Agathe Dumont
Agathe Dumont
Centre national de danse contemporaine d’Angers, France; CircusNext, France
Bio: Agathe Dumont is an independent researcher. She holds a PhD in Performing Arts (2011) and a degree in Sport Sciences. She teaches in professional dance and circus schools and at university. She also works as a researcher for different European institutions or projects: CircusNext, Fedec, Centre national de la danse. She has recently published several articles and books on circus, contemporary dance and hip-hop.
Title: Artist or Entrepreneur? Multiple Identities for Emergent Contemporary Circus Artists in Europe
Abstract: At the beginning of their careers, emergent contemporary circus artists are confronted with different professional identities. The way circus artists perceive themselves reveals tensions between the institutional definition of a profession and practices in the field. We will therefore interrogate how the “Europeanization” of circus arts in the last decade has affected the professionalization of artists and how it plays a role in the identification processes as an artist and/or as an entrepreneur and what it reveals of the nature of artistic work.
Alisan Funk
Alisan Funk
Doctoral student, McGill University, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Bio: Alisan Funk is a Montreal circus coach, performer and creator currently pursuing a PhD in education at McGill University. She holds an MA in circus education from Concordia University and works as a research assistant on multiple projects which examine the technical and creative aspects of circus, theatre and physical literacy.
Title: Hidden and Null Curriculum in Circus Education: Avoidance of Otherness in Pursuit of Fine Arts Status
Abstract: Contemporary circus arts programs, graduating students into the professional industry for over 30 years, exhibit several distinct trends. Researchers have brought up critiques of race, low rates of female matriculation and the hegemony of specific body-types. For instance, some schools are notorious for preferring a certain female aesthetic, or encouraging students to focus on specific disciplines based on their likeness to other performers of the same technique. This study investigates the ongoing discourse about circus education in relation to important social and cultural issues, asking who attends circus schools and how they came to be involved in a given program, what content is being learned and what is not part of the curriculum or school culture; finally, the study focuses on tracing gaps in dialogue, representation and expression
Ante Ursić
Ante Ursić
New York University and University of California, Davis, USA
Bio: Most of Ante Ursić’s professional career has taken place as a performer and choreographer in the field of contemporary circus. He has successfully produced independent as well as collaborative projects. He received a gold medal from the SOLyCIRCO festival and a special prize from the Cirque du Demain festival. Ante Ursić performed with companies such as Cirque du Soleil (Totem), Circus Roncalli and the Tiger Lillies Circus. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Performance Studies at UC Davis. He focuses on circus acts, events, shows and performances which facilitate the expansion of our perception of circus: what and who it encompasses, as well as its politics. He is currently investigating the animal–human relationship in traditional and contemporary circus.
Title: Approaching Limitrophy – Beastialities in Baro d’Evel Cirk’s Bestias
Abstract: I am interested in different instantiations of the human and animal encounter in modern circus practices. In this year’s contribution, I examine Bestias, the latest show produced by the French-Spanish circus company Baro d’Evel Cirk, one of a handful of circus companies who work with their animal performers to address questions of animality. My presentation uses Bestias to approach Derrida’s concept of limitrophy. Rather than positing one absolute and decisive limit between the human and the animal, limitrophy is concerned with differences, heterogeneities and multiplicities. However, Bestias becomes a limit case. As a circus, it represents Derrida’s horror of taming on domestication. Hence, for Derrida, the traditional, animal-centered circus is a spectacle that arouses negative affects and a place where limitrophy is denied. In contrast to Derrida, I attempt to suggest that circus is a site where boundaries between species are constantly transgressed. More specifically, I examine how Bestias fosters heteroaffections and practices limitrophy rather than denying it. Furthermore, I reflect on how Bestias, by exploring and staging limitrophy, allows us to think of a political plurality beyond the category of the human.
Ayal Prouser
Ayal Prouser
Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Bio: Ayal Prouser recently completed his Master’s degree in Film and Media studies at Columbia University. His research focuses on the intersection of Circus Studies, Film Studies and Bisexual Studies. He enjoys letting his work as a flying trapeze artist influence his academic studies and letting his studies influence his approach to circus and the creation of new acts.
Title: Under the Bi(g) Top
Abstract: This paper focuses on the potentiality of a “bisexual vantage” in place of the male gaze, or the occasionally theorized bisexual gaze (the difference is more than simple nomenclature and the fact that bisexual gaze is perhaps a misleading homophone). Its presence within a text serves as a catalyst for spectators, enabling them to see the world as bisexuals are theorized to by Elisabeth Daumer: through a lens which deconstructs socially confining and oppressive constructs. Daumer argues that bisexuality should not be understood within the typical structures of sex, gender and sexual orientation, i.e. the gay/straight, man/woman, male/female binaries. Instead, she perceives bisexuality as a vantage point from which to deconstruct these confining binaries. As source texts I will be using circus cinema, and the parallels it draws to contemporary circus, because I believe that the “bisexual vantage” can be identified as ubiquitous across the acrobatic circus arts.
The “bisexual vantage” is contingent upon the identification of a tripartite constellation: an eroticized, shared discourse that manifests through a communal skill or community activity; a text that allows the viewer to align themselves with both men and women simultaneously as the “one you want to be” and the “one you want to be with”; the equal eroticizing of all genders. All three points are contingent upon an understanding of different Foucauldian approaches to gender, biological sex, sexuality and the physical act of sex. Foucault will be corroborated by contemporary queer/bisexual theorists including e.g. Clare Hemmings and Surya Monro.
I will explicate the etymology, the identification, and the ramifications of the “bisexual vantage”; furthermore, I will also contextualize the “bisexual vantage” within other spectator theory, specifically, queer, trans and feminist theories, and discuss why the “bisexual vantage” is unique.
This paper is a section of my forthcoming Master’s thesis in Film and Media studies at Columbia University.
Camilla Damkjaer
Camilla Damkjaer
Department of Biomechanics and Sports Sciences, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
Bio: Camilla Damkjaer, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Dance at the Department of Biomechanics and Sports Sciences of the University of Southern Denmark. Camilla Damkjaer’s research concerns practices and philosophies of the body, methodologies of practice-based research, the articulation of embodied knowledge and the modes of consciousness in circus, dance and yoga practices.
Title: Circus and Yoga as Each Other’s ‘Other’: Histories of Refusals and Exotifications across Physical Practices and Travelling
Abstract: I explore some of the processes of othering that circus has been involved in through looking at the representation of circus within another practice: Ashtanga yoga. Though Ashtanga yoga is known to be one of the most physically demanding and acrobatic kinds of transnational postural yoga, it has been part of the discipline’s self-understanding to refuse any connection with circus. At first glance, this refusal may only serve to point out the differences between Ashtanga yoga and circus. In Ashtanga yoga, even highly acrobatic figures are practiced not to be shown but rather as part of a meditative process reached through movement. However, this refusal also carries a more complex history concerning the relation between yoga, circus and other forms of travelling performance and the way these have been inscribed in colonial structures of exchange. I examine how exploring these histories may help us understand the porous and complex relations between circus and other physical practices.
Camilla Löf
Camilla Löf
Faculty of Learning and Society, Malmö University, Sweden
Bio: Camilla Löf explores the relationship between education and childhood. More specifically, her research interests center on the constitution of childhood(s) within different educational settings.
Title: On Not Being ‘the Refugee’: Fabrications of Childhood through Social Circus
Abstract: Researchers in various fields point out that interventions into welfare, education and health are often based on predefined categories (e.g. youth at risk, deviant behavior). Such categories are likely to further segregate groups already categorized as marginalized (Bunar, 2010; Löf, 2015; Popkewitz, 2013). Popkewitz (2013) uses the term ‘fabrication’, suggesting that this process of fabricating “the other” depends on ontological standpoints. Against this background it is interesting to examine interventions that offer an “alternative” welfare – such as social circus. Drawing on an ethnographic fieldwork, this paper aims to explore social circus as a social and discursive practice in childhood while specifically focusing on a target group of child refugees. Research questions include the following: How are social circus activities organized in this practice? How are social categories (e.g. childhood, refugees, and/or function) fabricated through the organization of activities comprised by social circus? Our analysis indicates that ‘transformation’ and ‘agency’ stand out as the central aspects of social circus. These aspects facilitate the adoption of new positions by children – and childhood as a social category: from being “the others” (i.e. “the refugees”) to being “participants” in a circus workshop and learning circus skills.
Cyril Thomas
Cyril Thomas
National Center for Circus Arts, Châlons-en-Champagne, France
Bio: Cyril Thomas serves as the head of research and development at the National Center for Circus Arts in Châlons-en-Champagne in France. He is co-holder of Chaire ICiMA, i.e. the Innovation Chair for Puppet and Circus and member and creator of the Circus Arts Research Platform CARP, a collaborative website project between circus arts documentary centers and researchers. He works with CircusInfo Finland, the Belgian Circuscentrum and the Canadian Center for Circus Arts Research, Innovation and Knowledge Transfer at the National Circus School.
Title: The Other – Defining Risk
Doyle Ott
Doyle Ott
Sonoma State University, California, USA
Erin Ball
Erin Ball
Kingston Circus Arts, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Bio: Erin Ball is a circus artist, the owner of Kingston Circus Arts and, as of 2014, a double below the knee amputee. She uses her new perspective and situation to tell stories, explore movement and make statements that move “against ableist logic” in her performances. She also works with amputees and has created a curriculum for coaches who work with amputees.
Title: Against Ableist Logics: The Adaptive Body in Contemporary Circus Arts
Abstract: What does it mean to claim the circus stage as an amputee? While the emergence of so-called crip communities has been discussed in the context of cabaret, live art and film, few critics have yet to take stock of how deaf and disabled artists have intervened in the circus arts. For Circus and Its Others II, Ball and Zaiontz briefly discuss interventions in disability studies that openly counter narratives of disabled bodies as either pitiable or inspirational. Eliza Chandler refers to these dominant narratives of disability as ‘ableist logic’. In tandem with critics such as Danielle Peers, she voices the need for a ‘crip community’: a ‘desire to dwell with disability, a desire which is antagonistic to the normative desire to cure or kill disability’. Ball will discuss how ‘dwelling’ in the context of circus arts is an implicitly adaptive act – one that she seeks to extend beyond her practice to training initiatives such as Flying Footless for aerial coaches amputees. This presentation will also feature documentation of Ball’s inventive use of prosthetics in performance and a brief demonstration that points to how she upends ableist logics through silks, slings and fabric.
Franziska Trapp
Franziska Trapp
University of Münster, Germany; Université Paul Valéry Montpellier III, France
Bio: Franziska Trapp, a PhD candidate in Cultural Poetics at the University of Münster and at the University of Montpellier, focuses on analyzing contemporary circus. As the founder of the Zirkus | Wissenschaft research project and organizer of international conferences including Semiotics of the Circus (2015) and UpSideDown – Circus and Space (2017), she is at the forefront of circus studies in Germany. During the course of the past several years, Franziska Trapp has worked for various circus productions such as the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain and Cirque Bouffon and successfully completed the Certificate en dramaturgie circassienne (CNAC and ESAC).
Title: Contemporary Circus: Is it the Other of Traditional Circus?
Abstract: The field of new and contemporary circus is often viewed as the “Other” of traditional circus. With regard to aesthetics, the former is defined by its narrative nature and focus on “the dramatic personae and the linear story” (Lievens 2017) and the latter by its Babylonian structure, which sketches the elements according to difficulty (Guy 2001). Nevertheless, there is a significant number of arguments that fundamentally shake the common demarcation – and here I am not referring to counterarguments that problematize the use of terms or arguments which proclaim the presence of traditional circus’ heritage in all subsequent performances. Instead, I am referring to propositions that undermine the very basis of our understanding, such as Bouissac’s thesis which states that the structure of traditional circus acts is already fundamentally narrative (Bouissac 2016). Of course, the counterarguments do not overcome the differences between the subgenres, but rather demonstrate the need for a new historiography of circus – one that does not focus on the changing topics of narratives and historical turning points but on differences between subgenres with regard to “the manner of the narrative, its technique” (Shklovsky 1917).
Hayley Rose Malouin
Hayley Rose Malouin
Independent scholar, Ontario, Canada
Bio: Hayley Rose Malouin is an independent scholar and theatre critic from Toronto, Ontario. She is the web editor for alt.theatre magazine, a professional Canadian theatre magazine examining the intersections of politics, cultural diversity, social activism, and the stage. She holds an MA in Studies in Comparative Literature and Art from Brock University.
Title: We Are Visceral, We Are Revolting: Receiving a Circassian Pussy Riot
Abstract: Inside Pussy Riot, a satirical immersive theatrical experience based on the infamous 2012 trial of Pussy Riot, opened at Chelsea’s Saatchi Gallery to mediocre reviews. Among reviewers’ criticisms was a concern about the production’s circassian aesthetic, which was judged to detract from or confuse the show’s political message. IPR’s potentially suspect politics aside, such criticism labors under the assumption that circus and performance art look and function inherently differently, and have distinct artistic and political goals. The case, however, is not so cut and dry, given the interwoven histories of circus and performance art in the 20th century. This paper thus aims to make use of the framework of circus scholarship to engage with Pussy Riot’s various forays into cabaret, burlesque, and circus. It suggests that Pussy Riot’s calculated hooliganism resonates with Peta Tait’s notion of the viscerally received circus body: they aim to extract a visceral response from spectators by foregrounding their own politically coded embodiment and connecting this response to “escalating experiences of social violence” (Tait 2005). While IPR’s posh radicalism may have fallen flat, its interweaving of performance art and circus tropes opens the door for new scholarly exchanges between contemporary circus studies, performance art and political protest.
Ian Jagel
Ian Jagel
School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts (SANCA), Seattle, Washington, USA
Bio: Ian is a research practitioner, creator and social circus program director at the School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts (SANCA) in Seattle. He spent last year as a program quality evaluator, visiting social circus organizations around the United States on behalf of AYCO and the Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality in order to contribute to the first longitudinal, evidence-based study of the effects of social circus on socio-emotional learning in the United States. Ian has completed multiple social circus trainings from Cirque du Monde and received physical theatre training from l’Ecole Internationale du Théâtre Jacques Lecoq.
Title: Social Circus: Specters, Spectacle, Methexis
Abstract: As practitioners and researchers race to extoll the manifold benefits of social circus in the United States, there exists a suspicious absence of public critical discourse examining the exploitative potential of the field and its problematic dependence on a neoliberal economic reality. Similar to the opportunistic vanguardism characteristic of a gold rush, in an attempt to be among the first to cultivate valuable material, individuals risk turning a blind eye to the negative environmental impact of the extraction. The predominant discourse surrounding social circus in the United States must face vital questions: How are power and material resources distributed in social circus work? How do we reconcile the specter of colonialism inherent in working outside of one’s culture? Are social circus instructors and organizations truly equipped to work with the complex challenges they face? To what degree are social circus instructors and administrators actually carpetbagging under the pretense of working to engender positive social change? How does the prevailing system of philanthropy that supports social circus in the United States oppress those it claims to benefit through the victimization and “poverty pimping” of the Other? What potential is there for social change as a result of social circus work, and on what scale can this social change manifest?
Ilaria Bessone
Ilaria Bessone
University of Turin, Italy; University of Milan, Italy; AltroCirco, Italy
Bio: Ilaria Bessone, circus educator and researcher, earned a PhD in Sociology and Methodology of Social Research from the University of Milan and the University of Turin in 2017. Her project explored contemporary circus movement in Turin in relation to currently changing configurations of art, work and the body. She is responsible for the international relations and research section of AltroCirco, a project dedicated to social circus development in Italy.
Title: Engaging with Gender and Sexuality in Social Circus Trainings for Trainers
Abstract: Throughout the 2017–2018 period training for trainers offered by AltroCirco – a project for the development of social circus in Italy – focused on gender, sexuality and cultural encounters. These issues represent a primary concern against a national backdrop of increasing homophobia, racism and fear of ‘the other’.
The first training module entitled Circus and Gender Perspective provided content and tools designed to counter stereotypes of gender and sexuality and highlighted the importance of diversity as a resource. The goal was to foster reflexivity on the strategies employed by circus educators to manage bodies and emotions during workshops and projects and to spread awareness within social circus contexts and through social circus work in line with a growing international debate.
The presentation counts on the support and participation of a trainer and educator from AltroCirco whose experience provides a basis for exploring the tools and outcomes designed for and produced by this training. The goal is to develop the analysis of gender and sexuality in social circus contexts, sharing AltroCirco’s work with other researchers, practitioners and the academic community, nurturing the connection between the academic world and everyday circus life, and improving social circus practices as effective tools for social change.
James Green
James Green
Performing artist, San Francisco, California, USA; Kinetic Arts Center, Oakland, California, USA
Bio: James Green began studying and performing aerial dance and circus arts as alternative forms of therapy while in recovery from a traumatic brain injury. Discovering the dance pole as his apparatus of choice provided a secure platform for safely exploring vertical space as well as queer gender expression. Finding strength in this practice, scholarship, and community, James continues to write, train, teach and perform in the San Francisco Bay area.
Title: Gender Embodiment and Empowerment through Pole Dance
Abstract: With the contemporary rise of aerial dance as an entry point into the circus arts, one apparatus continues to flourish in the margins: the dance pole. While carrying with it over one hundred years of stigmatization, pole dancing has also seen a dramatic increase in popularity as a form of recreation, a fitness routine and as a competitive sport. But does it belong to, or in, the circus?
Drawing on a sparse body of emergent academic discourse as well as on independent interviews and survey data, James discusses why pole dance is definitively a circus art, as well as how the pole dance performance carries unique potential for the empowerment, embodiment and exhibition of evolving gender norms.
Jessica Kendall
Jessica Kendall
SOAS, University of London, London, UK
Bio: With a background in the theatre arts, Dr. Jessica Kendall has toured internationally with circuses in the U.S. and Europe, working specifically in the areas of Talent and Production. She is currently honing her skills as a full-time student training as an Artistic Advisor at the esteemed École Nationale de Cirque in Montréal (Canada). Dr. Kendall holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from SOAS (University of London) and has conducted extensive multi-sited anthropological research in China, Europe and Ethiopia, focusing on how circus performers strategize in the process of building internationally successful careers.
Title: Noises, Parties, and Bad Ghosts: African Artists and German Technicians together on an ‘African’-themed Circus Tour in Europe
Abstract: This paper presents an ethnographic account of the offstage life in a touring European ‘African’-themed circus production. I claim that porous boundaries between the backstage life of the show as it related to the dynamics between African artists and a German production crew, were heavily infiltrated by racialized notions of ‘difference’ that pervaded the ‘African’ circus spectacle. Crewmembers perceived artists as racial embodiments, and African artists’ day-to-day lives were framed by an onslaught of the offstage behavior of technicians, the gaze of audiences during performance, the reactions of the public in the towns, and the logistics of production operations. Anxiety about when and where ‘African’ bodies should be seen and heard, and how they should relate to the material world around them, was a constant topic of chatter amongst the German crew, who did their best to keep a safe distance between themselves and the artists. The tour relationship between technicians and artists morphed into an encounter between Germans and Africans; but, running counter to this racial divide, was the propensity for the artists to privilege hybrid forms of identity that emphasized a negotiation of ethnicity amongst and between themselves as one unified, though divided, segregated group of artists.
Jonas Eklund
Jonas Eklund
Stockholm University, Sweden
Bio: A former fire fighter, now a Theatre Studies PhD candidate, currently stressed out by trying to finish his dissertation on the experience of bodies on stage in circus, burlesque and freak shows. His primary academic interests include popular culture, bodies and body culture, masculinity, phenomenology and the uncanny.
Title: A Culturally Appropriate (Re)Presentation of the “Other”? Creating Images of Us and Them in Cirkus Cirkör’s Trilogy on Migration
Abstract: Circus has a tradition of mixing nationalities and cultural expressions, celebrating diversity in both acts and aesthetics. However, are these representations of cultures always appropriate, and how are these representations perceived by the audience? Cirkus Cirkör’s trilogy – Borders (2015), Limits (2016), and Movement (2017) – uses circus to engage and inform the audience about the ongoing migration crisis in the world, relating it to darker times of our history, showing that borders and limits are human constructions and that another world is possible. However, the (re)presentations of the “other” in the shows are far from unproblematic and raise some concerns. Who is this “other” and, moreover, who has the right to represent the “other’s” voice? I will discuss the images of the “other” in the shows as well as their authenticity and what the stagings might say about a “western”, i.e. privileged, understanding of the “other” in relation to the concept of cultural appropriation. While Cirkör attempts to question borders and show that we are all equal, (re)constructions of the “other” are still present; in fact, Cirkör’s commendable aims may well be counterproductive as the individual shows enforce an us and them relationship rather than challenging it. In short, this potential appropriation of culture is perhaps far from appropriate.
Joseph Culpepper
Joseph Culpepper
Department of English, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
National Circus School of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Magic Circle, London, UK
Bio: Joseph Culpepper is a performance scholar, magician and magic consultant. He is an Affiliate Assistant Professor at Concordia University’s department of English. Dr. Culpepper teaches magic history and its adaptation to the circus arts at Montreal’s National Circus School.
Title: Inside the Black Tent: Magic as Other in the Circus Arts
Abstract: From 1889 to roughly 1898, the Barnum and Bailey circus toured with a black tent displaying decapitated heads, half women and other freakish spectacles. This presentation will discuss how stage illusion techniques were used to present so-called able-bodied performers as if they were disfigured, half-human or trapped inside glass bottles. I will compare these illusory sideshow tent bodies to chromolithographic posters advertising self-decapitation, sawing-in-half and other large-scale stage conjuring numbers. The gender politics of such body illusions span a complex range from overt sexism to displays of female empowerment. All of them were sensational displays designed to generate publicity and ticket sales for the shows they accompanied. How might contemporary performances actively engage and respond to the politics of such illusions when adapting them for today’s spectators?
I will also use the symbol of the Black Tent to question magic’s current status as “other” within the circus world. Why is magic not offered as a discipline alongside aerial arts, juggling, acrobatics, the Cyr wheel, and other disciplines in most of the world’s circus schools despite its historical presence in circus productions?
Kate Holmes
Kate Holmes
Bristol, UK
Bio: Kate Holmes is an independent researcher whose research explores the celebrity of aerial stars of the 1920s and early 1930s using approaches examining everything from spatial performance practices to female physical culture. Her research, which stems from her amateur practice, has been published in Early Popular Visual Culture and is forthcoming in Stage Women, a collection of essays on early twentieth century female performers edited by Maggie Gale and Kate Dorney.
Title: Fluid Circus Nationalities: Moving Female Bodies, Good Citizenship and Commercial Success
Abstract: Although circus may have been romanticized as the Other in the 1920s and early 1930s, it was popular and mainstream; in fact, it was the largest mass live entertainment of the period. International circus stars inhabited an unusual position: simultaneously challenging established gender representations whilst reflecting the status quo. This paper explores how aerial performers Lillian Leitzel and Luisita Leers represented their nationality to succeed and how they activated unintentional connotations using their moving female bodies. As aerialists, neither performer spoke during the act, enabling both to frame their national identity in the most commercially appealing terms. Leers and Leitzel treated their country of origin as fluid, and, in doing so, activated national concerns surrounding moving female bodies and women’s individual interests in the increasing association between health and beauty. In England, healthy exercising women represented racially suitable mothers capable of furthering British imperialism, whereas in the US they symbolized good consumers capable of contributing to America’s economic success. I argue that reflecting these concerns made female aerialists capable of presenting acts that went far beyond what was considered acceptable female activity in society at large.
Katharine Kavanagh
Katharine Kavanagh
Independent researcher, The Circus Diaries, Cardiff, UK
Bio: Katharine has a background in devised performance; she has been writing about circus since 2013 when she launched The Circus Diaries – a multi-platform hub for critical discourse centered on the circus arts. In addition to exploring how critical practices are nurtured among circus professionals, Kathering also leads workshops and residencies and lectures at the National Centre for Circus Arts in London. She has recently been awarded funding from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council to undertake a PhD, commencing in September 2018 at the School of English, Language and Communication at Cardiff University.
Title: Overcoming Academic Otherness – Experiments in Integration
Abstract: This presentation acknowledges the historically alien nature of academic research within the broader culture of practicing circus artists. Many of us, the academics at this conference, are a particularly marginal community within the marginal community of circus. How can we ensure that the knowledge which is being generated here, through theoretical work in post-graduate education and beyond, feeds effectively into the system of vocational training and the everyday experience of circus practitioners?
This paper highlights the value of integrating critical practice into professional circus careers through the evaluation of several experimental initiatives I have been involved with in the UK.
The argument I make aims to establish a wider public profile of current circus activity but also to sow the seeds for a circus community that is more tuned into itself – its trends, hot topics, progress and innovations – in order for it to develop more fruitfully and effectively alongside, but not dominated by, other art forms.
Kelly Richmond
Kelly Richmond
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
Bio: Kelly Richmond is a graduate student of the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. Her research explores the hybridizations and mutations that emerge when performance studies, queer studies, and ecocriticism come into contact. She is continuously in search of different and queerer forms of queer circus.
Title: Aroused by Failure: The Queer Affects and Socialites of Il n’est pas encore minuit
Abstract: If contemporary circus is always-already about difference, it is also always-already about perfection. Circus practice demands its performers constantly push the boundaries of superhuman embodiment, artistically re-presenting the body-at-risk, while maintaining strict athletic codes for the purposes of safety. The perfectionism of circus proves limiting for its explorations of difference: until we begin to question how circus defines and constructs its ideal performer, how can different narratives, bodies, and techniques come into practice?
In this paper I will look at a performance of Compagnie XY’s Il n’est pas encore minuit, which I attended during the 2017 Montreal Completement Cirque festival. This performance challenged the perfectionism of circus by choreographing conditions in which tricks were destined to fail. The display of repetitive failures became a celebration of the collective labor of spotting and catching, a re-imagination of circus where the imperfect brings together rather than divides. An explosion of the potentialities of circus failure, this production generated a new dimensions of circus practices and affects I can only describe as queer. By queer, I refer to Moyan King’s “multiplicitious state suggesting transgression, dissent, desire, and self- identification”, as well as Jose Muñoz’s “mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present”. Exploring the intersection of queer affect and queer sociality, I will trace how failure in Il n’est pas encore minuit offers not only a vision but a reality of how queer worlds both within and without the circus might work like.
Keren Zaiontz
Keren Zaiontz
Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Bio: Keren Zaiontz is an assistant professor at the Department of Film and Media at Queen’s University. She has co-edited special issues for journals including Contemporary Theatre Review, Canadian Theatre Review and PUBLIC that variously feature the work of Alex Bulmer and Jenny Sealey, theatre artists charting new terrain for deaf- and disability-led circus arts. Keren’s recently published monograph Theatre & Festivals (Palgrave 2018) also includes forewords by Bulmer and Sealey.
Title: Against Ableist Logics: The Adaptive Body in Contemporary Circus Arts
Abstract: What does it mean to claim the circus stage as an amputee? While the emergence of so-called crip communities has been discussed in the context of cabaret, live art and film, few critics have yet to take stock of how deaf and disabled artists have intervened in the circus arts. For Circus and Its Others II, Ball and Zaiontz briefly discuss interventions in disability studies that openly counter narratives of disabled bodies as either pitiable or inspirational. Eliza Chandler refers to these dominant narratives of disability as ‘ableist logic’. In tandem with critics such as Danielle Peers, she voices the need for a ‘crip community’: a ‘desire to dwell with disability, a desire which is antagonistic to the normative desire to cure or kill disability’. Ball will discuss how ‘dwelling’ in the context of circus arts is an implicitly adaptive act – one that she seeks to extend beyond her practice to training initiatives such as Flying Footless for aerial coaches amputees. This presentation will also feature documentation of Ball’s inventive use of prosthetics in performance and a brief demonstration that points to how she upends ableist logics through silks, slings and fabric.
Kristy Seymour
Kristy Seymour
Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Bio: An emerging scholar and circus artist, Kristy Seymour has worked extensively in the Australian contemporary circus sector since 1999 as a performing artist, youth circus and social circus trainer (Flipside Circus, Circus Stars), and company manager (Circus Corridor). Her current areas of research are circus and autism and Australian contemporary circus. Her work utilizes concepts from Deleuze and Guattari, Agamben, Butler, Massey and Foucault.
Title: Women in Australian Contemporary Circus: Can we Talk about the Girl in the Red Dress?
Abstract: Within the Australian contemporary circus milieu the distinction between classical family circus and contemporary circus is often defined by the absence of performing animals; however, the merging of feminist politics with the performance of strong, muscular and powerful female bodies is potentially more defining of the contemporary reterritorialization of the artform in its formative years. The emergence of women’s circus in Australia coincided with the third wave feminism movement of the 1990s with the emergence of several seminal companies such as Vulcana Women’s Circus, Women’s Circus and Club Swing. In this paper (an excerpt from my doctoral research) I explore the influential role that women in the Australian contemporary circus sector have played in shaping the reputation of the artform and in shifting normative perspectives of what female bodies are capable of in contemporary performance. I also argue that although the influential period for women in Australian circus of the 1990s and early 2000s produced a legacy that still resonates within the Australian contemporary circus sector, there is of late a considerable disparity in the number of women performing in major touring circus companies. I set out to uncover the trajectory of the role of women within the artform, the obstacles they face and the triumphs they achieve, and to critique and investigate the recurring trope of more recent times which has seen the representation of women in contemporary circus to be somewhat disparate.
Loes van Schaijk
Loes van Schaijk
Erasmus University Rotterdam & Codarts, Netherlands
Bio: Loes van Schaijk holds a BA in Music in Education and an MA in Cultural Studies. She is an all-round music teacher at the Circus department of Codarts in Rotterdam. She is conducting a study on how circus artists (learn to) work with music. She wrote and published the book High Lonesome Below Sea Level (2015) and she sings and plays double bass in the band Red Herring.
Title: Contemporary Circus Music and the Conundrum of the Popular
Abstract: Historical research into music used in traditional circus has shown that orchestra repertoires consisted mostly of whatever was popular at a given time, i.e. potpourris containing excerpts of hits by contemporary popular composers and evergreens (Becker 2008, Baston 2010). Musical stereotype and cliché were applied for the sake of audience framing. Its function was mostly structural – consider the archetypical dynamic build up, followed by an abrupt silence, finished with a drum roll to signify “the big trick” – but it also offered social and cultural reassurance. The cultural “other” was constructed by way of exoticism.
This paper explores musical repertoires and their applications in contemporary circus based on observations and interviews conducted at circus festivals and (student) performances in Europe between 2016 and 2018. To what extent do the aforementioned observations still apply to music used in contemporary circus? Is contemporary circus’s supposed concern with authenticity and otherness reflected in its music? Does contemporary circus avoid the use of popular music and cliché, in other words: has mainstream music become contemporary circus’s new other? If this is the case, and the mainstream has shifted to the margin, what then has taken its place at the center?
Magali Sizorn
Magali Sizorn
CETAPS, University of Rouen, France
Bio: Magali Sizorn holds a PhD in anthropology, sociology and sport sciences. Since 2008, she has been lecturing in anthropology, sociology and artistic practices (circus and dance) at the University of Rouen in France. She has authored several articles and books about circus, including Trapézistes. Ethnosociologie d’un cirque en mouvement (2013).
Title: The Aesthetics of an Ethics. For a Sociology of Attachments to the Circus
Abstract: This paper proposes to analyze attachment to circus using a case study which focuses on a “circus-border”: the Cirque Romanes. This circus was founded in 1994 by Alexandre Romanès (born Bouglione, a famous circus family) and by his wife Delia, whom he met in the gypsy camp of Nanterre near Paris. The nomadic Romanes, who have staged their show in France and abroad, have installed, with the agreement of the Paris City Hall, their circus tent in the chic 16th arrondissement of Paris where they regularly suffer the attacks of residents fearing for the image of their neighborhood and even attacks by far-right activists. In spite of these difficulties, the Cirque Romanes enjoys the support of some French media. Moreover, it provides a good field for understanding the attachment to circus: with an aesthetic close to one which could be described as “classical”, it also draws audiences in search of contemporary forms. Often referred to as “poetic”, the Romanes circus also enjoys artistic recognition and legitimacy as a result of the valorization of a (gypsy) culture, an art and a political struggle. An observation of this circus thus allows us to analyze the “taste of the circus”.
Maria Teresa Cesaroni
Maria Teresa Cesaroni
Scuola di Circo Corsaro, Scampia, Naples, Italy
Bio: Maria Teresa Cesaroni is the director of the social circus project Scuola di Circo Corsaro in Scampia, Naples. She is a trainer for trainers in Cirque du Soleil’s Social Circus Basic Trainings delivered in Italy and a founding member of AltroCirco.
Title: Engaging with Gender and Sexuality in Social Circus Trainings for Trainers
Abstract: Throughout the 2017–2018 period training for trainers offered by AltroCirco – a project for the development of social circus in Italy – focused on gender, sexuality and cultural encounters. These issues represent a primary concern against a national backdrop of increasing homophobia, racism and fear of ‘the other’.
The first training module entitled Circus and Gender Perspective provided content and tools designed to counter stereotypes of gender and sexuality and highlighted the importance of diversity as a resource. The goal was to foster reflexivity on the strategies employed by circus educators to manage bodies and emotions during workshops and projects and to spread awareness within social circus contexts and through social circus work in line with a growing international debate.
The presentation counts on the support and participation of a trainer and educator from AltroCirco whose experience provides a basis for exploring the tools and outcomes designed for and produced by this training. The goal is to develop the analysis of gender and sexuality in social circus contexts, sharing AltroCirco’s work with other researchers, practitioners and the academic community, nurturing the connection between the academic world and everyday circus life, and improving social circus practices as effective tools for social change.
Marie-Andrée Robitaille
Marie-Andrée Robitaille
School of Dance and Circus (DOCH), Stockholm University for the Arts (UNIARTS), Sweden
Bio: Marie-Andrée Robitaille is an assistant professor of circus and the head of the BA program in Circus at the School of Dance and Circus (DOCH) at the Stockholm University for the Arts (UNIARTS). She is the initiator of the Stockholm-based international and Nordic Women in Circus network and the founder of Gynoïdes Project, an undertaking which aims to examine the roles and representations of women in circus arts.
Title: Roundtable and Workshop on Women and Gender in Circus
Abstract: In this participatory session, several circus artists, educators and researchers focusing on women and gender in circus will offer brief summaries of their work and insight into their future plans. Anyone at the conference interested in these areas is welcome to participate in the active networking session that follows, or attend as an observer. The goal is to share information, increase levels of awareness about like-minded international practices and create solidarities, alliances, and collaboration.
Featured participants: Marie-Andrée Robitaille, Alisan Funk (PhD researcher; McGill University, Québec, Canada), Marion Guyez (PhD; Compagnie d’Elles, Toulouse, France), facilitator: Karen Fricker
Marie-Eve Skelling Desmeules
Marie-Eve Skelling Desmeules
Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Bio: Dr. Marie-Eve Skelling Desmeules is a postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University, where she studies circus training experiences at different professional circus schools. She is also a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa (since 2011) and a high school drama teacher. She recently received the Governor General’s gold medal for her PhD thesis focusing on an understanding of corporeal work in different voice, acting and movement classes in the training of professional actors.
Title: Studying Professional Training Experiences related to the “Fleshy Body” in a Circus Context
Abstract: This formal paper presentation describes research that seeks a better understanding of circus training experiences from the viewpoints of trainers and students. During the winter 2018 semester, I conducted a qualitative interpretative research at the Centre national des arts du cirque (CNAC, France) which comprised participant observation (75 hours), interviews (52) and focus groups (9). This research relies on Dewey’s concept of experience (1934/2005) and the concept of Multiple Bodies (Graver 1997, 2005; Hurley 2008, 2016) which refers to the Performer Body (physical skills and prodigality), Character Body (fictional identity) and Fleshy Body (self-identical corporeal identity). This paper presentation will focus primarily on how training experiences related to the Fleshy Body lead students to embody the singularity of their bodily presence.
During this presentation, I will first discuss the research context and methodology. I will then focus on the study of circus training experiences and present results obtained after this first data collecting semester. I will discuss training experience (mainly related to the Fleshy Body) from the viewpoints of trainers and students from different disciplines. Each body being unique, sensitive and authentic, the work related to the Fleshy Body differs from one person to another. Links, divergences and nuances between experiences can still be identified and contextualized to expand our understanding of this particular type of training.
Marion Guyez
Marion Guyez
Université Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès, France
Centre national des arts du cirque, France
Bio: Marion Guyez is a handbalancer and artistic co-director of la Compagnie d’Elles. She holds a PhD in Performing Arts: articulating theory and practice, her dissertation focuses on the hybridization of acrobatics and text on contemporary circus stages. Marion Guyez is currently working as an assistant researcher at the ICiMa chair at the French Centre national des arts du cirque and has published on circus, gender, and aesthetics in peer-reviewed and online journals in France, Canada and Colombia.
Title: Women Performing Together in Acrobatics
Abstract: Based on the analysis of several circus shows recently created in France by women only companies and on my own experience of circus creation, this presentation aims to study the aesthetics consequences of this choice of non-mixity on acrobatics and gender representation. How circus women are they staging and criticizing gender clichés? These experiences are undoubtedly empowering for women artists, this presentation intends to study how this kind of organization is renewing circus aesthetics.
Martha Harrison
Martha Harrison
National Centre for Circus Arts, London, UK
Bio: Martha Harrison is a circus performer specializing in doubles trapeze and acrobalance. With 15 years of performing and teaching experience in the sector, Martha went on to complete an MA in Gender, Sexuality and Culture in 2013. This led to further research in both gymnastics and circus, with a specific interest in representations of gender.
Title: Gender In Contemporary Circus: A Case Study
Abstract: Three distinct questions were brought up at the Roundhouse Gender Salon in London, namely: “Is circus too heteronormative?”, why are there “so many all-male circus companies?” and can “a woman ever enjoy the same privileges and opportunities in the industry as a man?” Using a well-known London-based newsletter, this study uses discourse analysis to establish how gender is represented in contemporary circus while attempting to answer the above mentioned questions. Data from this study may subsequently be used to further question who the “others” are in this context.
Mathilde Perallat
Mathilde Perallat
Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Bio: Mathilde Perallat is a PhD candidate in Humanities at Concordia University where she studies the emergence of new circus aesthetics arising from social circus practice in Montréal. Before settling in Montréal she spent several months working with three social circuses in Argentina, Cambodia, and Nepal as a circus instructor. Alongside her research she continues to participate in aerial disciplines as both artist and coach.
Title: Montréal Social Circus as an Alternative Circus Stage: The Example of the Show Le Cabaret du corps Dada
Abstract: Montréal is home to an alternative circus scene emerging in large part from among artists involved in social circus practice. This alternative circus, a “new artistic world” (Spiegel 2016), is a “cirque engagé” (Spiegel, 2016) which carries the anti-conformism conveyed by social circus artists and which brings circus closer to the risks of arts and to the notion of otherness. The show Le Cabaret du corps Dada, directed by ex-social circus participant and current social circus instructor Eliane Bonin, is a distinct example of this reflection and can be portrayed as a circus show that challenges hetero-normality while creating an aesthetic space in opposition to dominant aesthetic norms. I relate this artistic practice to the queer movement in the sense that it represents that of a marginalized group carrying a “dream utopia” (Muñoz, 2009), a collective idealism. I will analyze the show using Muñoz and Cohen’s representation of queer aesthetics as symbolizing “a futurity, something that is not quite here” (Muñoz 2009, 7), as a movement that “confront normalizing power by emphasizing and exaggerating their own anti-normative characteristics and non-stable behavior” (Cohen 1997, 439).
Melissa Caminha
Melissa Caminha
ERAM University School, Girona, Catalonia, Spain
Bio: Melissa Caminha is a clown, art educator and researcher in Performing Arts, Gender Studies, Cultural Pedagogies and Cultural Policies. A doctor of Arts and Education from the University of Barcelona, she is currently teaching students of the Performing Arts Bachelor Degree at ERAM University School (University of Girona, Spain).
Title: Female Monster Clown: Undoing the Human in Clownery through Envisioning Feminist Figurations and Clowntacts
Abstract: This work aims to inquire into the concept of humanity, so often used in contemporary clown performances, discourse, theory and pedagogical practices, as well as in social, educational and therapeutic interventions. When clowns leave the circus to occupy theater and other social spaces, they seem to enter a progressive naturalization process which erases much of the grotesque, the over-caricatured performance and the buffoon comic tradition. Today clowns have lost a great deal of the diversity of bodily forms, behavior and expression in a sort of humanization process that unconsciously censures and excludes not just external Others but also potential internal Others that we can create and perform as artists. The Female Monster Clown is a figuration that invites clown performers to rebel against the hu-man norm and the inner crystallized self in clowning. It advocates for the monstrous side of clowning, the non-human, the fluid, the queer and crip clown. Inspired by feminist and queer authors like Donna Haraway and her figuration of the cyborg, the Female Monster Clown traces the historical and conceptual links as well as anthropological and scientific discourses which make it possible to envision identity affinities between female subjects, animals, monsters and machines.
Melmun Bajarchuu
Melmun Bajarchuu
Philosopher, dramaturge and curator, Berlin, Germany
Bio: Melmun Bajarchuu studied philosophy, political science and sociology in Hamburg, Germany. She works at the crossroads of theory, art and politics as a discourse partner, curator and dramaturge, focusing specifically on poststructural, postcolonial and queerfeminist perspectives. She collaborates with researchers, theatre makers, performance artists and dancers.
Title: Circus as a Practice of Resist_ing
Abstract: In my talk I discuss circus as a potentiality: I claim that circus can constitute an ephemeral practice for negotiations of power relations, identity politics and appellations as well as a means of (temporary) resistance. I illustrate my line of thinking with examples from hybrid circus formats used in contemporary performing arts contexts in Germany.
Circus can be seen as a minor space where processes of othering can be affirmed, rejected, transformed. A practice of resist_ing is meant as a continuous but stuttering mental and physical movement, a practice of intentional confusion, reflection and temporary agency.
Circus can be a space where capitalist structures of the commodification of bodies and minds can be momentarily suspended and maybe even subverted. While circus is seen as pure entertainment for a major audience, the circus ring can also be conceptualized as an intermittent safe space for the other, a heterotopic locus from where the objectified others can practice resistance, find ways to oppose and create moments of agency and expose the oppressive gaze. However, the binary conceptualization of spectator and performer is reductive: the liminal interaction between the present bodies on either side of the ring proves to be more productive.
Michael Eigtved
Michael Eigtved
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Michelle Man
Michelle Man
Edge Hill University, Lancashire, UK; University of Surrey, UK
Bio: Michelle Man has been working at Edge Hill University since 2012 and has performed, choreographed and taught internationally for over twenty-five years in dance and circus while collaborating extensively with composers, architects, designers and theatre directors. In 1997 she became part of the award-winning circus school Carampa in Madrid. She now mentors, choreographs and directs circus for tent, theatre and street performance, where her work has extended into community-based projects in Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and in Santiago de Chile.
Title: Modes of Hospitality as a Methodology for Devising Contemporary Circus Performance
Abstract: Drawing on twenty years of experience as a choreographer collaborating in the creation of circus performances in Europe and South America, this paper will explore how a notion of hospitality can be offered as both a philosophy and a framing for the development of contemporary circus language. Written in response to the creative processes underpinning my work with the award-winning contemporary circus company eia – CAPAS (2011), InTarsi (2016) – my research focuses on the minutia of acts of exchange and the choreographic potential available in circus bodies during the enmeshing of the different physicalities found in hand to hand acrobatic techniques and released-based forms of dance. Taking from Derrida the notion that “[a]n act of hospitality can only be poetic” and from the bodies of resistance encountered in Jean Paul Zaccarini’s Circoanalysis, Circus as Death Writing (2009), I will be focusing on how dance appears to circus as the ‘other’. Generating gentle acts of exchange and teasing textural qualities from circus-engrained embodiments that transgress the borders of self, this philosophy-through-practice activates an understanding towards hospitality. Through the culture of encounter, hospitality in its questioning of how we arrive at borders empowers the potential of difference.
Olga Sorzano
Olga Sorzano
City University of London, UK
Bio: Olga Sorzano just completed her PhD in Culture and Creative Industries at City University of London. Her work focuses on the analysis of invisible figures and the recognition of circus in the 21st century, with special emphasis on Colombia and Britain.
Title: Modern Circus: The Origins of Circus or the Eurocentric Construction of the Form?
Abstract: ‘Modern circus’ and ‘circus’ are often presented as equals in circus literature. 18th century Europe is acknowledged as the time and place when circus emerged as a distinct genre and a performing art; from here the form evolved until it reached its contemporary narrative-driven form. This presentation challenges the official history of circus and its Eurocentric construction. Rather than the origins of circus, ‘modern circus’ is discussed here as the product of capitalism and enclosure, and the legitimization of the form by modern actors at the turn of the 19th century. The analysis highlights the invisible figures in the making of circus and the limitation that such construction imposes in current understandings of the practice. Contemporary histories, on the other hand, do not escape the modern construction; the 21st century is becoming the most recent time when circus is recognized by cultural elites, and thus regarded as art. The analysis offers a parallel between the 19th and 21st centuries that could contribute to current disputes around what constitutes circus.
Olivier Sibai and Marius Luedicke
Olivier Sibai and Marius Luedicke
Birkbeck, University of London; City, University of London, UK
Bio: Olivier Sibai is a lecturer in marketing at Birkbeck, University of London. His research revolves around the study of consumer culture, with a particular interest in the disharmony in consumer culture and consumer collectives. Olivier works on topics such as deviance in consumer collectives, community management, marginal consumer practices, polarizing brands and market-based solutions to peace making. While Olivier is interested in various methodologies, ethnography is his tool of choice.
Title: How to be a Marginal Consumer: An Exploration of the Amateur Practice of Circus
Abstract: From parkour running to guerrilla knitting and recreational taxidermy, many consumers continuously invest time, effort and money in apparently trivial marginal practices. However, marginal consumption practices matter because they constitute the fertile soil from which cultural innovation emerges: influential subcultures and social movements originally came from a small base of individuals engaging in unusual practices. Marginal consumption practices also challenge dominant discourses, making the marketplace a more inclusive institution open to consumers with diverse identity projects. This research aims to explore how consumers adopt and maintain marginal consumption practices. We ask specifically why consumers engage in marginal consumption practices, which challenges threaten their continuous engagement with marginal consumption practices and how they respond to challenges in order to maintain their engagement. To do so, we conduct an ethnography of the amateur circus community in London, who play and train in parks, juggling clubs, at amateur circus festivals and in circus schools. This research aims to enhance understanding of marginality in the marketplace and how consumers, businesses and policy makers can work to protect and foster it.
Rodney A. Huey
Rodney A. Huey
Fédération Mondiale du Cirque, Monte-Carlo, Monaco
Bio: Rodney Huey is a former vice president of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey (1996–2003), the largest and longest-running circus in the United States, which closed in 2017 after 146 consecutive years in operation. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the production of clowning in the United States (George Mason University, 2006) and has served as advisor to the Fédération Mondiale du Cirque in Monte-Carlo, Monaco since 2009.
Title: Creating “Otherness” Through Pedagogy? The Case of Clown College
Abstract: Can subversive, rule-breaking circus clown characters be created through formalized, institutional training? Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, the largest and longest-running circus in the United States, established its own Clown College in 1968 for the sole purpose of producing clowns for its two traveling units. In 30 annual sessions through 1997, Clown College graduated nearly 1,300 clowning neophytes through a pedagogical regime based on a university model, complete with a dean, instructors and a formalized curriculum. At the end of each session, students were graduated to receive diplomas and their bona fides as professional circus clowns. Clown College clearly met its mission of providing a stream of fresh talent for its clown alleys, but in the process raised serious questions about the production of clowning in the United States. Can a neophyte become a professional performing clown after just eight weeks of classes? Who determined the look, demeanor, behavior and narratives of graduating clowns? What impact did race and gender have on the creative process? How did Clown College guarantee authentic “otherness” in their graduates? Did Clown College commodify the American circus clown?
Rosa Lopes Dias
Rosa Lopes Dias
School of Music and Performing Arts, Porto, Portugal
Bio: Born in Lisbon, Rosa Lopes Dias started her professional journey in marketing and advertising. Always passionate about the arts, she soon traded the world of digital marketing for the magic of the stage. Based in Brussels, she currently works as a theatre and contemporary circus producer.
Title: The Producer – An Other in the World of Contemporary Circus.
Abstract: Who is the Other in the world of contemporary circus? Is it possible to accept new parts and different entities without labelling them as intruders and, consequently, as a threat? Can we all be part of a universe made of Others? And, to a certain extent, are we not all Others? This talk will focus on the role of the producer as one of the Others in the world of contemporary circus. I will attempt to analyze the different scope of action of the producer in a contemporary circus show, minutely exploring areas including production, administration and dissemination and the impact they have on the life course of a circus show or company. What are the different roles of the producer in contemporary circus? How important is the production in a contemporary circus context? Should the producer be an independent Other – with an external function, alien to artistic creation – or an integrated Other – an intrinsic part of the creative team? Can – or indeed should – the producer intervene, make a mark and influence the creative process? What happens when this role is nonexistent, suppressed or assumed by one or more artists?
Sebastian Kann
Sebastian Kann
Utrecht University, Netherlands; Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK), Ghent, Netherlands
Bio: Sebastian Kann is an aerialist, dramaturge and theorist based in Brussels. After training aerial hoop at the National Circus School in Montreal, Sebastian went on to earn an MA in Theater Studies from Utrecht University. He currently works at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) alongside Bauke Lievens and Quintijn Ketels, researching new circus dramaturgies (The Circus Dialogues). Sebastian is engaged in a circus project with Natalie Oleinik under the moniker Manor House; their first show Always/Beautiful will be premiered in 2019.
Title: Circus as a Practice of Ecological Thinking: How to Give the Others of Circus Practice Space to Come to Expression?
Abstract: Circus, especially in its traditional forms, has recently been roundly criticized for staging a politically retrograde vision of the subject. Bauke Lievens, for example, sees “the mastering of physically demanding, dangerous techniques and the taming of wild animals […] as expressions of a belief in the supremacy of humankind of nature and over natural forces such as gravity”. In light of the social and environmental crises wrought by the ideology of humanist individualism, it would seem that such styles of human self-representation should have no future.
In contrast to this supposed representational content of circus performance, I examine the experiential content of circus practice: the circus artist does research in dialogue with multiple embodied and incorporeal Others, composing ‘thoughts’ in concert with a whole host of images, discourses, objects, institutions and material environments. The ‘trick’ is the immanent product of this heterogenous ecology.
Therefore, what would it mean to take circus seriously as an embodied research practice, one in which thinking is radically distributed between the artist and other kinds of agents? By narrating circus differently, we open up space to imagine new circus dramaturgies – performances which function as sites of speculation, prefiguring less individualistic and more ecological modes of being in densely populated worlds.
Simone O’Brien
Simone O’Brien
Circus Corridor, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia; SeedArts Australia, NSW Northern Rivers, Australia
Bio: Simone O’Brien is a contemporary performance maker specializing in circus and physical theatre since 1990. She has created works with the corporate, educational, youth, disability and community sectors including large-scale site works in East Timor, intimate works in cars and social circus projects with regional and remote communities in Australia. She is the co-founder of Circus Corridor, SeedArts Australia and notorious feminist aerial icons Club Swing and lives in Mullumbimby, Australia.
Title: Cirque du Coraki: a social circus project about a small town & the world’s greatest tight wire walker Con Colleano – an Australian First Nation’s man
Abstract: Con Calleano was born in Lismore, Australia in Bundjalung territory in 1899 as Cornelius Sullivan to an Irish father and a First Nations mother (Gamilaroi) of West Indian heritage.
Coraki, population 1,500, is in Bundjalung territory; it lies 20 minutes from Lismore with a significant Indigenous population. Cirque du Coraki’ (CdC) is a 4 year social circus program and partnership between Coraki Public School, Circus-in-Education and a Spaghetti Circus, a regional youth circus from Mullumbimby’. The CdC program aims to increase Indigenous self esteem and school attendance through, amongst other strategies, employing professional Indigenous artists as trainers, leaders and career role models because “several key factors in schools support growth in achievement for Indigenous students: leadership… and Indigenous presence” (ACER, 2005).
In 2017, the project focused on contemporary Indigenous storytelling and local circus heroes, such as Lismore’s Con Colleano, who achieved international stardom as the Wizard of the Wire, passing off as a Spanish matador at a time when Aboriginal people were considered flora and fauna.
This paper celebrates Con’s identity and agility as circus sleight-of-hand to outmaneuver oppression. It explores creative links between Con’s legacy and social circus to investigate existing barriers and pathways to success for regional Indigenous youth.
Stav Meishar
Stav Meishar
Independent circus artist and researcher, New York, USA
Bio: Stav Meishar leads a double life around the world: during the day she runs Dreamcoat Experience, an award-winning nonprofit organization for creative Jewish education; at night she is a writer and a stage artist, specializing in circus and theater work. Sometimes, when she’s lucky, she gets to be both at the same time. She is committed to pursuing the gestalt of circus, history and education.
Title: Forgotten Legacies for Present Day Audiences: Circus Jews under National Socialism
Abstract: Before the rise of the National Socialist party, German circus included a number of Jewish families including the Lorchs, Strassburgers and Blumenfelds. Like all Jews under Nazi rule, they were forced to close or otherwise sell their businesses to their gentile colleagues before eventually being deported to various concentration camps. Very few survived. Of those few survivors, the story of Irene, Gerda, Alice and Hans Danner of the Lorch family stands out as an inspiring tale of courage and support: they were sheltered by the gentile Althoff Circus from 1941 through the end of the War, and their saviors were awarded the honor of Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Museum for saving their lives. This presentation will be a research-based talk and short performance hybrid. It will explore the lives of these families and discuss the emergence of Holocaust Drama, highlighting the impact of staging survivor stories as a means to preserve the past and inform the future. The performance part will focus on the Lorch family’s rescue, presenting a segment of a multidisciplinary work-in-progress inspired by their time at the Althoff Circus.
Stephen Cadwell
Stephen Cadwell
University of Limerick, Ireland; Galway Community Circus, Ireland
Bio: Stephen Cadwell was awarded a PhD in the philosophy of art by University College Dublin in 2011; his dissertation centered on indiscernibility and identification in modern art. Since then, his focus has shifted to the effectiveness and impact of youth and social circus and his methodology now includes interviews, self-reporting and statistical analysis. Using this approach, he has completed his post-doctoral research at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick as part of Circus+, an ERASMUS funded youth and social circus research project.
Title: Identify, Embrace, Adapt: Trusting the Other in Youth and Social Circus
Abstract: This presentation will consider the Others of youth and social circus, offer a conceptual framework designed to assist practitioners reflect on their own context and provide a means for them to include those Others, should they wish to do so.
The inspiration for this talk comes from two distinct sources; firstly, my observation and analysis of the practice of youth and social circus in a variety of organizations, in particular the Galway Community Circus in Ireland and the Mobile Mini Circus for Children in Afghanistan. Secondly, this talk is also derived from my research into Hegelian philosophy and Circus Studies, especially Hegel’s dialectic method of identification, a secular reading of Levinas’ theory of hospitality and Bolton’s concept of adaptability in youth circus.
By bringing these sources together, the paper highlights the importance of Others in a youth circus’ social and political context, emphasizes the importance of inclusion for youth circus and finally discusses the intrinsic importance of adaptability to the practice of youth and social circus.
Stevi Costa
Stevi Costa
Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, Washington, USA
Bio: Stevi Costa earned her PhD in English from the University of Washington in 2016. She specializes in 19th and 20th century American literature as seen through the lenses of feminism, queer theory and disability studies. Her work articulates theories of embodiment across narratives of bodily difference in both the literary and performing arts and combines disciplinary approaches from literary theory, cultural studies and performance studies.
Title: Neo-Sideshow and The Other: The Limits of Freaktopia
Abstract: This presentation examines the adoption of otherness in the neo-sideshow movement and neo-sideshow narratives, and questions the utility of voluntary “enfreakment” in the making of a “freaktopia.” Does voluntary enfreakment of generally white, cisgender, and masculine subjects illustrate a greater alignment with practices of access, inclusion, and bodily diversity? Or does the voluntary enfreakment of neo-sideshow performance co-opt and appropriate spaces and practices that once belonged to historically marginalized bodies? By reading memoirs of neo-sideshow practitioners like Jim Rose, and examining the performance practices of neo-sideshows in the United States, this formal research presentation aims to illuminate the way the genre troubles and transforms otherness for its own ends, and questions whether “freaktopia” is at all possible.
Susann Lewerenz
Susann Lewerenz
Concentration Camp Memorial Neuengamme, Hamburg, Germany
Bio: Susann Lewerenz is a historian from Berlin/Hamburg. Her research focuses on German post/colonialism as well as on migration, exoticism and racism in 20th century German visual culture and, particularly, live entertainment such as circus, variety theatre and fun fair shows. Her PhD thesis at the University of Hamburg was published under the title Geteilte Welten. Exotisierte Unterhaltung und Artist*innen of Color in Deutschland, 1920–1960 in 2017.
Title: Between ‘Africa’ and ‘America’: Performance Identities of an Afro-German Circus Family (1909–54)
Abstract: This paper presentation takes the different performance identities and related marketing strategies of the Afro-German circus family Jackson-Leyseck as a vantage point for investigating the interplay as well as the tensions between practices of racial othering and Black agency in the German entertainment business and, in particular, its intersections with the histories of colonialism and imperialism. It analyzes the various ways in which Black members of the Jackson-Leyseck family presented themselves as ‘Other-from-without’ to the German public and explores how their performance strategies changed against the background of the political and social transformations and cataclysms that took place in the first half of the 20th century, most notably after the rise of the Nazi regime. In connection with this, this paper traces the biographies of those family members who remained in Germany and those who immigrated to Scandinavia during the First World War, after the establishment of the Nazi regime, and in the 1960s when the borders of the German Democratic Republic were closed by the Iron Curtain. It thus embeds the transnational family history of the Jackson-Leysecks into the context of the German and European history of the Black Diaspora.
Sylvain Lavoie
Sylvain Lavoie
Concordia University, Montreal, Québec, Canada
Bio: Sylvain Lavoie is currently enrolled in the doctoral Humanities program at Concordia University where he teaches literature and drama. He is also a part-time professor of theatre history and theory at the University of Ottawa. As the Francophone Representative for the Canadian Association for Theatre Research Sylvain has been writing critical reviews for more than a decade and recently became the editorial director of the scène_s collection at the Les Herbes rouges publishing company.
Title: Animal Beings: Cirque du Soleil’s Special Bodies
Abstract: In “Cirque du Soleil’s Multiple Bodies” (Globe, 2008), Erin Hurley asserts that “Cirque du Soleil’s unifying aesthetic might be well understood as a concerted effort to regularize these unruly, outstanding bodies.” These “exceptional” bodies do indeed constitute one of the hallmarks of new circus, with the elimination of real animals in favor of humans comprising a second such trait. I emphasize the word real because, as Hurley reminds us, Cirque du Soleil’s shows are not only “populated with creatures” whose skills go far beyond those of humans, but because some productions also include core characters that are meant to be – or be seen as – animals. My paper explores how these “animals” take form. The animal has always (as a category of the living) yet never (metaphorically) been othered by Laliberté’s empire. I engage with anthropology to call the bodies not exceptional but special – in its epistemological meaning of “constituting a species” – to show how difference is classified throughout Cirque du Soleil’s shows in which representations of non-humans appear. By going beyond the limits, such zoomorphism gives another – yet ostensibly similar – meaning to the experience of the so-called (hidden) animal.
Tina Carter
Tina Carter
East 15 Acting School, Loughton, UK
Bio: Katrina Carter obtained her PhD from Royal Holloway University London in 2015; her dissertation focused on investigating disability aesthetics and politics in inclusive aerial practice. She continues to research independently through her UNfrIQUE project, an undertaking which examines the stories of both forgotten historical disabled artists and contemporary disabled practitioners. She continues to choreograph and teach aerial in diverse settings including Airhedz.co.uk, East 15 Acting School and the Graeae Theatre Company in London.
Title: Rolling into Flight – Dis-ing Up Aerial!
Abstract: I thought I had failed when I told Georgia she could not be airborne. The remaining members of Graeae’s youth group, the Rollettes, had accessed the trapeze, aerial hoop or hammock, and disappointment was evident in Georgia’s response. The room emptied and I was left questioning how to make amends. Perhaps a simple grasp of the bar, rotating whilst seated in her wheelchair, guided by her personal assistant, would offer her something? Her grinning face and determined refusal to release the trapeze during the first performance suggested we had indeed found her moment of flight.
My presentation is offered from a practitioner’s perspective. I will share pedagogical and choreographic processes that continue to inform my Accessible Aerial practice, where the role of difference is one of exciting and creative potential rather than of restrictive limitation. Whilst acknowledging that disability has been a pervasive ‘narrative prosthesis’ in the development of fictional characters, particularly in film and literature (Mitchell & Snyder, 2001), I propose that the disabled aerialist offers an opportunity to reflect anew on aerial as a discipline and the way it is taught, directed and performed. The disabled aerialist provides us all with the opportunity to throw out the rule book and reimagine what aerial can be for everyone.
Veronika Štefanová
Veronika Štefanová
CIRQUEON – Centre for Contemporary Circus, Prague, Czech Republic
Bio: Veronika Štefanová holds a PhD from the department of theatre studies at Charles University in Prague, exploring contemporary circus as a dramatic art. She occasionally teaches at Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and is in charge of the library, documentation, and research at CIRQUEON, the umbrella organization for the support and development of contemporary circus in the Czech Republic.
Title: The Otherness of Czech Contemporary Circus
Abstract: Czech contemporary circus is in many ways a unique phenomenon. Having been born of the will of theatre directors, it is frequently perceived as non-verbal or experimental theater within the Czech cultural environment itself. Theater actors and dancers, though nowadays more often than not in association with gymnasts and international artists, still influence and determine its aesthetic qualities. As an art form, Czech contemporary circus is very young: its lifespan is still best measured in years rather than in decades. However, this in no way detracts from its value. While contemporary circus may be considered a minor art form in the Czech Republic in terms of the number of ensembles and individual artists, it has achieved great popularity in terms of spectator interest. This is evidenced by the number of performances annually staged in the Czech Republic as well as by the growing number of cultural events featuring Czech contemporary circus. Nevertheless, defining the Czech contemporary circus professional, i.e. a professional contemporary circus artist, remains problematic. There is currently no professional circus school in the Czech Republic capable of producing certified professionals in the field of circus arts. The aim of the round table is to present the specifics of Czech contemporary circus, which has established itself over the course of the past ten years as a professional art form thanks to the efforts of non-profit organizations and independent theater artists. How does a professional contemporary circus form emerge in a country with no professional circus school? What role does the theater background play in the creative practices of Czech artists and how does it reflect spectator expectations? Furthermore, how do these artists perceive their position within the context of Czech performative arts, what are their working conditions and how are they reflected in their work? These and other questions will be explored by Czech artists and experts: Eliška Brtnická (Cirkus Mlejn), Adam Jarchovský (Bratři v tricku), Petr Horníček (Losers Cirque Comany) Rostislav Novák (Cirk La Putyka), Barbora Adolfová (Cirkonet) and Alžběta Tichá (Feel the Universe Circus Company).
Vincent Grosstephan
Vincent Grosstephan
Bio: Following a career as a teacher of physical education and sports and subsequently a trainer of teachers and trainers, Vincent Grosstephan completed a doctoral thesis in the field of education in 2011; his work focused on the issue of professional development within the area of continuing education involving researchers and practitioners. Since 2011 he has served as a teacher and researcher at the University of Reims. Vincent Grosstephan has worked in the field of circus since 2011. Initially focusing on risk management training issues in circus schools, he subsequently began working within the framework of the INTENTS project. In particular, he has helped define the profession of a circus arts teacher in a vocational school while also focusing on engineering the process for teacher training in Europe. He is currently developing a work on the analysis and development of activity in collective and joint-work situations, working within the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) framework.
Title: The Other – Defining Risk
Abstract: I place myself firmly alongside the activity of managing risk-taking and its development, and not risk as a situation. My theoretical framework is the historical and cultural theory of activity to which the situated, collective, cultural and historical dimensions are central. The question of otherness is therefore fundamental. On the one hand, I find that in the very activity of risk-taking, things that are essential from the point of view of relation to others are played out and, on the other hand, that the development of this risk-taking activity also expresses (between teachers and students) important issues of recognition of the other in its difference. I will rely on examples drawn from teaching situations and self-confrontation interviews with teachers and students.