Circus Training in the Time of Coronavirus

Abstract

This paper looks at contemporary circus as a physical, artistic practice that cultivates utopia, through reshaping values, dreams, subjectivities and socio-cultural logics in dedicated training and performing places. Circus training cultivates a community of bodies and generates tensions and discrepancies between the vision and values it predicates and their implementation in a neoliberal world. The present and future, personal and political sides of life intertwine in shaping and unsettling circus utopia. The lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic provided circus practitioners with time and new lenses to consider hopes, fears, doubts and certainties.

The circus training utopia is explored drawing on the meanings, representations and definitions circulating among a diversity of actors and sites involved in processes of learning, participation and identity building through circus practices. Data were generated before the lockdown through interviews and participant observation conducted mainly in and around the city of Turin, Italy, and during the lockdown through analysis of specialized media and online conversations within the Italian circus scene.

Insights are presented into how the lockdown reinforced and disrupted ideals about the appearance, skills and learning capacity of the circus body; the creative and disciplined character of circus practitioners; the alternative circus life of passion, fun, freedom, challenges and achievements; and the circus community resisting dominant culture and mainstream within the cultural field.

Tensions emerged towards and against consistent, structured and widespread dialogue among actors and organizations, stronger public advocacy and claims for institutional recognition and support. These shed light on the fragmented character of the contemporary circus field in Italy, but also placed emphasis on and raised awareness about the need to build a stronger and more cohesive circus community, able to raise a common voice, empowering enough to stay on the utopic course while navigating COVID-19 society and its future.

Notes

1 The paper follows the definition given by Lavers et al. (2020), in which Traditional or Modern circus refers to equestrian acts interspersed with juggling, clowning and acrobatics acts performed in a ring; New Circus emerges from the waves of social unrest in 1968; and Contemporary Circus indicates the ‘forms of circus that were a continuation of New Circus after the late 1990s’ (6). The differences between traditional and contemporary circus can be simplified and summarized in binaries such as presence versus absence of animals; assemblage of acts versus theatrical approach; emphasis on danger and prowess versus emphasis on artistry, research and hybridity of art forms; closure versus accessibility; unique, dedicated space versus proliferation of venues; fear, laughter and amazement versus emotional complexity and authenticity (Bolton 2004; Guy 2015; Serena 2008; Wall 2013). These binaries are ‘inaccurate and restrictive’ (Bolton 2004: 144), and shall as such be taken as a superficial scheme providing a partial account of the historical and cultural shift from ‘traditional’ to ‘new’ or ‘contemporary’ forms.

2 At the moment (early September 2020), new, smaller waves of infection are arising and circus schools are starting to organize the reopening after the summer break in an atmosphere of uncertainty about the future and lack of clarity about the many rules that need to be followed.

3 Day 1, conversation with circus companies. Participants were representatives from: Circo El Grito, Teatro Necessario, and MagdaClan. Facilitator: Francesco Sgrò.

Day 2, conversation with circus artists. Participants: Giulio Lanzafame, Andrea Loreni and Piergiorgio Milano. Facilitator: Francesco Sgrò.

Day 4, conversation with young artists. Participants: Kate Boschetti, Valentina Cortese and Edo Cirque (Carlo Cerato e Ramiro Erburu). Facilitator: Francesco Sgrò.

Day 7, conversation with circus experts. Participants: Jean Michel Guy, Philine Dahlmann and Salvo Frasca. Facilitator: Francesco Sgrò.

4 While occupational risks and insufficient public support are common to every artistic field in Italy (Luciano and Bertolini 2011), due to its recent development the contemporary circus sector is even more fragile and often ignored.

5 The paper focused on the national level; however, conversations also happened at the international level. For instance, I took part in virtual exchanges and sharing about youth and social circus schools’ reactions to the COVID crisis organized and facilitated by Caravan Circus Network.