Style as a “focal concern” helps practitioners to orient themselves and establish subcultural, internal and external boundaries. The expressive, symbolic and distinctive function of style-in its components of image, argot and demeanour -was thus reasserted in the community of circus practice. The responses pointed to elements of style and attitude, and highlighted different “typologies” of circus people, which were related to environment, age and other subcultural references. The interviews on which I based my PhD research included the question of whether circus practitioners may be recognized as such outside the circus space-while walking in the street, or drinking coffee in a bar, for instance. Moreover, the body in circus is present in a peculiar way, opposite to the “asepticised” and “abstract” body, shaped by broader social trends. This enables a high diversity and variability of notions of what an “ideal” circus body is, and how it is to be achieved, across sectors, institutions, approaches and individual practitioners engaging with contemporary circus practices. © Franzi Kreis Photography Ilaria Bessone | Circus Bodies and Cultural SpacesĪmong the many contemporary bodily practices, contemporary circus is particularly interesting because, at least in Italy, it still lacks codification, formalization and fixation of learning paths, specific aesthetic and performative standards and body techniques which characterize sports and ballet it still relies extensively on creativity, improvisation, personal skills and the views and experiences of the practitioners. Her most recent play, Eleanor and Mary Alice, is about Eleanor Roosevelt meeting with Mary Alice Evatt and human rights, art and war. She is currently writing on emotion and affect in performance. She has written over 60 scholarly articles and chapters and her recent books include: Fighting Nature: Travelling Menageries, Animal Acts and War Shows (Sydney University Press 2016) the co-edited The Routledge Circus Studies Reader (Routledge 2016) Wild and Dangerous Performances: Animals, Emotions, Circus (Palgrave MacMillan 2012) Circus Bodies (Routledge 2005) Performing Emotions (Ashgate 2002). Peta Tait is a professor of theatre and drama at La Trobe University, Australia she is an academic and a playwright and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The paper encompasses the productions of Circus Oz and Cirque du Soleil in its analysis of circus nostalgia in Cirque 1903, cheerful exuberance in Cirque de la Symphonie and melancholic sadness and anguish in Circa’s Il Ritorno Jonathan Flatley identifies a type of aesthetic mood in which it is possible to recognize the elements that produce mood before it evaporates, and it is the process of trying to hold onto that elusive quality after it goes that becomes a feature of mood. Mood is considered to be an intangible quality that is neither focused nor directed, but it can be perceived in its aesthetic production. Such moods create connections to recent political spaces within culture. 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. Through a variation in the program and the music, the circus show re-establishes an overall mood and it deviates from the cheerful mood most noticeably with an aerial act that conveys poignancy. Perhaps mood is not what comes immediately to mind for circus but it can be argued that the aestheticized space of circus sets and resets mood in each act and throughout the show. This paper considers how circus sets up a cultural space with its moods and in collaboration with music.
Peta Tait | Cheerful, Nostalgic, Melancholic – Circus Moodiness as Cultural Space
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