses the ground on the other side of the gorge. His emblematic conquest is akin to the conduct of Christian conquistadors on the way to their new colonies. While Wallenda’s walk used the natural grandeur of the Grand Canyon as the backdrop for his act, the tightwire walk evokes a different kind of reading in an urban setting. There, the surface is already flattened: the streets and ­buildings— the new sacred places—are the anchors of the newly flattened ground that prevent it from slipping away. Carter notes: The monumentality of the places we create—our cities, harbors, highways, even our provincial cottages—is an attempt to arrest the ground, to prevent it from slipping away from under our feet. We build in order to stabilize the ground, to provide ourselves with a secure place where we can stand and watch. (1996a, 2) In modern cities, the subjugation of the ground has been accomplished already: the lines of efficiency are already imposed, incorporated through city planners and architects. Urban development is in permanent need of a fluid means of transportation of traffic, humans, and commodities. The straight line therefore seems to offer the perfect solution, on the horizontal as well as on the vertical plane. Le Corbusier, the famous French city planner and architect, praises the line and the man who incorporates it, “Man walks in a straight line because he has a goal and knows where he is going, he has made up his mind to reach some particular place and he goes straight to it” (Carter 2004, 38). In other words, the one who walks in a straight line thinks in a straight line. The linearity of thought is aligned with the linearity of buildings, streets, railroad tracks, and metro tunnels. Imagine how perfectly modern a city would be if all pedestrians walked on wires above the ground, avoiding traffic jams, traffic lights, and getting from one point to the other as efficiently as possible.

156  Ante Ursić

In the current neoliberal condition, the two-dimensional horizontal plane is a requirement for a “modern” society whose members are constantly in movement. The major concern of city inhabitants is to be able to move, in the very sense of being capable of moving. Such ability depends on many factors, including affluence, which separates people in motion from those incapable of it. The movements of the wealthy, for instance, are unconstrained by geographic boundaries and time zones: utilizing their private jets as efficiently as possible, they jump from continent to continent, from business meeting to business meeting, not even having to wait at check-in counters as common airline passengers do. In contrast, the desolate are crushed at the corner of the sidewalk, nearly invisible, nearly stepped over, nearly flattened down to the horizontal level. They have lost their verticality on the very slippery two-dimensional floor where there is little to hold on to if balance is lost. André Lepecki, commenting on Pope.L’s “Crawlings,” 7 writes that “giving up of verticality, the slow progression along the sagittal plane, is already a critique of the smooth kinetic functioning of the modern city, based on ideals of efficient flow of bodies and commodities” (2006, 97). Furthermore, Lepecki agrees with Sloterdijk that “ontologically, modernity is a pure being-toward-movement” (2006, 7). In the case of the tightwire artist, the notion of balance as the permanent action of moving becomes crucial. After all, compared to the floor, slipperiness doubles on the tightwire due to its very specific texture. Although the tightwire artist sometimes projects the image of complete stillness to the untrained eye, this is an illusion. In fact, he is constantly moving and perpetually renegotiating his center of gravity over the wire: to stop moving would eventually lead to a fall. Following Sloterdijk’s notion of the “kinetic impulse of modernity,” the tightwire artist’s act can therefore be used as an analytical device (Lepecki 2006, 12). From this perspective, a tightwire walker like Wallenda, who does not stop moving and who walks on a slippery line toward a definite purpose without changing his cadence, seems to be “modernity’s permanent emblem” (Lepecki 2006, 8). Wallenda’s approach is sensible but is it the only conceivable way? Perhaps we might consider an alternative way of moving on the wire by following the ideas of the French philosopher and writer Paul Valéry. He distinguishes between two realms of expression, a prosaic one and a poetic one. While walking is a part of the prosaic realm, dance is close to “poetry’s symmetry of sound and sense.” Walking, he says, like prose, has a definite aim; it is an act directed at something we wish to reach. Dancing, however, is “a system of actions; but of actions whose end is in themselves.” Both walking and dancing use “the same organs, the same bones, the same muscles, only differently coordinated and aroused… Prose and poetry use the same words, the same syntax, the same forms, and the same sounds or tones, but differently coordinated and differently aroused” (Valéry et al. 1977, 74–97). When the walker reaches his goal, the act of walking has served its purpose and is therefore negated. But although the dance ends, the act of dancing has been the goal all along. Carter adds:

To walk the tightwire  157

The very difference is that prose resembles walking, in being an act directed at something we wish to reach, while dance is creating, maintaining, and exalting a certain state, by a periodic movement that can be executed on the spot. (1996a, 291) Western styles of dance developed on the already flattened ground, and it is therefore problematic to use them as a direct counterpart to walking. Carter argues, “After all, without the labors in discovering and creating a clearing, leveling its irregularities and removing its obstacles, the figures of the dancer could hardly be performed” (1996a, 291). Valéry’s ideas, however, evoke an association with a specific kind of dance, the so-called “small dance.” This now-established movement practice was developed by Steve Paxton, an experimental dancer and choreographer who is regarded as a crucial figure in the invention of a dance practice called “contact improvisation.”8 The central idea of small dance is that there is no stillness in the body; the body is always balancing. The dancer who exerts small dance on the spot attempts to tune into the minimal movements that are constantly happening. The dancer does not try to control these movements as much as contemplate the structure and kinetics of his body. For instance, he might focus on minimal muscular activities or on movements of the diaphragm as well as circulation of body fluids. As Paxton states, “Tuned to gravity, reflexes arrange our skeletons, aligning weights and proportions to maintain our stand. Noticing the small dance gives the mind a way to tune to the speed of reflex” (1986, 1). The idea of small dance shines through Petit’s legendary high-wire crossing. Decades before Wallenda’s performance, Petit undertook a voyage between the Twin Towers in New York City in 1974.9 Supported by friends, he was able to install a rope between the North and the South towers without permission from local authorities. The resulting “Biggest Artistic Crime” of the century was depicted in the Oscar winning documentary Man on Wire as well as in other accounts. Much like Wallenda, Petit used a kind of industrial construction kit to tighten the steel wire, utilizing modern materials and tools. Like Wallenda, Petit meditated in front of the abyss the morning of his crossing. Yet, on the wire, he behaves quite differently than Wallenda, if not almost completely opposite. Petit does not use the wire just as a directional walk to reach the other tower in the straightest line possible. His being on the wire has no other aim but to be on the wire. Thus, he executes a dance that might be considered similar to the method of the small dance proposed by Paxton and akin to Valéry’s poetics of the dance. Might Petit’s approach be an alternative to Wallenda’s perfect embodiment of modernity? Petit’s main purpose is not to cross the wire, but to be on the wire. For him, it is not about kissing the sacred ground that awaits him on the other side. He executes different kinds of movements on the wire, he turns around, and he lays,

158  Ante Ursić

sits, and contemplates. We never know what he is contemplating; perhaps himself, or possibly the nearly invisible crowd underneath him, or maybe the mad nature of his undertaking. I would argue that in these moments of playfulness, he has completely forgotten himself as part of a spectacle. The wire does not control him through and through; his playfulness and his joy become an expression of freedom on the wire. In the final analysis, I would state that Wallenda is a tightwire walker, while Petit is a tightwire dancer. His dance literally breaks the linearity of both the wire and the prescribed patterns of modern life. Even though Petit’s crossing project was embedded in modernity, he proposed a point of departure that resisted the “Althusserian spell.”10 According to Althusser, ideology has a profound effect on the way we live, walk, talk, dance, and function. The individual usually submits freely to the commandments of ideology, in the sense that he thinks any decision was undertaken actively by himself. But he lives in the wrong assumption that there was ever a choice. There is therefore no resistance to the pragmatism of walking the line of efficiency due to the illusion that the walk on the line is undertaken through our will. Although there is certainly an indispensable value to the state apparatus, I argue there is a possibility for an individual to resist the all-encompassing hegemony: that they should not be simply possessed by ideology’s “spell.” Small dance surely proposes a point of departure for resistance. As a professional tightwire artist myself, I feel I have a connection to the state that Petit experienced during his “crossing.” From the kinetic inspirations derived from my artistic experience and practice, I learned that tightwire dancing is not about successfully executing stunts. It is rather about the ability to explore and listen to the body while balancing; to feel the weight of gravity dropping through the spine and into the bottom of the feet, where the surface of the rope is felt, sensing its roundness; and to attune to different distributions of weight, leading to micro movements of the foot, ankle, knee, and hip joints, adjusting to a constant loss of balance. There is also the feeling that the air surrounding the body has a density similar to water. When I balance and shift to one side, I use my hand as if to push against a submissive membrane similar to the way a deep sea diver uses the immediate surroundings to stay in place. Playing with the reflexes of the body, the imagery of the density of the air allows an emphasis of observation on kinetics, on the connection between the body, the rope, and gravity. No longer is it about taming the rope or showing the superiority of one’s skill. Movements become versatile, improvisation takes place, and a new kind of body language emerges. A suspension of time and place, a resistance to the domination of the straight walk, and the pleasure of being aware of being present is the very core of every dance and should be a part of every walk of life.

Notes 1 While “tightrope” and “high wire” are commonly used in the English language, these terms are general, and include different kinds of material, such as hemp, nylon, steel, and so forth. To emphasize the material that was used by Wallenda and

To walk the tightwire  159

Petit—and to focus on modernity, in which I am especially interested—I use the term “tightwire,” which addresses form and materials. 2 According to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, analyzing a tightrope artist and his performance is a good way for thinking followers to question life and their place in it. Facing immanent (and imminent) fall, that is, death, people should learn to be companions and fellow creators, not part of a submissive herd. Nietzsche proposes that seeking truth means that everything is to be changed into what is thinkable for man, visible for man, and feelable by man, and that people should think through their own senses to their consequences (Nietzsche 2006). 3 “Modernity” in this essay is used to describe the western concept of “modern times” that is based on rationalization (development of the market economy, along with the rise of state bureaucracy and political participation), industrialization, and secularization (disintegration of a religious worldview and the creation of autonomous spheres of science, morality, and art). Everything in the modern era seems to be in motion, change, and transition toward the future with a strong feeling of advancing and speeding up in a constant search for renewal. The perpetual transformations that supersede every achieved stage of development affect everything, from lifestyle to how we work and govern ourselves, including the way we think and express ourselves. See Haferkamp and Smelser (1992, 13–14). 4 Nikolas “Nik” Wallenda, born January 24, 1979, is an American acrobat, aerialist, and high-wire artist. 5 The Discovery Channel allegedly made a huge profit from thirteen million television viewers watching the show while one and a half million spectators streamed it on discovery.com. 6 Carter additionally argues that not only the land but also its inhabitants became the embodiment of the colonized land. He describes a meeting between Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Friday and states that by placing Crusoe’s foot on top of his head, Friday becomes a new ground (1996b). Lydia M. Child (1802–1880), an activist and writer, communicates the same sentiment, turning the subjugated into ground prostrated under the conquerors’ feet: “We first crush people to the earth, then claim the right of trampling on them forever because they are prostrate” (1833, Chapter VI). 7 William Pope.L, born in 1955, is an African American visual and performance artist. In his work, he addresses issues of consumption, social class, and masculinity as they relate to race (Pope.L 2002). 8 Contact improvisation, danced in pairs, is now part of the canon of dance techniques taught in most contemporary dance schools. Steve Paxton was also involved with the Judson Dance Theater and performed with Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, and Lisa Nelson, members of a group of dancers who questioned the commandment of constant movement and classical virtuosity in dance practice and devoted themselves to new choreographic tasks and everyday movements or the so-called pedestrian movements. 9 Philippe Petit, born in 1949, is a famous French high-wire artist and performer. 10 Louis Pierre Althusser (1918–1990), one of the most influential French Marxist philosophers of the twentieth century, seeks to understand the way ideology functions in society by comparing ideology to “reality,” the world we construct around us as the symbolic order. He contends that ideology has a material existence and its main purpose is in constituting concrete individuals as subjects. Most subjects accept their ideological self-constitution as “reality” or “nature” and thus rarely rebel against the repressive state apparatus designed to punish anyone who rejects the dominant ideology (Althusser 1984).

References Althusser, Louis P. 1984. Essays on Ideology. London: Verso Books. Carter, Paul. 1996a. The Lie of the Land: Earth Body Material. London: Faber & Faber.

160  Ante Ursić

Carter, Paul. 1996b. Friday’s Other Foot. Australian Humanities Review Issue 1, April. Carter, Paul. 2004. Repressed Spaces: The Poetics of Agoraphobia. London: Reaktion Books. Child, Lydia M. 1833. An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans. Boston: Allen and Ticknor. Haferkamp, Hans and Neil J. Smelser, eds. 1992. Social Change and Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lem, Stanisław. 2002. Solaris. Boston: Mariner Books. Lepecki, André. 2006. Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement. New York: Routledge. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2006. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paxton, Steve. 1986. The Small Dance, The Stand. Contact Quarterly 11 (1): 48–50. Pope.L, William. 2002. The Friendliest Black Artist in America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Shiff, Richard. 1978. Art and Life: A Metaphoric Relationship. Critical Inquiry 5: 107–122. Valéry, Paul, I. A. Richards, and T. S. Eliot. 1977. Symbolism: Imagination and Thought: The Role of Thought in Poetry. In The Modern Tradition: Backgrounds of Modern Literature, eds. Richard Ellmann and Charles Feidelson, 74–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

13 THE SPATIALITY OF AUSTRALIAN CONTEMPORARY CIRCUS Kristy Seymour

Australia has two leading circus cities and several key festivals that produce the majority of contemporary circus performances. Melbourne and Brisbane host the majority of companies, and The Adelaide Festival in particular is at the forefront of Australian festivals in its contribution to the sector, consistently and generously programming contemporary circus at least since the 1970s. To understand the influence and trajectory of Australian contemporary circus, it is useful to first consider the ecology of the circus sector in Australia and how the two leading Circus Cities of Brisbane and Melbourne have shaped the art form’s growth and cultural export.

Melbourne, circus Oz, and sectoral development Australian circus in its “new” or contemporary form primarily developed in the state of Victoria1 with Circus Oz and Flying Fruit Fly Circus (FFFC). While FFFC continues to be located in Albury-Wodonga, since those early years the city of Melbourne has been and continues to be particularly prominent in terms of the degree of activity in contemporary circus, housing key companies and high-level training institutions. The key organizations and arts spaces which have either influenced or continue to influence and support contemporary circus practice in Victoria are in Albury-Wodonga FFFC and Acrobat; and in Melbourne The Pram Factory, La Mama, Circus Oz, The Circus Spot, Westside Circus, Fly Factory, Ruccis Circus, Trick Circus, Dislocate, Melbourne Fringe Festival, Women’s Circus, Blue Studios, Strut n Fret Production House, the National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA) and until 2016, the headquarters of Australian Circus & Physical Theatre Association (ACAPTA). Melbourne also

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-17

162  Kristy Seymour

hosts various independent, freelance artists and emerging companies made up of NICA graduates who reside in the city and frequently move between companies. Melbourne has experienced especially rapid developments in its spatial amenity for circus in terms of dedicated venues for training and artistic development, which have accelerated the growth not only of Melbourne-based contemporary circus, but the whole sector nationally. Contemporary circus in Australia received its initial impetus in the late 1970s with Circus Oz, which then had the Pram Factory as its main venue. The prolific growth of the company, its evolution as a national and international touring company, the various spaces it has occupied during its development, and its significant position in the city of ­Melbourne’s performing arts landscape have enabled strong audience development, audience association of circus with Melbourne, and thus a perception of Melbourne as a central place for circus in Australia—a key circus city. Melbourne not only cements its position as a cultural leader and risk-taker in contemporary circus, but contributes to the national growth of the sector. Simultaneously, the ongoing presence of Circus Oz in the city has achieved, in Crang’s (1998) terms, an “anchoring” across time and space—a consistent sense of belonging for the art form. This helps explain why, even though the contemporary circus rhizome has proliferated across the nation and across the international scene, it also continually comes back to Melbourne. Lines of flight take off from Melbourne and have long done so, but it is essential to consider that “these lines always tie back to one another” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 9). In 1977, when Circus Oz was still residing predominantly at The Pram Factory, founding member John Pinder put forward the idea for a restaurant-style show in a tent. A joint project with the Victorian College of Art, the tent show was performed in the gardens of the National Gallery of Victoria for a month over Christmas and New Year of 1978/1979. They famously took on the task of making their own tent by hand rather than hiring or buying one. Sue Broadway noted that most of the rehearsal time for that show was actually spent making the tent rather than developing the show’s content (Sue Broadway, Interview, May 2015). Nevertheless the tent became an asset to the newly formed company, although it was never its central venue. Circus Oz continued to perform their work in local and interstate theaters with some sporadic touring using the tent as a venue. For the next ten or so years, Circus Oz moved around Melbourne, occupying old warehouses and spaces that could accommodate their training needs. In the late 1980s, they took up residence in an old factory in Port Melbourne, where they spent the next fifteen years creating their work and also holding circus workshops for the general public. In 2012 (their thirty-sixth year as a company), after an extensive amount of grant writing, brokering, and negotiation by the company, the Victorian Government approved a repurposing of an existing building to create an official home base for Circus Oz. Formally the Collingwood TAFE site,2 the venue underwent a AUD 15 million renovation to include rehearsal rooms, circus workshops spaces, a band room, a props workshop, costume department, offices, storage, and a permanent on-site Spiegel tent.

The spatiality of Australian contemporary circus  163

Beyond the aspiration of building an ideal home base that would allow the company to grow, part of Circus Oz’s mission with their Collingwood space is to be able to support their peers within the Australian circus sector. This includes the provision of spaces for training circus skills and for holding creative seminars for the creation of new works as well as community-based initiatives using circus for social change. The Melba Spiegel Tent regularly hosts new work by both emerging and established artists. The Indigenous arm of Circus Oz, BlakFlip, has grown extensively since the move to the new building in 2014. As a result of the BlakFlip program, in 2017 the first all Indigenous circus troupe premiered its first work “Chasing Smoke” to a sold-out season and five-star reviews. Directed by Natano Fa’anana (Briefs Factory/Casus), the cast consisted of artists from across the country. Similarly, in late 2015, with the support of Circus Oz, an independent company of differently abled artists, The Fairground Project formed, showcasing the lack of and need for more diverse representations of bodies in circus. This project was initiated by ­Adelaide-based artist Lachlan “Loki” Rickus during the 2014 ACAPTA Sector gathering in the Circus Oz Melba Spiegel Tent, where Rickus spoke up about the lack of opportunities for wheelchair bound artists like himself. Circus Oz took this up and brokered to create a space for more inclusive work to be made. Circus Oz’s new venue has so far once again demonstrated its capacity to extend its nodes of connection not only in its Melbourne “backyard,” but right across the national sector. However, since the late 1970s, the city of Melbourne has seen an ongoing intensification of contemporary circus. One of the most important developments was the creation of the NICA as Australia’s first and only tertiary training institution for circus. With its purpose-built, state-of-the-art training facilities, NICA has sparked enormous growth and an increased credibility for the national sector. NICA emerged after five years of negotiation and development with key members from the contemporary circus industry, led by Circus Oz alumni Jane Mullet in collaboration with Pam Creed and Swinburne University. In 1999, a pilot program ran with eight participants in a warehouse facility in the Melbourne Docklands. The success of that program demonstrated the viability of a dedicated institution and the training facility was built on Swinburne’s Prahan campus. The original building was impressive, housing several circus training rooms, offices, and Gymnastics Australia training facilities; it has since been developed to include an adaptable, multifunction performance venue where NICA holds its student showcases, professional performances, and graduation ceremonies. NICA’s significance doesn’t lie only in its capacity to deliver high-level circus skills training to contribute to the national sector. Since its inception, NICA has attracted students from various training backgrounds. While some of their intake comes from leading youth circus companies such as FFFC, Spaghetti Circus, Flipside Circus, and others; it also attracts applicants from dance, gymnastics, and acro-sports.3 One very important way in which NICA has impelled development within the sector lies in its providing an official qualification for its

164  Kristy Seymour

graduates. Mr. Lu,4 who became the founding Head of Circus Studies at NICA, commented on the significance of this: One of the things that drew me to help develop the university degree was that the artists of circus, once they finish performing, they don’t have a formal qualification to carry over, they have nothing. It is still the case in countries like Russia and in China. So if we have a degree, then we have a chance to change the history of career trajectory for these artists. Provide a mainstream education framework that does give people a platform to jump from, so that they can still enjoy developing their skills in the art form without sacrificing their entire lives. It has made a large impact on that side of the industry and has impacted on individuals who have undertaken the degree. (Guang Rong Lu, Interview, November 2015) Further, the existence of NICA has created opportunities for circus artists to become employed as trainers at the institution as well as for international circus trainers to take up long-term contracts as key staff members. Thus, NICA has extended its capacity beyond skills development into creating an employment ecology that continues to grow and foster ongoing international networks. NICA is now also considered a “feeder school” to the globally successful machine of Quebecois company Cirque du Soleil, with casting auditions held at the NICA space every two years or so, and Cirque du Soleil talent scouts often visiting the school to “headhunt” new talent. The international nodes of connection that have developed with NICA broaden the rhizome of the Australian sector, linking the existing assemblage of local artists and companies to the international scene and at the same time enriching global circus activities. Of course, global multiplicities are produced by other means, such as the impact of small to medium companies consistently touring internationally.5 For Deleuze and Guattari, though, a multiplicity “has neither subject nor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing its nature (the laws of combination therefore increase in number as the multiplicity grows)” (1987, 8). That is, everything that occurs in the interactions between Australian contemporary circus and international contemporary circus activities—in training, recruitment of emerging artists, innovations in performance, tours, conferences, and experienced artists and directors moving between companies—contributes to the making of multiplicities. Although NICA is largely held in very high regard across the sector nationally and internationally, it is not without its critics—people who see its current impacts on the art form as problematic, at least to some extent. With its enthusiastic output of highly skilled graduates entering contemporary circus annually, some are beginning to perceive it as having “flooded the market,” particularly in Victoria. Moreover, its curriculum is perceived as focusing primarily on skills development with considerably less emphasis on artistic prowess, critical appreciation

The spatiality of Australian contemporary circus  165

of aesthetic diversity, and the importance of comparative research and analysis. Some industry members have therefore identified a danger of NICA producing “homogenized” graduates, with high skill levels and technical proficiency, but lacking in the kind of “artistic chops” that have kept the contemporary circus sector so dynamic in Australia. In my experience in the industry and also the experience of others who have shared their views with me, it could be said that there has been more focus on the technical capacity of NICA’s graduates than on their artistic potential. This is not to say that artistry is not supported by NICA’s training staff or that it is not developed within the current NICA curriculum, but rather that the technical capacity of its students is often more developed and nuanced than their artistic skills. There has been a general consensus among NICA’s critics that more detail and focus on the elements of creativity and artistic expression within the curriculum would be greatly supported by the wider sector. This perception is sometimes positioned in contrast to leading companies in Victorian contemporary circus, such as Circus Oz and Acrobat, which demonstrate a high level of technical precision but are equally appreciated for their creativity and artistic risk-taking.

Brisbane: nurturing independent circus companies The city of Brisbane is considered one of Australia’s leading circus cities, and like its sister circus city Melbourne, it is considered a driver of contemporary circus on a global scale. Brisbane’s line of flight to becoming a leading circus city is similar to Melbourne’s, in that it began its trajectory with connections that loop back to alternative theater and street theater origins. Brisbane’s contemporary circus sector began in the early 1980s with a community theater project led by local community collectives, The Popular Theatre Troupe and Street Arts Theatre. Both companies had formed so as to produce a countercultural response to an extremely conservative period in Queensland politics, known after its Premier as the Bjelke-Peterson era. The Bjelke-Peterson government held office from 1968 to 1987, and its extreme conservatism had a very negative impact on the arts, culture, and social structure. In turn, parts of the arts sector and the community supported a social ideology of radical reaction and political activism. This era of Brisbane’s community history was also affected by the fear of the impact of the development of the “Expo ’88” site, involving the reclamation of a significant section of riverside in South Brisbane. People were concerned about its effect on housing prices and the social economy of the West End community where a large portion of artists resided and made work during this period. Fortunately, although the State Government was incredibly restrictive for Brisbane artists for almost two decades, the Federal Government was largely the antithesis. In Challenging the Centre: Two decades of Political Theatre, Steve Capelin describes the philosophy and politics of the Popular Theatre Troupe and the opportunities that they had as a consequence of changes to arts funding under the Federal Whitlam Government (1972–1975):

166  Kristy Seymour

The philosophy of the Popular Theatre Troupe set it apart from most other theatre groups at that time, in that there was a definite political motivation involved in mounting each of its productions. Because of the cultural vision of the Australia Council’s funding policies in the wake of the Whitlam expansion, we were enabled to say what we thought should be said about social and political issues which we considered important. We didn’t have to make box office the choice-determining concern that it was amongst bourgeois theatre companies. Context ruled. (Capelin 1995, 46) With this artistic freedom, they were able to establish a strong and inclusive artistic community in the West End. Street Arts Theatre, which was the other driver of community theater in Brisbane at that time, held a similar ethos and it wasn’t long before the two companies were working alongside each other. Street Arts Theatre had already established a connection to New Circus and saw it as an essential part of community performance: Street Art’s founding members brought with them a belief in circus as an effective, all inclusive popular form of performance. Their own skills—­ influenced by Reg Bolton of Suitcase Circus fame, originally from the U.K. and now resident in Australia, and the New Circus and comedy movement centre in Melbourne—were combined with their desire to explore new popular theatre forms. (Capelin 1995, 104) Founded by Pauline and Dennis Peel, Street Arts Theatre undertook its first project in 1983, when it facilitated the country’s first Community Circus Festival, held in Musgrave Park, West End, Brisbane. The festival was well attended. It featured performances from artists who would go on to become icons of the local and national contemporary circus sector and to form companies that have strongly influenced the art form. Capelin describes how the process of festivals began to shape the culture of the arts community across the country and how this project in particular produced the first assemblage featuring some of the people that later became Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus: Here people who were to become key players in Street Arts had their first taste of community theatre. Tony Hannon, eccentric clown and whistle player later involved in community arts in Adelaide; Meg Kanowski, clown, comedian, writer, performer, director and company stalwart; Phil Davidson, acrobat and performer; Peter Stewart, musician, performer later musical director with the company; Derek Ives, schoolboy juggler, unicyclist and circus natural who has since worked with Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus

The spatiality of Australian contemporary circus  167

and Circus Oz to mention but a few. All were part of the first Thrills ‘n’ Spills Community Circus troupe which emerged from this project. (Capelin 2004, 104) Over the next three or so years, Thrills ‘n’ Spills Circus went on to create five more shows in this format, with an eclectic cast of amateur acrobats, community theater artists, and local musicians. They performed their work in parks, gardens, shopping malls, and community halls—whatever space was available at the time. At this stage, the work was predominantly ground-based in circus skills, so it did not require the technical specifications of aerial apparatus, making it less complicated to find suitable venues. Capelin notes that Street Arts Theatre had always drawn participants who were interested in circus performance and that a groundswell to create an independent circus company grew rapidly from these participants. The community of West End, the vibrant character of the place and the people in it, contributed to the emergence of an artistic community creating new work that was community and politically driven. Despite extensive gentrification, West End is still perceived as a bohemian suburb with an alternative lifestyle embedded in its community, and many artists still choose to reside there. In an interview, Antonella Casella6 described her involvement with Street Arts Theatre, including the Thrills ‘n’ Spills Circus show, which would be the catalyst for the formation of Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus: The project had quite a long process and I think I arrived there about half way through that process. It all culminated in a show called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus” at the Rialto Theatre in 1986. There were about 60 people in it, it was one of those massive community shows. It was basically this incredible community of young and emerging people who wanted to work in political activism or theater and do it in a new way that was different from the traditional theater model. Natalie Dyball and Donna Close from the FFFC came up for a week to train us and Natalie ended up staying for the rest of the process and ended up being in the show, so we had a Fruit Fly in the show. (Antonella Casella, Interview, June 2016) Casella also noted that the show was highly political in its content, driven by the participants responding to the issues the community of West End was facing at that time. In association with the Expo ’88 initiative mentioned earlier, the mid to late 1980s saw a boom in property development around West End, raising issues of gentrification and housing affordability: That show was actually quite blatantly political as well. It was about living in the community of West End. All of the performers in that show were all adults that were all heavily engaged in the local community and so as a

168  Kristy Seymour

result we had quite a lot of acts about the Dean brothers who were at that time demolishing buildings around Queensland. So the overtly political acts were in there alongside some really beautiful acts and some really silly acts. There was tightwire, a flag diving act, all sorts of circus acts. It was an activist artist mob of West End. (Antonella Casella, Interview, June 2016) Two years after that first show called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus,” the company with the same name officially formed and began to forge itself into an alternative and artistically risky collective. As Casella shared with me, their connections to the national sector were developing as early as 1988, when they brought in Circus Oz artist Robyn Laurie as a guest director: In 1988 is when it became a professional troupe, which was myself, Derek Ives, Chris Sleight, Lisa Small, and the musician Ceri McCoy. We worked with those visual artists again on the first show as a professional collective, which again was called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus” and was just an entertainment show. We brought Robyn Laurie up to direct that and it was very much in the vein of a Circus Oz show. In fact after we completed the very first community show with Street Arts in 1986, we had an afternoon after party at Pauline and Denis Peel’s place and they showed us a video of Circus Oz. I think they were trying to inspire us and show us what was already out there. So we didn’t reinvent the wheel in Queensland but we were most certainly inspired by what Oz were doing and had created. (Antonella Casella, Interview, June 2016) Casella left the company in 1989, when she moved to London for a period of time to develop her circus skills and branch out artistically, and from then Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus saw various artists transition through the company, each bringing their own spin on the creative process and aesthetic of the work. Artists such as Kareena Oates, Stephen Brown, Anna Yen, Sharon Weston, Mat Wilson, and Annabel Lines joined the company alongside longtime members Derek Ives and Azaria Universe. Many of these artists had short periods of being involved or were in and out of the company. They were using spaces such as the St. Andrews Church Hall in West End, The Princess Theatre, and the Old Museum to create and perform their work. They were yet to set up residence in a dedicated space. Rudi Mineur joined the company in 1992 and describes the creative process as one that was both independent and restrictive. Because it was a mostly groupled artistic process, without an assigned leader or artistic director, its process and progress for creating work was often slower: We had certain skills that we liked and fed into the work but it wasn’t act driven. Training was focused around a creative idea, it was group driven. Not act driven—skill driven in some ways. We never really had a slapstick

The spatiality of Australian contemporary circus  169

act, a handstand act, a juggling act, like most companies did back then. We had endless company meetings with long conversations, no one was the boss. And although that had its benefits, it was often difficult to make any decision. (Rudi Mineur, Interview, June 2015) The company morphed and shifted in its artistic purpose and structure many times over the period 1988 to 2004. In 2004, a complete rebranding occurred when the company became Circa. Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus was, however, a key player in enabling the development of dedicated venues for contemporary circus performance in Brisbane. The Brisbane Powerhouse has been a key venue for arts and culture in Brisbane since it opened in 2000, and as such has frequently housed contemporary circus. More than this, as key players in the artistic life of the city at the time, Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus, Vulcana Women’s Circus, and Flipside Circus were the leading stakeholders in the redevelopment of the old power station into a thriving arts precinct, and they had a vested interest in including circus as a key art form within the venue’s artistic programming. Zane Trow, who was Artistic Director of the venue in its first phase, consulted with the local circus community to ensure that the venue had the correct infrastructure for circus performance, training, and creation to occur. Brisbane-based circus artist Davy Sampford described the venue’s interactions with circus companies: The Brisbane Powerhouse was supportive of the local circus sector right from the beginning. Particularly when they were still planning the build of it, they had circus in mind and Zane was overseeing the build. They built it so circus could happen in it and around it. And the Stores building, that was part of the initial planning. Then they really appealed to the circus industry to ask us all to apply for artistic programming and to be included in the venue. Rock n Roll Circus was an intrinsic part of the official opening. (Davey Sampford, Interview, July 2014) The Stores Studio is a smaller warehouse adjacent to the main Brisbane Powerhouse theater venue. With an impressively high ceiling, gantry, and a warehouse aura, it makes an ideal circus training space. The venue was set up to become a permanent circus training venue through the inclusion of an ongoing residency program for the Vulcana Women’s Circus, which saw the installation of box truss rigging to extend the space’s capacity to hold aerial circus equipment. The residency provided Vulcana with a home base to run their workshop programs, to rehearse their artistic work, and to develop their skills.7 In 2002, Flipside Circus was also invited to become a resident company in the Stores Studio, which allowed the then small, community-based youth circus to develop into a thriving company and leaders in youth arts. Both companies have since moved into their own stand-alone venues; however, the support and advocacy from the Brisbane

170  Kristy Seymour

Powerhouse during these developments was intrinsic for the growth and development of both Flipside Circus and Vulcana. Presently, Circa is the resident company in the Stores Studio venue. The Brisbane Powerhouse continues to support local contemporary circus not only through the Stores Studio space but also through its ongoing programming of local circus companies such as Briefs Factory International and Company 2 in its annual artistic program. The venue provides a major theater space for circus performance and has also encouraged performances of aerial harness work across the facade of the building. This style of aerial performance was introduced in Brisbane through the work of Celia White as artistic director of Vulcana. Celia previously worked extensively with the Sydney company Legs on the Wall, who pioneered this style of aerial performance in Australia. At the Powerhouse, this influence has seen aerial artists floating and flying on, off, and on top of the building. This has created opportunities for artists to explore site-specific work, and also showcased to local audiences the possibilities and vast artistic potentials of contemporary circus performance. One year after the successful opening of the Brisbane Powerhouse, another heritage-listed Brisbane building was repurposed to form a dedicated arts and culture venue, with circus central to its development. Taking its name from a poet who lived for thirty years in Queensland, The Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Art opened in October 2001. Situated only 2.2 kilometers from the Brisbane Powerhouse, “The Judy,” as it is referred to by locals, was made possible through a state government initiative facilitated by Arts Queensland. The process of developing the center included extensive consultations with several key arts organizations, one of which was Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus. As a result, Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus became a resident company and, now as Circa, remains in the venue, using the space to develop its work, run its circus training programs, house its administration and management staff, and often to perform new works in the 300-seat theater. Like The Powerhouse, the Judith Wright Centre has demonstrated ongoing support for the local circus sector, providing internships, residency programs, mentorship programs, and opportunities for new works and works-in-progress from contemporary circus companies to be showcased in the venue. Alongside the contemporary circus companies of Circa, Flipside Circus, and Vulcana Women’s Circus, Brisbane has long boasted an ongoing and thriving scene for freelance circus artists with a large number of independent circus practitioners residing in the city. The presence of these freelance artists has impelled rapid growth in independent companies. Since the inception of Strut n Fret Production House and Briefs Factory International, Brisbane has seen an outstanding growth of successful independent companies such as Company 2 and Casus, which have gone on to tour successfully internationally. Brisbane is now frequently referred to as the largest circus city in Australia. This is not due to its geographical size, but to the fact that it hosts so many small companies that are key players in the international touring circuit.

The spatiality of Australian contemporary circus  171

Although these are the leading cities with the highest density of circus practice, satellite circus cities or smaller nodes of contemporary circus activity have begun to develop in Adelaide, Sydney, and Perth due to the rhizomic nature of the art form, its ability to break off and start up somewhere else, or to connect itself across the contemporary circus milieu in various ways. Together, the cities and festivals produce and feed into the milieu, encouraging collaboration nationally and internationally—enabling independent companies, small to medium companies, and freelance practitioners to connect in many different ways, thus creating a thriving assemblage. In Deleuze and Geophilosophy, Bonta and Protevi explain Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the assemblage as “an intensive network or rhizome displaying ‘consistency’ or emergent effects by tapping into the ability of self-ordering forces of heterogeneous material to mesh together” (Bonta and Protevi 2004, 54). For such an assemblage, the networks and flows of the Australian contemporary circus sector cultivate an ongoing, multifaceted process of industry growth and artistic development. This occurs not only between companies but through connections with other art forms, which, in turn, foster the geographical and creative reach of the form. The rhythm of the circus city is both reflexive and a reflection of the rhizomic nature of the art form. Deleuze and Guattari explain: The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots. Unlike the graphic arts, drawing or photography, unlike tracings, the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 21)

Creative practice and spatiality The two examples of Australian work that I will discuss here provide an insight into how the spatiality opportunities provided to Australian contemporary circus enable artists to utilize space in diverse and exciting ways. One company, Gravity and Other Myths, began its trajectory in a youth circus in Adelaide, then went on to become a strong independent company that tours nationally and internationally, and now spends very little time in Adelaide. The other, Strut n Fret Production House, began its career in Brisbane, moved on to Melbourne, often has multiple shows touring nationally and internationally, and has set up a venue in Adelaide that has quickly become nationally and globally influential. The creative processes involved in how Australian circus artists develop their work provide an insight into the role that spatiality plays in what is often seen as their distinctiveness. The performance spaces and the rehearsal spaces inform the style of the works that emerge from these contexts.

172  Kristy Seymour

Whether circus bodies are flying from the ceiling, bounding off walls, or leaping across each other, circus has the capacity to fill a theatrical space in ways that its sister art form, theater, often cannot. Circus always responds to space, in that it seeks out the potentiality of a space and then applies the possibilities of the body to the space it occupies. As a circus artist, it is impossible not to be influenced by the space you are creating work for and in. Circus artists, particularly aerial performers, always look up when entering a space—they see a space in different ways, inasmuch as aerialists are constantly searching for the potential rigging points for their apparatus. Space guides the artist. For example, the technical capacity of a space impacts what can be created in that space. A low ceiling will rule out most kinds of aerial performance, therefore driving the work to become more ground based in its creation. Similarly, the aesthetics of the space, such as a Spiegel Tent or a warehouse, which strongly emanate their own presence, meaning, and history, will inform how artists utilize these kinds of spaces, stylistically, narratively, and technically. As Doreen Massey (2005) argues, space is never void of meaning. It is never empty or “closed.” She stresses that we should: recognise space as always under construction. Precisely because space on this reading is a product of relations between, relations which are necessarily embedded material practices which have to be carried out, it is always in the process of being made. It is never finished; never closed. Perhaps we could imagine space as a simultaneity of stories-so-far. (Massey 2005, 9) Circus practitioners are influenced by the “stories-so-far” that are held within the spaces they create work in and for. Spaces where contemporary circus is performed are never, in fact, blank canvases. Circus applies movement to a space, building on, and enriching the “story-so-far” that the space currently and potentially tells. A key Australian example of this was Mel Fyfe’s role as Circus Oz Strong Woman in which she performed a back bend while balancing a concrete slab on her stomach as a fellow cast member, Mat Wilson, smashed the concrete slab to pieces with a sledge hammer. This performance took place in the Circus Oz big top and in major theaters around Australia. Fyfe was unshakeable in her strength, balance, and resilience during this act, physically and metaphorically commenting on the perceived “fragility” of women in society, offering a powerful and unashamed demonstration of how circus can enter a space and literally smash preconceived notions of gendered bodies and spaces and potentially render its audience uncomfortable in doing so. Erin Manning reminds us that it is quite impossible to consider the importance of bodies without considering the space they occupy, and that, moreover, it is therefore not feasible to theorize space without taking into account one’s own corporeal relation to it: When space-time is no longer entered but instead created, it becomes possible to think the body-world as that which is generated by the potential

The spatiality of Australian contemporary circus  173

inherent in the preacceleration of movement. Movement takes time. But movement also makes time. (Manning 2012, 17) The corporeality of both artist and audience come into play in terms of how the spatiality of the venue impacts how the circus performance is perceived and received. Circus is often assumed to be a highly chaotic and even reckless art form by those who sit outside of it. However, although circus does utilize chaos and risk to derive its extreme performance of the body, it also relies heavily on order and control in order to execute such physical feats. The performance of the circus body is, of course, an incredibly controlled state. It is controlled chaos, chaosmosis, an acute display of embodied practice that an audience witnesses when, for instance, they see a hula-hoopist separate several hoops across her body while balancing on a tightwire. While many audience members may feel as though they are “on the edge of their seat” amid the seeming chaos of the circus, what they are, in fact, experiencing from the circus artists are elevated performances of embodied cognition. The performance space creates the illusion of disorder. Many circus performances invite audiences to thrill as multiple movements take place simultaneously in the one space. However, circus artists also design the uses of space so that immersed in the chaos of color and movement, the same audience can experience moments of breath-holding stillness, as a single act or artist enters the completely smooth space of life and death risk, such as flying through the air while hanging by a single heel on trapeze. That apparently smooth space is, of course, the most striated or highly ordered of all circus spaces in terms of highly disciplined skills, endless rehearsal, safety considerations, calculated risks—striations that remain invisible to audiences. The depiction of risk varies depending on the artistic choices made by the artists, the director, or both as to how the spatiality of the performance is layered on to the “stories-so-far” held within the architecture of the venue. Elizabeth Grosz tells us: The exploration of conceptions of space and time are necessary correlates of the exploration of corporeality. Two sets of interests are defined in reciprocal terms, for bodies are always understood within a spatial and temporal context, and space and time remain conceivable only insofar as corporeality provides the basis for our perception and representation of them. (Grosz 1995, 85) In each space that they inhabit, circus artists seek the possibility for flight, the possibility for climbing, tumbling. Using its creativity and risk-taking to create a new performativity of space, Australian contemporary circus finds ways to break the spatial parameters of performance. The Australian contemporary circus sector is known for the wide variety of different aesthetics, styles, and genres within it. Australian companies alter the social coding of a space in vastly

174  Kristy Seymour

different ways. For example, Gravity and Other Myths do so by bringing audiences into the embodied performance of their work, as they go beyond the idea of “audience interaction” by including the audience to support an acrobat as part of a hand-balancing sequence. As the artist moves through her handstand act, the invited audience member becomes part of the acrobatic basing in the performance, supporting the weight of her legs as she moves in and out of the handstand sequence. Gravity and Other Myths, or “GOM” as they are known by industry peers, debuted “A Simple Space” at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 2013; it has since had numerous international tours, including Montreal, Edinburgh, London, and a tour of New Zealand. A Simple Space is just that in terms of production, lighting, and costumes. There are no sequins, no extravagant set design, and no high-tech rigging. The stage is set with seven highly technical acrobats, one musician, and one or two props. The beauty of the work is that this is all they need to keep the audience mesmerized, thoroughly entertained, and impressed for the duration of the onehour show. The minimalism in the production of A Simple Space certainly contributes to GOM’s connection to its audience, but just as vital is their commitment to risk and trust. The simplicity of the staging and framework, combined with the complexity of their acrobatic technique, demonstrates how simplicity and complexity complement each other to create fluidity in the performance space. A significant proportion of A Simple Space consists of group acrobatics in which the artists use the bodies of the other cast members as something akin to stepping stones and landing points. In group acrobatics, technical precision is essential as you relinquish the safety of your body to your troupe. As the flyer, you can control your body tension and initiate your rotation or acceleration; beyond that, you must rely on your base/s to pitch you, catch you, or spin you sufficiently. For GOM, a lack of apparatus demonstrates simplicity but allows bodily complexity to occur through movements rehearsed to the point where they become intuitive and extraordinary transitions across the performance space. The nuances in GOM’s work as an ensemble highlight the importance of embodiment and trust in circus. Jondi Keane’s work on embodied cognition points to the characteristics of the body in space and touch and the subtle and nuanced movements in the body “Embodied cognition, and perception in particular, consists of movements-­ within-movement that twist, contort and shift the gross and subtle connections and relationships previously held in place” (Keane 2009, 19). The “movements-within-movement” that occur in A Simple Space articulate the finer details in the acrobats’ connections to their own bodies and to the bodies occupying the space around them. The company has taken the creative risk of avoiding entrances and exits for the acts, which accentuates the transparency of performativity that has become their signature. No one leaves the stage. All seven acrobats remain on stage for the duration of the show and rarely stop moving. Even when the focus is directed

The spatiality of Australian contemporary circus  175

toward one or two performers, the others are always on stage and remain connected via their eye contact with each other and overall connection to the extraordinary degree of physicality that unfurls. Their choice to “hold space” for each other for the entirety of the performance reinforces the embodied connection of the ensemble and their connection to the space in which they are performing. Strut n Fret Production House also variously places audience members in relation to the work. Creative Director Scott Maidment places his work around and in the audience, and in turn, places the audience within the performance. For instance, in “LIMBO,” sway poles bend and hover over the audience with acrobats strapped to the top of the poles, so that the performance happens literally over the audience’s heads, by their sides, across their personal space. In many ways, these kinds of artistic choices subvert the expected spatial experience of how audience members and circus acrobats should share a performance space. Strut n Fret Production House are also well known as creators and curators of one of the largest circus-carnival style venues in Australia. Since 2000, as part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival, they produce a largescale carnival venue called The Garden of Unearthly Delights, which has grown significantly and has won multiple awards. It programs local and international circus acts of the highest caliber. The spatiality of The Garden of Unearthly Delights is paramount to the performances that occur within it. Situated inside the Adelaide Botanical Gardens, which are located in the center of Adelaide, the order of the space suggests that anything can and will occur. The spectator enters The Garden through a main gate at the top of the Botanical Gardens, leaving the reality of the city behind, and is at once encompassed by live music, street performers, and various sub-venues. The Garden of Unearthly Delights consists of several circus tents—a Spiegel Tent, a contemporary big top, two vintage wooden tents—as well as several outdoor spaces created by the use of rigging truss and industrial containers. The atmosphere is carnivalesque, with festooned lighting and fairy floss stands alongside modern-day food trucks scattered among the performance venues. Circus, live music, comedy, puppetry, theater, and spectacle all find their place. The Garden not only provides the city of Adelaide and its visitors with a space that is something of a parallel universe during the festival, but also programs work that is “edgy” and at times confronting—from exotic to grotesque, burlesque to sideshow. In doing so, The Garden brings together a large cross-section of the world’s best and most exciting contemporary physical performers, creating a melting pot for the quirky and the eccentric in a major industry gathering. Here, it is useful to consider Foucault’s work on heterotopias or places/spaces characterized by multiplicity and difference. In “Of Other Spaces,” he writes: Opposite … heterotopias that are linked to the accumulation of time, there are those linked, on the contrary, to time in its most fleeting, transitory, precarious aspect, to time in the mode of the festival. These heterotopias

176  Kristy Seymour

are not oriented toward the eternal, they are rather absolutely temporal [chroniques]. Such for example, are the fairgrounds, these marvellous empty sites on the outskirts of cities that teem once or twice a year with stands, displays, heteroclite objects, wrestlers, snake women, fortune tellers, and so forth. (Foucault 1986, 26) The Garden has programmed companies such as GOM, Briefs Factory International, Company 2, Casus, La Soiree, and a long list of independent circus artists from all over the world. By placing this multiplicity of the international circus sector into one large venue for four weeks, new networks unfold through artists seeing and supporting each other’s work, and collaborations are often seeded. This arises not only from the co-locality of shared space, but also from the kind of space that is being produced and shared. The heterotopic energy of the Garden then nurtures collaboration, experimentation, and growth, creating new nodes in the rhizomic connections across the national and international circus sector. The rhythm or flow of the design of the Garden provides a space where experimental and often dark work is programmed and performed, sometimes “test-driven” before embarking on international tours. Alongside the antique and boutique tent venues and industrial containers sit carnival rides such as Ferris wheels, dodgem cars, and a sideshow pavilion, where world records are often attempted by Australian sideshow artist Space Cowboy. He brings his personally curated collection of oddities to The Garden in the form of a “mutant barnyard” that sits comfortably next to a merry-go-round and popcorn stall. The mutant barnyard is a collection of two-headed taxidermy animals and historical freak show artifacts that straddle the sphere of being both fascinating and confronting for audiences. The enthusiasm and tenacity of the Space Cowboy’s guided tour of the mutant barnyard provides insight, but can provoke horrified reactions from some visitors. Challenging any conventional perception that entertainment’s role might be to make you feel warm and fuzzy, The Garden has the capacity to render its audience uncomfortable, inviting it to embrace the grotesque, to encounter the extraordinary. Due to its festival setting, it attracts not only arts audience regulars but also locals who may not usually consume circus performance at any other time in the year. They might stumble across the venue and unintentionally become the audience. This brings audience development to the art form, and reminds those of us who are performers in the space that audiences encounter The Garden in vastly different ways to how we might. The circus artist encounters the space as an extension of their existing daily world, but in a more intensified fashion. For artists, it is seen as a place of artistic development, networking, showcasing, and sometimes a bit like a working holiday. For the audience, whether planned or spontaneous, it is perhaps an escape into a world of the “other,” a place to be entertained, appalled, to subvert reality, to switch off, and indulge.

The spatiality of Australian contemporary circus  177

Elizabeth Grosz illustrates how our relation to space and the objects occupying space affect not only how we receive space, but how we influence the space we occupy: The subject’s relation to space and time is not passive: space is not simply an empty receptacle, independent of its contents; rather, the ways in which space is perceived and represented depend on the kinds of objects positioned “within” it, and more particularly, the kinds of relation the subject has to those objects. Space makes possible different kinds of relations but in turn is transformed according to the subject’s affective and instrumental relations with it. (Grosz 1995, 92) Our relations to the circus spaces we occupy as either audience or artist affect how we navigate through the performance space and how we receive and build upon the stories that are produced by and generate within these spaces. Circus provides a multiplicity of becomings to the spaces with which it engages.

Notes 1 Adelaide and Perth saw some activity of New Circus prior to the official formation of Circus Oz in 1978. 2 The College of Technical and Further Education is Australia’s government-funded vocational training sector. 3 Acro-Sports is a competitive partner acrobatics sport centered on human pyramids of two or more people. 4 Mr. Lu was Head Trainer at The Flying Fruit Fly Circus prior to his role at NICA and has been intrinsic in bringing the influence of Chinese acrobatics into the Australian circus sector. 5 I explore in detail the role of touring in relation to the global impact of the Australian Contemporary Circus sector in my doctoral thesis. 6 Founding member of Rock n Roll Circus and of Vulcana Women’s Circus and went on to be a Senior Artistic Associate at Circus Oz. 7 I explore the development of Vulcana Women’s Circus in my doctoral thesis in a dedicated chapter, which focuses on women in circus.

References Bonta, Mark and John Protevi. 2004. Deleuze and Geophilosophy: A Guide and Glossary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Broadway, Sue (2015) Kristy Seymour’s Interview with Sue Broadway May 2015, ­Melbourne, Australia Capelin, Steve, ed. 1995. Challenging the Centre: Two Decades of Political Theatre. ­Melbourne: Playlab Press. Casella, Antonella. 2016. Kristy Seymour’s Interview with Antonella Casella. Melbourne, Australia. Crang, Mike. 1998. Cultural Geography. London and New York: Routledge.

178  Kristy Seymour

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, Michel. 1986. Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias ( Jay Miskowiec, trans.). Diacritics 16 (1): 22–27. Grosz, Elizabeth A. 1995. Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Guang Rong Lu. 2015. Kristy Seymour’s Interview with Guang Rong Lu (Mr. Lu). Melbourne, Australia. Keane, Jondi. 2009. Hyperconnectivity through Deleuze: Indices of Affect. In Gilles Deleuze: Image and Text, eds. Eugene W. Holland, Daniel W. Smith, and Charles J. Stivale, 160–175. London: Continuum. Manning, Erin (2012) Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge MA and ­L ondon: MIT Press. Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Mineur, Rudi. 2015. Kristy Seymour’s Interview with Rudi Mineur. Brisbane, Australia. Sampford, Davy. 2014. Kristy Seymour’s Interview with Davy Sampford. Brisbane, Australia.

14 CHEERFUL, NOSTALGIC, MELANCHOLIC Mood in circus Peta Tait

Introduction Circus has always borrowed from other performance forms. In particular, it has co-opted a range of music styles to coexist with its signature brass band sound so that music and circus might be synonymous, but they are not necessarily perceived as such (Baston 2016). The combination allows acrobatic circus performance to calculate and enhance its overall emotional effect and impact on the senses (Tait 2005, 2022). Perhaps then, it is not surprising to find that major music organizations are increasingly interested in collaborating with circus in the twenty-first century attracted by a reputation for enjoyable entertainment. Yet, circus and its music create a wider range of emotional impressions and recent circus emphasizes tragic despair. This chapter considers how circus creates emotional moods and it argues that circus typically sets and resets its mood as it alternates cheerful and solemn effects. Perhaps mood is not what comes immediately to mind for circus. Yet the staging of a cheerful mood has been fundamental to the enjoyment and success of circus over two centuries in tandem with the delivery of visceral thrill. Moreover, a cheerful tone with physical clowning action can make violent interaction seem harmless. This chapter analyses the mood effects of four major productions staged during 2016 and 2017 in Melbourne—a geographical hub for circus in Australia.1 It finds that the moods of these productions range from the predictably cheerful and nostalgia for traditional circus exuberance to complex melancholy in contemporary circus. One of the major innovations of the fifty-year-old animal-free circus was a diversification of the predictably circus mood. From the French circus Archaos with its terrifying “Mad Max” aesthetic created with machines to the conflictless dance circus of the Canadian Cirque du Soleil, circus

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231110-18

180  Peta Tait

arts now span a range of moods expected of theatrical performance. The advent of theatrical circus seemed to have expanded circus moods. A performance studies approach to live performance, including circus, considers specific productions as texts from which interpretations of the form and its significance can be developed. The productions discussed here were only some of the circus productions in Melbourne at that time, but they were distinctive for several reasons: prominence in a major performance venue; the quality of the music in a collaboration between art forms; and the contrast between the moods of the shows. In highlighting the importance of music to the emotional qualities of listening and seeing, Kim Baston writes that “the predominantly ‘joyful’ emotional quality expressed by traditional circus music confirms the function of the music to provide both excitement and simultaneous reassurance” (2016, 124). Baston explains that joyful qualities are loud, regular, and not complex, and music adjusts to and marks the circus trick and can frame a performance identity as exotic. Analysis of a specific performance can note the music but can overlook an intangible, less technical quality such as mood, even though it is usually deliberately created by the artists and central to the show’s impact. The feel-good capacity of circus is simply assumed and its variations are not necessarily explained. Yet the traditional circus program can deviate from the cheerful mood with a clown act tinged with mournful moments or an aerial act that conveys poignancy. I noted a type of mood reversal in shows by Australia’s Circus Oz, in which its aerial solo and duo acts were often solemn, unlike most of the other acts, which were comic (Tait 2016a). Hence the mood of a circus production is not uniform and varies in both traditional and contemporary circuses, although the repeated evocation of one type of mood effect—such as cheerfulness—creates an overall impression. The argument that emerges from the comparative detailed analysis of four productions is that overall mood is created through an artistic process of establishing and reestablishing mood to maximize a show’s impact. Circus resets its moods throughout the program and within each act through nuanced contrasts; it can be aided by switches between the major upbeat key and minor somber key in the music. But this is also a highly visual art form—a spectacle—and as each act builds visually and aurally toward its climax, the mood and intensity vary in pace and tempo. In this way, digressions in mood within a production become aesthetically meaningful.

Mood Mood is considered an intangible quality that is neither focused nor directed (Felski and Fraiman 2012). Although they are connected, individual mood is not considered the same as an emotional feeling, which is more reactive to a provocation in the moment and short-lived. Moods are longer lasting and researchers in psychology have shown that they can induce happy or sad moods in their subjects by using films or by asking them to remember a happy or sad event (Clore

Cheerful, nostalgic, melancholic: mood in circus  181

and Gasper 2000, 12). Artistic expression can seek a particular type of mood. Rita Felski and Susan Fraiman (2012) write that the concept of mood might circumvent some of the polarized categorization of theory, but it runs the risk of being considered nebulous and ineffectual—that is, unless mood is aligned with thought. Heidegger claimed that we are never without mood, and this leads to a condition that can be comprehended, and additionally with an “affective atmosphere” that can be recognized (Felski and Fraiman 2012, vii). Felski and Fraiman decide that “moods, then, are often shared, collective, and social, shaping our experience of being with others” (2012, vii). Mood is being used in this chapter in conjunction with language for and about emotions but distinguished from the physiological process of bodily responding with an emotional feeling and other bodily sensations of affect (Tait 2022). Mood remains a useful term for acknowledging the larger emotional impression, particularly in nonverbal circus, and it was clearly delineated by the early twentieth-­century director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, who included physical acrobatic performance in productions. Mood is less focused than a specific feeling, such as delight or embarrassment, and its explanation potentially encompasses several words for emotions. The impact of a live performance text is always more difficult to explain when it cannot be easily reduced to a narrative. It can be culturally and personally meaningful, but, as Patrice Pavis explains, this makes it difficult to develop universalizing abstractions about performance, because despite the “readability” of the material features, there can be an “anarchy of meanings” (1992, 204–205). Pavis is suggesting that given intercultural influences, meaning in performance should be open-ended, which is applicable to the highly visual nonverbal circus and also to conceptualization of mood. Paul Bouissac explains that while circus can be analyzed as a text within a linear sequence, emotional reactions drown out the details for this process (2012, 31, 45). He argues that the spectators’ laughter is contagious, as is anxiety, and “phenomenological accounts rather confusedly point to mixed feelings of arousal, anxiety, elation, and relief which intensely color the experience of circus performances” (2012, 46). The contradictory feelings of spectators suggest that the heightened emotional experience per se is enjoyed (Tait 2005, Tait 2022). Circus evokes contrasting individual affective and emotional responses as well as moods that are potentially shared. From the perspective of artistic intention, Erin Hurley argues that the “sought-after” appeal of Cirque du Soleil’s productions lies with “a form of emotional labour where its aesthetic elements and narrative through-lines provoke, organize and authenticate affective experience” (2016, 73). She is outlining a high degree of organization in the artistic creation of emotional impact. In Cirque du Soleil productions, the mood effects are carefully structured; Cirque du Soleil’s “Kooza” is used as a comparative example in this chapter (viewed 12 February 2017). Despite the artistic control within circus, the complication of applying Pavis’s framework to the meaning of circus is that the idea of circus itself symbolizes loss of control, so it lends itself to symbolizing anarchy in culture. Yet

182  Peta Tait

a knowledgeable spectator knows that it is underpinned by highly disciplined practices. For example, even Circus Oz, which excels at presenting cheerful comic mayhem, achieves this effect with an underlying physical discipline. A circus mood of excitement is achieved with carefully delivered mechanical, technical, and aesthetic skills along with athletic skill to offset risk (Tait 2016a). Circus presents difficult muscular action with smiling graceful ease, so the enjoyable mood is invariably paradoxical. In addition, spectators can have different interpretations of risk and danger depending on their level of knowledge of circus. Spectator recognition of mood, however, may be more aligned. In his analysis of the politics of melancholia and modernism, Jonathan Flatley writes that modernist literature sought to capture the mood of the time and provide “a feeling of orientation” (2008, 7). He explains that artistic mood engages with or “maps” personal experience across culturally recognizable elements. Flatley is identifying a type of aesthetic process in which a reader momentarily engages with the aesthetic elements that produce mood. Hence, an elusive quality of artistic mood becomes internalized. Similarly, mood remains tantalizingly just out of reach as a performance spectator tries to remain connected with what it is that touched his or her sensibility. In this way, mood in performance reaches out to collective experience.

Nostalgia for circus The title of the production, “Circus 1903,” not only denotes circus in history but a precise year (viewed 11 January 2017).2 It refers to the generic traditional circus of the past, and the aesthetics of this production were unmistakably historical, with an ornate parade wagon center stage. The first part even had workmen in turn-of-the-twentieth-century costume and women in long dresses preparing and putting up a striped tent for performers also in period costume. The audience was left in no doubt that this was referring to historical circus. The Souvenir Program reveals that 1903 marks the heyday of traditional circus and offers a direct reference to Barnum and Bailey, The Greatest Show on Earth, in the USA, suggesting a specific circus program with three rings and animal acts including elephants. This historical specificity seemed to suggest that audiences in Australia should recognize this circus, although it was not a direct part of their own circus history. Australian circus dates from 1848 and it developed in parallel with American circus, and while Australian circuses such as Fitzgerald’s (Arrighi 2015) and Wirth’s had toured globally by 1903, they had not toured the USA—as “Circus 1903” would do from 2017. By 1903, exotic animal acts were among the lead circus attractions because they could be routinely included in the equestrian-dominated circus ring as opposed to the accompanying menagerie. Training had been developed by the early 1890s, largely through the efforts of the family businesses of the Hagenbecks in Germany, the major trader in animals globally, and the Bostocks in England, operators of the leading nineteenth-century traveling menageries (Tait 2016b). The animals in the

Cheerful, nostalgic, melancholic: mood in circus  183

“Circus 1903” show, however, were large, life-sized puppets of elephants—one African adult and one baby—made in the theatrical style indicative of the type of puppet horse in the successful production “War Horse” (Marra 2015). While the elephant was symbolic of nostalgia for the historical circus, the contemporary puppets were no doubt a concession to twenty-first-century values. Staged in a major theater venue, the ringmaster for Circus 1903 appeared in the auditorium throwing popcorn around among the audience with clownlike attitude before clambering onstage. The same opening gambit was used in Cirque du Soleil’s “Kooza,” although it was delivered with far more finesse. The “Circus 1903” ringmaster described a past when circus was synonymous with excitement and mysterious feats, creating “a travelling canvas caravan of dreams” and a “temple of wonders.” Then he shifted the mood when he introduced some pink balloon elephants and encouraged the audience to applaud like a circus audience. The first specific circus act was The Flying Finns, two Finnish male acrobats, and one Australian energetically twisting, turning, and somersaulting off a teeterboard. Yet this was a theatricalized circus complete with choreographic, dance-like choruses. Next, there was a balance rola bola act by Sozonov on a pedestal that built up to six rollers and it was followed by Florian’s bicycle act circling the stage. The wagon opened up into a sideshow wagon and the ringmaster and performers satirized audience expectations and joked that the female performer, Serpentine, had been eaten by a reptile. A contortion act eventuated in which the performer circled around her own body and torso and flipped herself over in extreme action. The acts were international, highly skilled, and technically accomplished. “Circus 1903” positioned the spectator looking back, and the title, program, and visual design provided the background for the ringmaster’s short, nostalgic narratives. The show contrasted upbeat, energetic visual action with short, pensive, and somewhat static segments of self-reflection. From an early point, the music was a strong element of the mood effect: the compositions of Evan Jolly, recorded by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Assisted by the music, the ringmaster described a circus of the past in a wistful tone, so that it seemed to be a circus he remembered and that the audience might remember. The performance was mapping a collective mood of nostalgia. The announcement that Feld family run Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey’s The Greatest Show on Earth® was to close in May 2017, due to shifting audience preferences and against animal acts, might justify staging nostalgia for this type of traditional circus. Christine Baade and Paul Aitken discuss how the “nostalgia aesthetics” of music in particular have become “commodified,” shaped by “cultural, technological and economic factors” (2008, 354). They point out that music, as Baudrillard explained about historical objects, has a reproducible quality. Circus music, especially a brass sound, complies with the reproducible capacity. While Baade and Aitken, and Paul Grainge (2000) suggest how a turn-of-thetwenty-first-century aestheticization of nostalgia emerged to invent a recent past, the commodification of circus nostalgia seeks an older practice. Nostalgia

184  Peta Tait

has been one of the features of twentieth-century cinema that replicates the past and with desirable attributes (e.g., Cook 2005). In the same way, nostalgia for the spectacle of an earlier twentieth-century heyday of circus became part of its aura. Circus locates itself within a tradition that has been handed down, and to some extent, this is an accurate idea of this performance form. While the perception of a lasting tradition suggests stability, consistency, and continuity, it also involves improvement and incremental change; historically, circus was a cultural space of innovation and invention. In many ways, circus is like theater: forever reproducing old texts in completely new ways. Cirque du Soleil productions made full use of its capacity for reinvention—and “Kooza” seemed to be looking back to the company’s own past. Therefore the circus form functions like a performance of “past tradition” and, as Susan Bennett explains about theater, “re-enactment is a powerful demonstration of the currency of the past in an embodied form” (Bennett 1996, 14–15). While the past is not a stable entity that can be reclaimed without practices from the present, its currency requires the evocation of a mood of nostalgia in the present. As Bennett elaborates, “nostalgia performs as the representation of the past’s ‘imagined and mythical qualities’ so as to effect some corrective to the present” (1996, 5). She writes that “nostalgia is constituted as a longing for certain qualities and attributes in lived experience that we have apparently lost” and cannot regain in the present, but “collective nostalgia can promote a feeling of community” (Bennett 1996, 5). Bennett argues, however, that such community is apolitical and creates a false “we” that negates gender, racial, and sexual identity difference (1996, 5). Similarly, circus nostalgia may circumvent the achievements of fifty years of contemporary circus and its queer radical identity politics and animal-free status. Further, nostalgia might be considered utopian in its retrospective view of the past which did not really exist and only manifests as a narrative of what happened (Bennett 1996, 6, 10). “Circus 1903” delivers nostalgia for an idealized rather than an actual circus. As Marius Kwint argues, circus needs to revisit its past rather than peddling “hackneyed traditions,” including “romantic nineteenth-century mythology,” which did not match what were “hard-nosed” businesses in reality (2013, 210, 223). Nostalgia is a long-standing feature of myths about the circus form. “Circus 1903” was a feasible historical reenactment in some ways, because there were more aerial acts in the 1903 Barnum and Bailey Circus than there were exotic animal acts, although equal to equestrian acts (Barnum and Bailey Program 1903). A solemn mood effect accompanied the first solo aerial act in Circus 1903, as the female performer, Lucky Moon, on ring undertook continuous spiral motion and with graceful stretches and hangs. She worked in a beam of light, bent double, and hanging by her toes, as if in moonlight; the symphony music underpinned an evocation of longing. Circus cheerfulness quickly returned with a risky knife-throwing act—a rare act these days—and knives hit the board with a loud thud and eventually as flaming knives. The ahistorical puppet elephant entered, a large shape of hessian grey pieces and segmented legs slowly moving

Cheerful, nostalgic, melancholic: mood in circus  185

with its human handlers visible beneath. The face had realistic eyes, tusks, and a trunk that sprouted water, and the baby elephant ran around the mother, ears flapping, as the two puppets were posed on pedestals. The puppet elephants invited admiration for the cleverness of the puppets—eliciting admiration is a valid circus intention. But the puppet elephant act presented a sentimental idea of human-like elephants in its simulation of cuteness. The puppets as objects in “Circus 1903” meant that the evocation of nostalgia for the elephant act did not seem benign, given a history in which the baby elephant was unlikely to survive in the 1903 circus. Captive elephants did not breed easily in the circus and had to be continually replenished from the wild, and the lack of knowledge about their sensory capacity was a glaring dimension of the mistreatment and physical cruelty (Tait 2016b). The science on how elephants hear at infrasound levels was not known until 1984. Even more concerning, a human capacity to create substitute sculptural or puppet bodies for living animals allows them to be surrounded with selective human emotions. This type of emotive framing of animal species in film and performance is intended to please humans. The sentimentalized nostalgia of “Circus 1903” for elephant acts seemed to deride a larger twenty-first-century context in which elephant species in the wild are becoming imperiled in some places, and puppet substitutes avoid the historic complicity of circus in their capture. Act II of “Circus 1903” staged the canvas of the circus tent, albeit with a high-tech lighting and sound system, and the mood was predominantly energetic and cheerful. There was a highly accomplished cradle act by Les Incredibles, in which the male performer swung the female performer up and over, backwards and forwards, and she was propelled into space with speed and grace. Acrobats appeared on large blue balls; a fast juggler; and an adagio acrobatic act that included fifteen somersaults in a row. The ringmaster clowned verbally and visually, making fun of four child assistants from the audience; his adult humor was just within the bounds of acceptability but his action of striking a toy raccoon on the head was not. The finale presented the two male and one female highwire performers of Los Lopez running along the wire with a balance pole, doing somersaults over one another, riding bikes, and working together in a two-level balance. The squeal of trumpets added to a Mexican flavor, and a vibrant upbeat mood effect for the final impression. As this production reveals, the mood is reset to cheerful as the program of acts builds to a crescendo and this resetting happens throughout the program. Coincidentally, the finale of “Kooza” was also a wire-walking act with similar tricks and a Latin flavor to the music (Was this programming of acts a coincidence?). The overall Cirque du Soleil show was a far more theatrically accomplished integration of its trademark moods that shifted seamlessly between wistful desiring and frolicsome delight. Yet, mood variance seemed more transparent in “Kooza,” perhaps because of changes in the singing and original live music. Nostalgia suggests yearning for the past and “Circus 1903” was magnifying such qualities. Short-lived reflective wistfulness was quickly replaced by upbeat

186  Peta Tait

cheerfulness so that the nostalgia was also predominantly for a reset cheerful mood. As well as the live animals, the conventional red nose clown of the threering spectacle was missing, and it may have also been a concession to changing audience tastes in comedy to replace the slapstick humor of the 1903 clown type with the verbal repartee of a ringmaster. The Mexican identity of the final act in “Circus 1903” suggested triumph; the brass music was joyful if stereotypical. In her analysis of exile and Latin identity within literary work, Maja Horn (2009) describes how nostalgia has negative connotations as a “messy” mood arising out of structure of feelings that are often considered ugly because they seek to return to an older era consisting of a politically conservative world and values—not to mention performance. An idea of an unchanging circus was suggested visually by a wire-walking act in combination with a Latin performance identity in both “Circus 1903” and “Kooza.” The finale in both productions had a messy dimension because it brought forth associations with geographical regions in which live animal acts continue in circus in the present. These productions suggested that the commodification of circus nostalgia may be culturally specific.

Cheerful violence The cheerful mood can be challenging to explain, even though its purpose of pleasing audiences is paramount. While a cheerful quality is grouped into pleasurable and positive emotions that are deemed good and beneficial, these are far less studied than negative ones (Damasio 2003, 130–132). The eliciting of enjoyment and a positive experience no doubt contributes to the longevity of the circus form. Two recent productions in Melbourne combining live circus and a full orchestra confirm a twenty-first-century trend in such collaborations as they reveal some of the contradictions of cheerfulness. The two productions were ostensibly circus, and orchestral music and opera, except that they each involved an additional performance form: illusionist magic and commedia dell’arte. The reasons for recognizing the distinctions between performance forms include the need to acknowledge skills and inform audiences. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra performed in conjunction with the touring Cirque de la Symphonie in the Australian state of Victoria’s largest concert venue.3 The production delivered a high level of both circus and music skill in virtuoso performances, but it was the visual aesthetic of populist circus that dominated—perhaps, in part, because the acrobatic balance, aerial, or clowning solo or duo acts were performed in front of the orchestra. Conductor Benjamin Northey became like a ringmaster as the program progressed, and he participated in an illusion trick with a rope in which a female performer appeared wearing his jacket. Circus is body-based performance with apparatus inclusive of a weight-­ bearing belt or a floor mat, but orchestra too might be considered body-based

Cheerful, nostalgic, melancholic: mood in circus  187

performance with an instrument as apparatus. Performers in both circus and music train intensely in repetitive action to master a specific physical skill, and there are other similarities between circus and orchestral music, particularly in the way that performers work with timing. Yet circus performance is more paradoxical because it is known for risk-taking physical feats and the performance of ­d anger—even though the performers are focused on safety and the safe execution of action (Tait 2016a). The strenuous muscular technique behind circus usually remains unseen, camouflaged behind easeful grace and pauses in the action for smiles and the “styling” or held poses between each sequence or trick—all aspects of how a show achieves cheerful mood effects. Orchestral solemnity and circus brashness blurred so that the mood was enjoyably lighthearted throughout. Granted, the performance reception may have depended on a preference for orchestra or circus—a spectator’s sensory attunement to either sound or sight. But the show relied on the raison d’être of attention to skills. Cirque de la Symphonie sought to impress and the audience clapped each act’s accomplishment like a circus audience, even when the orchestra was often still playing an accompanying music work. As indicated, an aerial act that is artistic and athletically accomplished can change the mood, but the mood of the acts did not seem to noticeably shift in Cirque de la Symphonie. Early in the show, a performer appeared on aerial silks, wrapping these around her wrists, legs, and thighs as she climbed up and rolled her body downward. As she paused midair, suspended in horizontal leg splits like a dancer, her movement seemed effortless without a hint of the muscular effort required to stay up high or spin at speed. The aerial technique was truly accomplished, but the mood remained effervescent throughout, which seemed to downplay the achievement. In moments, the music seemed to soar high in beautifully invisible motion. The program’s well-known music was taken from, for example, Dvorak’s ­Carnival “Overture” or Saint-Saëns’s “Danse Macabre,” and by association, the Orchestra ­ omedians.” itself seemed to turn into a chair act for Smetana’s “Dance of the C An illusionist performer accompanied by Gomes de Abreu/Colnot’s “Tico-Tico” rapidly switched gloves and dresses from neon green to purple to aqua to white. A juggling act took place to Bizet’s “Carmen” and a hula hoop act to de Falla’s “Ritual Fire Dance.” A whiteface clown in a black and red harlequin style of costume became a type of silent ringmaster. A remarkable female contortion act to Khatchaturian’s “Masquerade: Waltz” included strong inverted acrobatic hand balances. A straps act by a bare-chested male performer was matched to Williams’s “Hook: Flight to Neverland,” as he was lifted high above the stage in circular flying motion. Some of this music would be used in traditional circus. The Hammer Hall venue, the state’s concert hall, suited the orchestra equipment more than circus rigging, and in the auditorium, five riggers to one side of the stage provided the counterweight for the aerial straps act. In Act II, however, when the orchestra played Glinka’s “Russlan and Ludmilla” Overture and Strauss’s “Polka” without the circus, the music seemed more dynamic and

188  Peta Tait

potentially more mood-affecting. At this point, it began to seem that it was the combination of circus and orchestra that limited the mood, as if the visual display was subsuming the aural sensory effect. At the same time, the music did not allow the mood effect of the act to change. An aerial duo went through the motion of the lovers’ duet to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake “Waltz,” and for a twenty-first-­ century audience, the female lifted her male partner off the ground by the wrists, the silks wrapped around the horizontal legs of her inverted body. Two strongmen worked in slow acrobatic balance from the ground to Sibelius’s “Finlandia,” their skin covered in gold. Surely this would have been mood-changing, but it remained a highly skilled display without variation as the audience applauded each sequence. Despite its evocative live music, this production remained an enjoyable demonstration of skills by both the circus and the orchestra, eliciting admiration. The stability of the mood created a bland effect overall. While acknowledging that the production process and separate rehearsals may have restricted the possibility of working together, Cirque de la Symphonie was not resetting the mood. A comparable production with a live orchestra and circus, however, delivered a complete contrast of moods from pleasing acrobatic anarchy to distressing opera. A collaboration between the Victorian Opera, Orchestra Victoria, and Circus Oz, the production “Laughter and Tears” made opera entertaining like circus in Act I and circus heartfelt like opera in Act II (viewed 16 August 2016, AusStage 2023). The production solved the problem of two completely different art forms by emphasizing one art form in each act, linked by a play within a play about a travelling commedia dell’arte troupe and its stock characters. “Laughter” set in 1938 in Sicily presented a commedia narrative in acrobatic slapstick in combination with twenty-three pieces of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century music, including minstrels and works by Scarlatti, Vinci, Banchieri, Vivaldi, Monteverdi, and Gesualdo. “Tears,” set after World War II in Sicily, was the opera Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, in which a tragic love triangle between traveling performers was played out in relation to their commedia characters. An accomplished live orchestra conducted by Richard Mills accompanied some very funny clowning, clever acrobatic action, graceful aerial movement, and strong operatic performances. Act I involved Circus Oz’s disruptive comedy as three male acrobats and one female in 1930s overalls played stagehands constructing a temporary stage within the street of an Italian town, their comic pushing, tumbling, and balancing integrated into a commedia show, including five singers in commedia costumes. There was no sense of nostalgia. The contrast between the singing and forceful physical action worked to humorous effect and the production repeatedly reset the mood as comic. The character of Nedda in a red dress sang from a balcony on which el Capitano—in domestic tyranny—had imprisoned her while the besotted Arlecchino watched her from the ground. As they somersaulted in and out of windows and disappeared through doorways, the lyrics referred to dying like a martyr, in comic irony, and the acrobatic fighting was offset by the comedy of exaggerated interactions between clown types.

Cheerful, nostalgic, melancholic: mood in circus  189

Nedda escaped with Arlecchino, and el Capitano threatened to kill himself. The cheerful mood was underpinned by violent action. The opera surtitles, also known as supertitles, wittily stated, “Health warning: anyone musical, please leave now,” as the male stagehands appeared wearing the glorious commedia dresses of the singers and mayhem ensued. Both cross-­ dressing and anarchic action are distinctive Circus Oz trademarks. As Nedda sang of love, two aerialists in red performed a duet on the strops,4 circling and stretching out horizontally as they glided upward in the air. The contrast between a soulful aerial interlude and madcap clowning meant the comic mood was reinstated in this show. Here, the cheerful mood of circus paradoxically offset activities that depicted violence. The mood onstage among the characters shifted to wariness as a Mussolini Blackshirt follower announced war (World War II) and deemed commedia ­fi nished—this was a line from Pagliacci’s opera. Act II of Laughter and Tears was about a clown who murders his (supposedly) unfaithful wife. A large opera chorus entered as a crowd watching the commedia troupe in the ruins of the town. The performer characters doubled in the commedia roles: Canio was Pagliacco, Nedda was Colombina, and Silvio was Arlecchino. Canio discovered that his wife Nedda was Silvio’s lover and Canio killed them both. Circus made a few contained appearances in interludes with three waiters throwing plates, a bike balance (a Circus Oz signature act), and a high cloud swing solo as a companion piece to Nedda’s love song. Yet the violence of this opera needed a critical perspective within its staging, because the violence was comic in Act I; this could have been visually and aurally achieved in Act II with asides, additions, interludes, or interruptions to suggest its reevaluation. Even though Australian Nellie Melba had sung the role of Nedda early in the opera’s history, this historically significant opera in which Canio kills his wife needed to directly address the unacceptability of this violent action because of increased public awareness of domestic violence in Australia.5 It was the larger social context that made this choice of opera promising but ultimately disturbing, because it did not overtly critique the violent action in some way during the performance. Spectators might laugh at the acrobatic action and sympathize with the plight of the characters in “Laughter and Tears.” In Act I, short aerial interludes evoked the wistful longing of the lovers, and in Act II, the circus action created visual interludes in the tragic mood. Such extremes contributed to how the mood was reset. They also suggested that a mood effect determines how staged violence is received, so that a mood of cheerfulness offsets the violence of comic action, but a tragic mood about the murdered woman needed to be reset with, for example, extreme despair.

Melancholic cultural mood While the traditional circus might deliver moments that seem reflective, even suggestive, of regret tinged with sadness, the contemporary circus of the

190  Peta Tait

twenty-first century excels at complex moods. These are moods that reject the cheerful circus effect. Further, circus and physical theater that comments on its society may seek to capture a cultural mood. (Or alternatively, it may seek to resist the darker cultural mood with the opposite effect.) The mood of Circa’s performance Il Ritorno was particularly intriguing because it conveyed a sense of melancholic sadness through contemporary physical theater and historical opera (viewed 17 August 2016; AusStage 2023). The contrasts by which the mood was reset to sorrowful melancholy involved more pronounced grief and anguish; the dominant sad, eerie mood was reset by tantalizing glimpses of tragedy. The narrative thread of Ulysses returning to Penelope across the Mediterranean Sea referred to a mythic past as it implicitly suggested traveling refugees and lives lost in the present. Even though these were framed by narrativizing titles, this was not a story. Instead, the nonverbal acrobatic bodies in “Il Ritorno” sought to make a serious mood. Peggy Phelan writes that “performance and theatre make manifest something both more than and less than ‘the body,’” which is experienced as disappearance and can be about “loss” and death as it connects public and private grief (1997, 3, 130). Circa’s production fully integrated circus and opera and Il Ritorno developed as a theatrically coherent whole. Sparsely staged, it presented intricately choreographed physical movement and operatic music. The music for Circa’s highly acrobatic but abstract movement sequences included works by Monteverdi, Grant, and Mahler as well as minstrel music. The seven acrobat performers, two opera singers, and four musicians playing violin, accordion, and flute worked together, moving across the stage with only a piano, a harpsichord, and a cello stationary to one side. The poetic classicism of the visual and aural aesthetics conveyed a sensibility that was beautiful and also disturbing. While Horn (2009) connects a type of collective experience with the mood of nostalgia, she deems melancholy more individualized. Yet, Il Ritorno sought to elicit collective melancholy. By comparison, aided by soulful jazz, the solemn mood of Kooza remained that of gentle yearning. Baston argues that Circa’s capacity to communicate about violence is reliant on the music (2010, 156). The sad, eerie mood of Il Ritorno, while masterful in its suggestion of suffering, may not have pleased those spectators who came wanting cheerful circus. The mood created by the Circa production seemed indicative of much contemporary European theater. As Helmar Schramm and Barbara Susec Michieli (2009) explain, the emotional tone of theater about Eastern Europe changed over two decades from optimism with the fall of the Berlin Wall to doubt about the political future and utopian democracy. Drawing on Robert Burton’s explanation of melancholy as a symptom of an age and Aby Warburg’s idea of cultural conditioned responses, Schramm and Michieli explain that this political doubt became exemplified by a mood of pathos and melancholy in theater. Circus might not initially be considered an art form that captures moods of doubt and uncertainty, but this is what Il Ritorno achieved. Like theater, Circa’s Il Ritorno seemed to reflect the political concerns of the era. The production

Cheerful, nostalgic, melancholic: mood in circus  191

started with a scenario labeled “Babel,” in which slow figures wandering out of darkness were accompanied by haunting vocal and cello music. In the next segment, acrobatic bodies crumpled and collapsed, seemingly weighed down by invisible forces. The performers moved across the stage in handstands, somersaults, and balances, including two-person and three-person-high shoulder balances, and full body throws and catches, creating imaginative combinations out of familiar acrobatic techniques. The production had a rhythm in which the performers moved, fell back, paused stationary in a hold, and then moved again. There were no predictable certainties with this action. Despite its allusion to Homer’s epic, the grey-brown tones in combination with the music and low light and collectively jumbled bodies contradicted ideals of sculptural perfection and color in Ancient Greece. A discordant aural tone was reinforced by body positions in awkward angles and strange bent aspects. This sequence was followed by a more harmonious one, when, for example, two acrobats worked on aerial apparatus either side of Penelope, singing at the back of the stage. A cube became an aerial rig for slow, sinuating holds by the hands, knees, feet, and neck; a performer on straps floated in the air. At one point, Penelope’s suitors appeared in black clown noses trying to complete the set task of getting into the aerial apparatus. It was lighter but not humorous. Holds and poses contorted and distorted the acrobatic body; bodies were hanging, falling, catching, and grabbing. They twisted and turned above the ground and spun head down, accompanied by the rising and falling operatic song. Ulysses arrived among a group of men, and the singers and acrobats peeled away. The “Chorus of Hope and Despair” presented all the performers standing in a line at the front of the stage fully lit, the surtitle listing the contrasting emotions. The skill was in the dynamic action and athletic movement, but the art was in the pauses and holds creating multiple fleeting images through the montage of bodies. Alongside the singers, the mobile acrobats seemed more neutral with less personality and more physicality. This was a director’s visual text, and working with the other artists and composer/arranger Quincy Grant, Yaron Lifschitz refined the physical movement with the music, its necessary companion. This type of artistically accomplished integrated production requires creative development time (and funding) and the quality of the lighting and the staging denoted contemporary performance. Acrobats worked in pairs momentarily, dissembling and reassembling. A cloud swing appeared, but not a full act. The women performers were lifted up high or turned or bodily thrown. They did leg splits on the ground, in a lift, suspended from trapeze, but they were also the base for a balance. Males stood on the chests of females, and these poses evoked the seriousness of physical violence and its cruelty. The mood effect was disturbing. Invisible forces seemed to tear and rip at a solo female performer as she stretched out her dress, her limbs. The mood was despairing. She seemed to be torn apart in extremes of thrashing, stabbing, and writhing, and she walked away on bent toes as if tortured. The violence was

192  Peta Tait

confronting. The physical action depicted painful anguish; a spectator’s phenomenological response might have been physical discomfort. The mood shifted back to pensive waiting. Three female acrobats hung suspended from wide trapeze apparatus, moving slowly into stretches and held poses. They seemed to be passing time as they hung upside down by the knees or sat on the bar and two held a third suspended below. The poses flowed into each other rhythmically. In a segment called “Reunion,” bodies lay prone before being hauled offstage. In the “Chorus of Farewell,” the acrobats worked in shoulder balances. They swung a performer into the arms of a second performer standing on the shoulders of a third—an impressive feat. There was an epic quality to the physical action. Three women fanned out standing on the shoulders of a male acrobat—like an Ancient Greek vase drawing. The performers gradually slipped away through a backlit doorway as if through time and memory, and a poetic mood of melancholy and pathos lingered.

Conclusion The overall mood effect of each circus production discussed here was different. From the feel-good to the melancholic, acrobatic bodies worked with music to achieve mood effects in these productions, the visual elements in combination with the aural effects. Crucially, an overall mood was created by its intentional variation and through an emotive staging in tandem with the music. A dominant mood within the production was achieved by repeatedly resetting it, as these circus productions intentionally sought to evoke collective experience. Although recognizable, mood remains an intangible dimension of experience, one that hovers tantalizingly just out of reach in its description. Presenting short, reflective segments that switched back to a prevailing cheerful mood, “Circus 1903” suggested that circus has long co-opted a mood of nostalgia. “Cirque de la Symphonie” delivered an enjoyable display of skills, but one in which the more complex processes of circus mood could not be fully realized, and it seemed less like circus. If the division of “Laughter and Tears” meant that visual clowning dominated Act I and the orchestra music and operatic singing dominated Act II, a wider mood in society offset how this could be viewed without a direct artistic intervention and questioning of the violence in Act II. It exposed how circus cheerfulness layered over extreme physical action can appear violent when the mood is changed. In a seamless integration of acrobatic movement and music, Il Ritorno shifted the mood in subtle ways so that it was reset back to an impression of melancholic sadness from more extreme suggestions of grief, suffering, and devastation. In this way, the mood effects of violent action became evident. This was not the pleasurable mood contrast with wistful sadness evident, for example, in Cirque du Soleil productions, in which joyful sentiments prevail. While the principle of resetting the mood was apparent, extreme anguish in Il Ritorno also pointed to the political mood of the era. A full range of theatrical moods can be found in circus.

Cheerful, nostalgic, melancholic: mood in circus  193

Notes 1 Melbourne has the National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA) in Australia and the headquarters of Circus Oz. Discussion of three of the four productions were initially included in a short review by the author: https://theconversation.com/sequinsand-symphonies-how-opera-ran-away-with-the-circus-64125. The listing of all the performers’ names in large productions proved too complicated and will need to be located from online sources. 2 The creative team included Australians and Americans and the producers were touring this production in Australia before touring the USA. 3 The author viewed the production at Hamer Hall, Arts Centre, Melbourne, July 15, 2016. 4 “Straps” is used as a generic term in this chapter, except here where aerialist and teacher Kathryn Nietsche identified this apparatus as “strops” to the author. 5 The Australian of the Year in 2015 was Rosie Batty, campaigning against domestic violence and the high rate at which males kill their female partners and ex-partners: about one a week.

References Arrighi, Gillian. 2015. The FitzGerald Brothers Circus: Spectacle, Identity and Nationhood at the Australian Circus. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing. AusStage https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/browse/, last accessed 5 February 2023. Baade, Christine, and Paul Aitken. 2008. Still “in the Mood”: The Nostalgia Aesthetic in a Digital World. Journal of Popular Music Studies 20 (4): 353–377. ‘Barnum and Bailey The Greatest Show on Earth’, Official Program and Book of Wonders Combined, 1903 Author’s Collection.Baston, Kim. 2010. Jacques Brel and Circus Performance: The Compiled Score as Discourse in The Space between by Circa. Australasian Drama Studies 56: 154–169. Baston, Kim. 2016. Circus Music: The Eye of the Ear. In The Routledge Circus Studies Reader, eds. Peta Tait and Katie Lavers, 117–135. London: Routledge. Bennett, Susan. 1996. Performing Nostalgia. London: Routledge. Bouissac, Paul. 2012. Circus as Multimodal Discourse: Performance, Meaning, and Ritual. ­L ondon: Bloomsbury. Clore, Gerald L. and Karen Gasper. 2000. Feeling Is Believing: Some Affective Influences on Belief. In Emotions and Belief, eds. Nico H. Frijda, Antony S. R. Manstead, and Sacha Bem, 10–44. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Cook, Pam. 2005. Screening the Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema. London; Routledge. Damasio, Antonio. 2003. Looking for Spinoza. Orlando: Harcourt. Felski, Rita, and Susan Fraiman. 2012. Introduction. New Literary History 43 (3): v–xii. Flatley, Jonathan. 2008. Affective Mapping. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grainge, Paul. 2000. Nostalgia and Style in Retro America: Moods, Modes and Media Recycling. Journal of American & Comparative Cultures 23 (1): 27–34. Horn, Maja. 2009. Messy Moods: Nostalgia and Other Nagging Feelings in Oscar Hijuelos’s The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Latin Studies 7 (4): 449–514. Hurley, Erin. 2016. Performance Services: The Promise of Cirque du Soleil. In Cirque Global. Quebec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries, eds. Louis Patrick Leroux and Charles R. Batson, 71–78. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Kwint, Marius. 2013. Circus. In The Cambridge Companion to Theatre History, eds. David Wiles and Christine Dymkowski, 210–226. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

194  Peta Tait

Marra. Kim. 2015. Massive Bodies in Mortal Performance: War Horse and the Staging of Anglo-American Equine Experience in Combat. In Performing Animality: Animals in Performance Practices, eds. Jennifer Parker-Starbuck and Lourdes Orozco, 117–134. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Pavis, Patrice. 1992. Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture (Lauren Kruger, Trans.). London: Routledge. Phelan, Peggy. 1997. Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memorials. London: Routledge. Schramm, Helmar and Barbara Susec Michieli. 2009. Pathos and Melancholy: Rethinking “Theatre” in Times of Doubt. Theatre Research International 34 (3): 278–293. Tait, Peta. 2005. Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance. London: Routledge. Tait, Peta. 2016a. Risk, Danger and Other Paradoxes in Circus and Circus Oz. In The Routledge Circus Studies Reader, eds. Peta Tait and Katie Lavers, 528–545. London: Routledge. Tait, Peta. 2016b. Fighting Nature: Travelling Menageries, Animal Acts and War Shows. ­Sydney: Sydney University Press. Tait, Peta. 2022. Forms of Emotion: Human to Nonhuman in Drama, Theatre and Performance. London: Routledge.

INDEX

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. abstraction, as circus trick 128–129, 130 academic research 72, 101 accident: circus change after 46 Acrobat 13, 27, 37, 40n8, 55, 56, 58, 67, 76, 83, 87–88, 94, 161, 165, 167, 174, 175, 183, 185, 188, 190–192 acrobatics: aerial 88; floor 62; group 174; hand-balancing 48–53; hand to hand 13, 56, 88; nonverbal internal communication 58–59; pair (see pair acrobatic); problem-solving 59; on training 60–61; on trust and pair acrobatic 57–58; verbal communication during training 63–64 Acro-Sports 163, 177n3 Adelaide Botanical Gardens 175 Adelaide Fringe Festival 161, 174, 175 Adorno, Theodor W. 151n2 aerial 95; acrobatics 88; rope 91 aesthetic effects 29–30 Agamben, Giorgio 126 Agger, Henrik 13, 56–64 Aitken, Paul 183 Alexis Gruss Circus School 43 Allen, Amy 52 Althusser, Louis Pierre 158, 159n10 Amagatsu, Ushio 13 analyzing contemporary circus 102–103 Ancient Greek 142, 151n7, 192

animal performance 3–4, 6–7, 11, 21, 25, 28, 176, 179, 182–186 Annabel Lines 168 apparatus 4, 12, 24–26, 31, 174, 186–187; aerial 167, 191; conventional circus 127; traditional 46 ARD Campus Magazine 16n4 Arendt, Hannah 131–132 Aristotle 75, 126 Arrighi, Gillian 11 art: abstract visual 104; and artistic performances 153; circus 27; of circus studies 10–11; of the crash 59–60; and science 100–101, 112–113; theatrical 34; visual 104 articulation 31, 47–54, 112, 128, 145; defined 50; and hand-balancing 50–51; as process 51; qualitative 51 artist: accident and life of 45; and audience 173 artistic movement 24, 37–38, 109, 113n4 artistic practice 72, 102, 113 Ash, James 134n8 audience: and artist 173; arts 176; as deuteragonists 147; interaction 174 Australian Circus & Physical Theatre Association (ACAPTA) 161 Australian contemporary circus: Brisbane 165–171; Circus Oz 161–165 Azaria Universe 168

196 Index

Baade, Christine 183 Bakhtin, M. M. 143 balance: acrobatic 186, 188; “gut of balance” 96; loss of 158; postural 49; sensation of 94, 96–98; two-level 185; verticality and 89–90, 94–95 Baßler, Moritz 3 Baston, Kim 180, 190 bathos 143 Batty, Rosie 193n5 Becker, Howard 23 Beddows, Joël 77 Belochvostov, Boris Nikiforovich 56 Belochvostov Technique 57 Benjamin, Walter 129, 140, 142, 145 Bennett, Susan 184 Bergson, Henry 150 Berlusconi, Silvio 146–147 Bernard, Jean-François 73, 84, 98 Bienvenue,Yvan 72 Bjurholm, Louise Von Euler 13, 56–64 BlakFlip 163 Bloom, Harold 74 Blue Studios 161 body: based performance 101; demonstrative 93; -environment 134n5; and gravity 87 Boltanski, Luc 31 Bolze, Mathurin 29, 92 Bonta, Mark 171 Bory, Aurélien 29, 30 Bourgeois,Yohann 29 Bouvier, François 76–78, 81–82 Bowie, Alison 76, 78, 84 Brecht, Bertolt 14, 137–150 bridgebuilder 100, 113 Briefs Factory International 170, 176 Brisbane 161; Brisbane Powerhouse 169–170; independent circus companies in 165–171 Brisbane Powerhouse 169–170 Brisset, Annie 77 Brooker, Peter 148 Brown, Stephen 168 Brown, Trisha 159n8 Burton, Robert 190 The Cambridge Companion to the Circus (Arrighi and Davis) 11 Canadian Cirque du Soleil 179 Capelin, Steve 165–167 Carlyle, Thomas 74 CARP 15n3, 16n4 Carpe Diem 31

Carter, Paul 155, 156, 157, 159n6 Casella, Antonella 167–168 Challenging the Centre:Two decades of Political Theatre (Capelin) 165 Chalupáři 36, 39 Chaplin, Charlie 14, 22, 136, 137; and the epic 138–141; Gestus, montage, and narrativity 138–141 “Chasing Smoke” 163 cheerful violence 186–189 Cheptel Aleikoum 1–2, 4, 10 Child, Lydia M. 159n6 choreographers 13, 35, 87, 109, 157 choreography 29, 32, 37, 40, 46, 56, 70: and neutral training session 62; pair acrobatic 62–63 “Chorus of Hope and Despair” 191 circus: children 6, 21, 23; culture 13–14; Disney 6; genres 21–22; internal limits of classifications 22–23; meaning 11–12; narration 5, 9, 27, 134n8, 144; nostalgia for 182–186; practice 12–13; staging 75; studies 10–11; as wonderland 4–5; see also individual entries The Circus 22 “Circus 1903” 182–186, 192 circus arts teachers 13, 98; gravity 87–88; images 91–94; methodology 88–89; sensations 94–96; space 89–91; touch 96–97 circus companies 10, 35, 39, 163, 165–171, 183; see also individual entries circus disciplines: acrobatics 48–62, 88, 174; clown(s)/clowning 4, 14, 25, 30, 31, 136–151; equilibristic 2–4, 9; handbalancing 48–53; juggling 12, 22, 27–29, 32, 104–107, 109, 125, 187; rope 3, 8, 9, 27, 91, 154, 158, 186; tightwire 14, 153–156, 158; trapeze 26, 27, 43, 45, 46, 95, 128 Circus Nando Orfei 44 Circus Oz 165, 180, 188, 193n1; and Melbourne 161–165; and sectoral development 161–165 The Circus Spot 161 circus technique: actualization of 128; as revealing 125–128; as technē 131–132 Cirk La Putyka 34–39 Cirkus Cirkör 56 Cirque d’Hiver Bouglione 44 Cirque du Soleil 6, 21, 164, 181 Cirque Global. Quebec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries (Leroux and Batson) 11 Cirque Jean Richard 43

Index  197

The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 183 climax, as circus trick 129 cloud swing 8, 189, 191 clown(s)/clowning 4, 14, 25, 30, 31; alienating 148–150; dialectic 148–150; eccentrics 37; and the epic 136–151; political 148–150; political role of 141–148; sad 38 collaboration 11, 13, 15n3, 16n4, 75, 100, 163, 171, 176, 180, 186, 188 The College of Technical and Further Education 177n2 Collingwood TAFE site 162–163 Commedia dell’arte 102, 141, 147, 186, 188 communication 16n4, 50, 58–59, 96, 100–102, 149, 151n5: nonverbal during training pair acrobatic 64; verbal during training pair acrobatic 63–64 community 22, 146, 150, 151n7, 167–169, 184; arts 166; -based initiatives 163; collectives 165; human 141 Company 2 170, 176 contemporary circus 1–15, 21; aesthetic effects 29–30; defined 23; diversity of 25–27, 29–30; dramaturgy 72–73; hybrids and purism 28–29; vs. new circus 24; signs 30–31; spaces of 25–26; subject 28; vs. traditional circus 23; see also circus contemporary circus performances: and cultural poetics 102–103; a twilight zone between bodily practice and cultural discourse 101–102 cooperation and pair acrobatic 58 corporis 82 corpus lingua 82 Crang, Mike 162 creation 23, 29; of meaning 44, 106, 108; political 24; process of 103, 110–112 creative practice and spatiality 171–177 cubed sculpture 105 cultural mood, melancholic 189–192 cultural poetics 10, 16n4, 102, 108–109; and contemporary circus performances 102–103; and creative process 109; as dramaturgical practice 103; and intertextuality 103 Cymbeline 72 Czech contemporary circus 12, 34–39, 46n1 Damkjaer, Camilla 13, 60 dance: contact-dance 99n6; pedagogy 91; politics 99n6; “small dance” 153, 157–158; Western styles of 157

danger 8, 28, 4–45, 81, 134n11, 154, 165, 182, 187 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 78 Davis, Jim 11 Dejl, Jiří 37 De Jong, Joris 103 Deleuze, Gilles 47, 53, 126–127, 171 Deleuze and Geophilosophy (Bonta and Protevi) 171 dialogue 13, 44, 56, 67, 75, 82, 87, 100, 101, 102, 112; between art and science 100–102, 112; with gravity 89; magnetic 44; verbal or nonverbal 56 difference 23–25, 30, 49, 59, 60, 62, 84, 110, 126, 128–129, 175, 184 digital circus 23, 104 Discovery Channel 154, 159n5 Dislocate 161 Disney 6 diversity 25–27, 29–30 Downey, Greg 48–49 dramatic arts 35 dramaturge 9, 14, 35, 84, 100, 102–103, 109 dramaturgy 2, 11, 12, 25, 26, 28, 37, 75–76, 85n2, 100; composition 35–37; contemporary circus 72–73; cultural poetics as 103; practice 103; selfreferentiality 9–10 Drouin, Jennifer 77 Dumont, Agathe 13 Dutch Arts Council 113n1 Dyk,Vojtěch 38, 39 embodiment 76, 157, 159, 174 emotion 57–59, 64, 112, 143, 179–183, 185, 186 Endo,Yoshi 84 epic: as alienating 148–150; as dialectic 148–150; as political 148–150 epic clowning 136–151 equilibrist 2–4, 9 Fa’anana, Natano 163 fairground 7, 163 fairy-tale universe 4–5, 6 Farrell, Joseph 147 feedback method, reading circus as 104–110 Felski, Rita 181 Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain 43–44 fiction 10, 138; as dramaturgic principle 7–9; Les Princesses 7–9 Fischer-Lichte, Erika 7 Flaig, Paul 139

198 Index

Flatley, Jonathan 182 Flipside Circus 163, 169–170 Fly Factory 161 Flying Fruit Fly Circus (FFFC) 161, 163 Fo, Dario 14, 136, 137–138; and the epic 141–148; political role of the clown 141–148; V-Effekt 146 Foucault, Michel 52, 175 Fraiman, Susan 181 freedom 131–133; artistic 166; creative 81; individual 14 free expression 125, 129; spaces of 131–133 Fyfe, Mel 172 Gallagher, Shaun 53 The Garden of Unearthly Delights 175 Gavrilov, Alexander 56 gender 67, 77, 107–108, 184 “gender hierarchies” 108 Gestus 137; and montage 138–141; and narrativity 138–141 Grainge, Paul 183 Grant, Quincy 191 gravity 13, 44, 57; and acrobats 88; and body 87; circus arts teachers 87–88; and sensitive virtuosity 98 Gravity and Other Myths (GOM) 14, 171, 174, 176 The Great Dictator 138, 151n1 Greenblatt, Stephen 82 Grock (Swiss clown) 27, 136 Grosz, Elizabeth 173, 177 Gruss, Alexis 21, 43 Guattari, Felix 47, 53, 164, 171 Guida, Firenza 84 Guillerm, Johann Le 26, 30 Guy, Jean-Michel 12 Hamlet: Poem Unlimited (Bloom) 74 hand-balancing: aesthetics of 48; analytical aspect of 49; and articulation 50–51; continuity and repetition 49; and discourses 50–51; as somatic circus 48–50, 52; technique of 48, 51, 53; as technique of the self 52–53 hand to hand 13, 56, 88 “Heaven on Their Minds” 38 Heidegger, Martin 125–133, 133n3, 133n10, 181 high-wire performer see tightwire performer Hitler, Adolf 138, 139 Holz, Nicolaus-Maria 29 Homer 191

Horkheimer, Max 151n3 Horn, Maja 186, 190 Hurley, Erin 181 Huysman, Christopher 29 hybrids 28–29 identity 10–11; gravitational 88–89; Latin 186; Mexican 186; performance 180; postcolonial 77; radical 184 images, and circus arts teachers 91–94 independent circus companies 165–171 innkeeper 36–39 innovation 109, 148, 164, 179, 184 installation: sound 82–83; video 72 interdisciplinary 11, 72 internationality 14 invariants 31–32 Italian Fascism 143 Ives, Derek 166, 168 Jacob, Pascal 76 Jakobson, Roman 105, 107 Jenkins, Ron 137 Jesus Christ Superstar musical 38 Jolet, Marie 9 Jolly, Evan 183 jonglage cubique 106 Jonson, Ben 74 Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Art 170 Judson Dance Theater 159n8 jugglability 32 juggling 12, 22, 27–29, 32, 104–107, 109, 125, 187 Kann, Sebastian 14 Keane, Jondi 174 Keaton, Buster 136 Kerkhoven, Marianne van 100, 112 Kimber, John 149 Král, Karel 36 Kukučka, Martin 34 Kwint, Marius 184 La Mama 161 La Putyka 12, 34–39 La Soiree 176 laughter 137, 139, 143–147, 150 “Laughter and Tears” 188–189, 192 Laurie, Robyn 168 Lazzarato, Maurizio 129 Le Corbusier 155 “Le Cri du Chaméléon” 101 Leo Bassi 136

Index  199

Leoncavallo, Ruggero 188 Lepecki, André 156 Leroux, Louis Patrick 13, 15 Lesage, Dieter 74–75 “Les Princesses—cirque aérien et chanté” 1–10 Lievens, Bauke 133n1 Lifschitz,Yaron 191 Lines XXII 108 Loftis, Freeman 74 logos 82 “Looking Without Pencil in the Hand” (Kerkhoven) 100 Maartje Bonarius 103, 113n1 magic 7, 31, 186 Maidment, Scott 175 Man on Wire 157 Martinez, Adrian 76 Marx brothers 136 Mason, Joel 76, 78 Massey, Doreen 172 Massumi, Brian 133n3 Mat Wilson 168, 172 Maxián, Jan 39 McManus, Donald 137 melancholic cultural mood 189–192 The Melba Spiegel Tent 163 Melbourne: and Circus Oz 161–165; and sectoral development 161–165 Melbourne Fringe Festival 161 Melbourne Symphony Orchestra 186 Ménard, Phia 12, 30, 32 methodology, and circus arts teachers 88–89 Meyerhold,Vsevolod 181 Michel, Marie-Anne 26 Michieli, Barbara Susec 190 Middle Ages 141–142, 146 Mikulka,Vladimír 35, 39 Milford Haven, triptych 72–73 Mills, Richard 188 Mineur, Rudi 168 “Mistero Buffo” 146–147 “Mobile” 27 Modernist humanism 127 modernity 154, 159n3 mono-disciplinary shows 26–27 montage 144, 145, 191; and Gestus 138–141; and narrativity 138–141 mood 180–182; artistic 182; cheerful 186–189; cultural 190; of excitement 182; individual 180; melancholic cultural 189–192; of nostalgia 183–184; spectator recognition of 182

movement analysis 13, 88–89 Müller, Heiner 73 Müller, Jörg 27, 28 Mullet, Jane 163 multidisciplinarity 11, 14 music 38–39 Mussolini, Benito 138, 189 My Name Is 85n2 myth 7, 184 narration 5, 9, 27, 134n8, 144 narrativity: and Gestus 138–141; and montage 138–141 National Circus School of Montreal 72, 73, 76, 81, 84, 85n2 National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA), Australia 161–165, 193n1 natural prosody 81 Nazism 143 Nelson, Lisa 159n8 Neoclassicism 143 neutral expression/state 61–62 new circus 21; vs. contemporary circus 24; defined 24; see also circus The New York Times 7 Nietsche, Kathryn 193n4 Nietzsche, Friedrich 159n2 nonverbal internal communication 64; honest language 58; intercom system 58–59; and pair acrobatic 58–59 Northey, Benjamin 186 nostalgia 179, 188, 190, 192; for circus 182–186; mood of 183–184 Novák, Rostislav 34, 35 Oates, Kareena 168 “Of Other Spaces” (Foucault) 175 Oleg Popov 136 oratio 82 Orchestra Victoria 188 pair acrobatic: art of the crash 59–60; choreography 62–63; and cooperation 58; essential elements 57–60; neutral expression/state 61–62; and nonverbal internal communication 58–59; overview 56; practical spaces/ environments 66; and problem-solving 59; project 55–56; research methods 68–70; technique 56–57, 64–65; and trust 57–58; verbal communication during training 63–64 palimpsest translation 71, 77–78, 79–80 Paolo Nani 136

200 Index

paradigms 2, 6, 12, 25, 27, 30–31, 105, 107–111, 125, 133n1, 137, 150 parakrobatik 56 Pavis, Patrice 181 Paxton, Steve 99, 157, 159n8 Peacock, Louise 140, 148, 149 Péaud, Raphael 26 pedagogy 16, 88–89, 91, 95, 101 Peel, Dennis 166 Peel, Pauline 166 pendular juggling 27 performance analysis 9–11, 31, 39, 47, 180 performance studies 101, 180 performing: arts 13, 72, 137, 149, 162; demonstrative body 93 Petit, Philippe 14, 154, 157, 158–159n1, 159n9 Peut-on encore jouer Hamlet? (Lesage) 74 physical theatre 102, 190 Pinder, John 162 Plato 1 poietic causality 133n3 political role of clown 141–148 Pope.L, William 156, 159n7 The Popular Theatre Troupe 165–166 Prachař, Jakub 39 practitioners 11, 13, 15, 50, 68, 100–102, 170–172 The Pram Factory 161–162 problem-solving and pair acrobatic 59 production of value 128–129 programming 107–108, 111, 161, 169–170 Propp,Vladimir 5 Protevi, John 171 purism 27–29 Putin,Vladimir 147 queer radical identity 184 “Question Concerning Technology” (Heidegger) 125–126, 129 Rainer,Yvonne 159n8 Rame, Franca 143, 147, 150 Rastelli, Enrico 27 Reading Circus: advantages and disadvantages 112–113; as feedback method 103; as a feedback method 104–110; impact on creation process 110–112 “Reading Circus. Dramaturgy on the Border Between Art and Academia” project 100 reality: as dramaturgic principle 7–9; fiction 7–9; Les Princesses 7–9 recipient 7–9, 109

referential text 73–75 reinvention 184 Renaissance 143 residency 103, 104, 110–111, 169–170 resonant response: contemporary circus 72–73; to Hamlet’s Soliloquy 79–80 Rickus, Lachlan “Loki” 163 rigging 4, 29, 169, 172, 174–175, 187 ring 1–4, 7, 9, 12, 25–27, 182, 184 risk: aesthetics of 8; creative 174–175; depiction of 173; physical 8–9; redemptive 13; “risk-sharing” 96 risk-taking behaviors 8 Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus 166–168, 169, 170, 177n6 rope 3, 8, 9, 27, 91, 154, 158, 186; see also tightwire The Routledge Circus Studies Reader (Tait and Lavers) 11, 14, 102 Ruby, Christian 24 Ruccis Circus 161 Sabisch, Petra 50–51 Sampford, Davy 169 Sartre, Jean-Paul 145, 151 Satijn, Don 103, 104, 108, 111 scenic textualities 75–76 Schramm, Helmar 190 Schuner, Seth 84 science: art and 100–101, 112–113; cognitive 91; and praxis 15 self-differing 128–129 self-referentiality 1, 4, 7, 9–10 semiotics 10–11, 31, 45, 103, 107, 110, 112, 113n2 sensations 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 87–99, 181; and circus arts teachers 94–96 Seymour, Kristy 14 Sharon Weston 168 signs 2, 23, 30–31, 35, 38, 43, 44, 105–110 Slava Polunin 136 Sloterdijk, Peter 14, 156 “small dance” 153, 157–158 sociology 10, 101 soliloquy, in Hamlet 71, 75, 77–78, 81–84 sound installation 13, 82–83 space(s): circus arts teachers 89–91; of contemporary circus 25–26; for dramaturgy of circus 26; of free expression 131–133; practical and pair acrobatic 66 Spaghetti Circus 163 spatiality: of Australian contemporary circus 161–177; creative practice and 171–177

Index  201

spectator 2, 4, 7–10, 14, 23, 36, 44, 46, 82, 84, 103, 104, 106, 128, 129, 136, 138, 140, 141, 144–147, 159, 175, 181–183, 187, 189, 190, 192; exposed 8; recognition of mood 182 “Square 2.1,” a forty-five-minute digital circus performance 104, 110–111 Square Two 103–112 stage 129, 133, 137–138; Dario Fo on 144– 147; and Gestus 144–147; and grammelot 144–147; and situation 144–147 standing-reserve 130–131 street 22, 26, 147, 165–168, 175, 188 Street Arts Theatre 165–167 Strut n Fret Production House 161, 170, 171, 175 subject(s) 28; sociological 28; as subjected 51–53 Sun, Sandy 12, 43–46 suppressed juggling 27 Swedish Royal Academy 136 syntagma 106–107, 109–110 Tait, Peta 14 “The Tale of a Tiger” 147 Tall Tales Company 13, 100, 103, 104, 108, 110, 113n1 Tarde, Gabriel 129 Tati, Jacques 136 technē 125–126, 127, 130–132 technique 35, 37, 47–54, 56–57, 60–66, 84, 87–98, 103, 104, 137, 140, 145, 159n8, 174, 187, 191: of hand-balancing 48, 51, 53; pair acrobatic 56–57, 64–65; of the self, hand-balancing as 52–53; technology 125–135 teetherboard 88, 92, 96, 128, 183 tent 24–27, 30, 162–162, 172–175, 185 Terranova, Tiziana 129 text artifact 81, 81–82 Theater Circus 28 theatre 165–168; ancient 143; physical 102; postdramatic 102 Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui 72 Théâtre Urbi et Orbi 72 “the minimal self ” 53 Thévenot, Laurent 31 “thick description” 102 Thomas, Jerome 22 Thrills ‘n’ Spills Circus 167 tightrope walker see tightwire performer tightwire 13–14, 27, 71–84, 153–156, 158 tightwire performer 153–158 Toběrná, Tereza 37

touch, and circus arts teachers 96–97 “To Walk the Tightwire” 14 tradition 21, 23–25, 155, 184 traditional circus 21; vs. contemporary circus 23; defined 23; signs of 24–25; see also circus training: Bjurholm on 60–61; Henrik on 60–61; neutral and choreography 62; verbal communication during 63–64 The Tramp, Chaplin 138 trapeze: accident of Sun Sandy 45, 46; dance 46; flying 26, 27; performances, risk associated with 45; swinging 95, 128 Travers, Petit 27 trick: abstraction as circus 128–129; climax as circus 129 Trick Circus 161 Tros Discotecos 39 Trpišovský, Lukáš 35 truism 39 trust and pair acrobatic 57–58 unconscious intellect 74, 84 University College of Dance and Circus (DOCH) 56 University of Münster Theater, Germany 100, 103 upsidedown circus and space 15, 115–121 UpSideDown—Circus and Space (Kluth and Trapp) 15 Ursić, Ante 14 Valéry, Paul 156–157 van der Laan, Harm 103, 110, 113n1 Vanhaesebrouck, Karel 9–10 verbal communication 63–64 Verfremdungseffekt 137 “Vertical Horizon” 26 verticality 13, 26, 87–99; balance and 87–90, 94–95 Victorian College of Art 162 Victorian Opera 188 video installation 72, 73 Vimercati, Gaia 14 violence 3, 92, 186–192, 193n5 visibility 4, 128–129 visual arts 27, 29, 38, 103–104, 107–108, 180 Vulcana Women’s Circus 169–170, 177n6, 177n7 Wallenda, Nik 14, 154–158, 159n1, 159n4 wanted/unwanted paradigms 105, 108, 111 Warburg, Aby 190

202 Index

“War Horse” 183 Westside Circus 161 “What is Freedom” (Arendt) 131 White, Celia 170 Women’s Circus 161; see also Vulcana Women’s Circus “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (Benjamin) 129

Yen, Anna 168 YouTube 129 Zahavi, Dan 53 Zane Trow 169 Zarathustra (Nietzsche) 159n2 Zimmermann, Martin 29 Zirkus|Wissenschaft 11, 15, 16n4