How is circus different from other “live performance,” or, as you say in French, from other types of spectacle vivant? Why are acrobats not dancers but dancers acrobats? Why are artistes performers but performers not (generally) artists? Are circus scenarists choreographers who use little animal icons instead of ballerina foot-prints and soda water to do choreography
I am not the only person to wonder. And, though I’ve seen a lot of performance that has called itself “circus” rather than “dance” or, generically, “art”, over the last 40 years, and I can’t remember having once complained about how a performance had labeled itself, still, for me, the distinctions are a question. Perhaps only because, often enough, the question is the propos of a scenario or a choreography or a production or an occasion for thinking how the art in question might be improved. But then, again, there can be deeper reasons, even reasons that go beyond performance and art to what hominin is or is becoming.
Not long ago, at the Théâtre Monfort, Maroussia Diaz Verbrèke acrobatically danced a one-woman show called Le troisième cirque: Circus Remix (“The third circus”). The scenario was built, so says the synopsis, around what “circus” comes from and where and how it might be going.
Le troisième cirque reflects Diaz Verbrèke earlier work as a performer on De nos jours (Notes on the circus) – “Today” – produced by Ivan Mosjoukine, a circus scenarist and director, in 2012, both in perspective as well as in production particulars, such as signposting.
Le troisième cirque begins when a spectator walks under the big top; spectators become
aware of the start of the show when Diaz Verbrèke starts a pillow-fight ceremony with them. I understood from this, that, going forward, then, circus, like other performance, is fated to become a “participative,” at the least, an “interactive,” affair, a sort of VR without goggles. The idea behind “participative” and “interactive” is to blur the distinction between performer and spectator, not to make the performance more fun or stressing, although I have noticed that most spectators see it as the latter, not the former.
And then, the future circus will tell truths about now: be “relevant.” Since “relevance” is as relative as the realities we collectively create, being relevant requires words, signposts. Le troisième cirque is signposted from the git-go: joie, audace, aventure: “gaiety, daring, adventure.” The pillow fight is only the first in a slew of signposts, sometimes words, sometimes gestures, sometimes bits of technology, that create anecdotes punctuated by moments of choreographed physical prowess: walking upside down, for instance.
Sometimes, the signpost signals a combination prouesse et histoire, body art with story. In advance of one particularly touching riff, for instance, Diaz Verbrèke signposts: Pourquoi c’est comme ça (“Why so?”). She then proceeds to negotiate an acrobatic feat on a hawser-type rope in very stiletto heels and backless gown. Precariously placed, she fumbles to get ahold of a cellphone with which seems to be initiated a teletext talking heads anthropological disquisition on the use of women as exchange objects. It’s a funny and touching riff.
Or, again, the signposting rejects the circus as exotic-species show. Diaz Verbrèke slips on an “I am a tiger” sweatshirt, lights a flaming hoop and tenses as if to jump (jumping through a flaming hoop being the tiger-equivalent of putting rats in your bed to show off your writhing skills). She lets the hoop go out, and slips on another tee-shirt: “I am an animal”. She leaps through the flamed-down hoop.
When I mentally rip away all Diaz Verbrèke’s signposting, I find that the pleasure of Le troisième cirque is her – and our, the human body – the body-spirit that she represents through her art.
In fact, I was able to sit there on my bony butt cramped on a hard board with my chin in my hands for better than an hour not because of the signposted content, all of which is really preaching, but because Diaz Verbrèke can do with herself what few can do well. And because, in so doing, she tells a really relevant story that I can’t get anywhere else from anybody other than her and her fellow circus folk.
With the nonchalance of the truly strong, Diaz Verbrèke deploys a
visible, fluid tension that dances in the air, that embraces the earth, that merges with the spirit of the world. In fact, when all is said, she is not at all unlike Claire Aldaya, the only woman acrobat in Akoreacro’s Klaxon (“Siren”). As she flies, flips and free falls from the top of the roof to the fragile keys of a piano, Aldaya trusts herself to the goodwill of five earnest, flying men; one of the most breathtaking erotic displays you’ll see. Diaz Verbrèke’s body energy is in another vein, but, still, like Aldaya, draws attention beyond the derring-do, to the thrill in balance and gesture, to the organic mécanique that is now so often hidden by the ether of the electronic.
In sum, Diaz Verbrèke’s corporal virtuousity, like Aldaya’s, without a word, forces spectators to understand the power and beauty of human limbs, human bounce, human desire and in so doing points towards many things worth thinking about. For instance, without some positive understanding the of the power of body, bounce and desire, how do you think sexuality can be channeled away from interpersonal power politics – the power to harass – towards something different?
So, no, I don’t think circus needs a VR version 3.0 – in fact, I think there never was a version 1.00, so there will never be any other versions.
While human tastes, technologies and requirements have changed, the circle at the origin of circus has never changed. I think about it like this: human speech, not Gilgamesh, made the Bible. The stage made the play. And before either history or literature, the circle made the circus. Not God, not Shakespeare nor Augustus Caesar. Not prophets, not players, not plots, not jugglers, acrobats, animals, nor the daring Man on the Flying Trapeze we sang about when I was a kid.
Just the circle has ever made the circus and it ever will. Because the first circle drawn was of course, self-consciousness. Drawing a circle shows where you are not and, consequently, that you are somewhere. The mystery of the who, what and where inside the circle lets magic bloom there. And that magic gives what is imagined, projected, into it some room for maneuver in a world elsewhere occupied by expansive and expanding ego.the circus. Not God, not Shakespeare nor Augustus Caesar. Not prophets, not players, not plots, not jugglers, acrobats, animals, nor the daring Man on the Flying Trapeze we sang about when I was a kid.
So, when I think it through, it doesn’t really matter who you see in the circle or what you put in the circle or what you call it, just so long as you keep in mind that the magic is not neutral. Every spectator, whether she knows it or not and without exception, perceives the inside of the circle as an ineffable not me, as ineluctable otherness.
Finally, I think, success or failure of any performance comes from combining is with not, me with other, and never, ever, the other way around; in the end, social commentary, signposting, won’t ever work.
If you’re in Paris and you’d like to see some top contemporary circus performance and make your own judgments, here are three suggestions:
OPTRAKEN by GALACTIK ENSEMBLE
From 7 to 25 November. 2017, Théâtre Monfort
op traken : in Alpine skiing, preparation to take a jump just right. Optraken puts on “situational acrobacy” where the team continuously adjusts to its (unpredictable) environment. These Galactik short shorts are heavy on visual body slapstick.
TERABAK DE KYIV with STÉPHANE RICORDEL & DAKH DAUGHTERS
From 28 December, 2017 to 13 January, 2018, Théâtre Monfort
A real degenerate cabaret, a Ukrainian witch-punk girl band with magic, card, dance and acrobatic shows all rumpled together with roiling music from the band; so much so that the language parts don’t really matter. An energy perfect for seeing out the old and welcoming the new. Energy cabaret from Terabak’s show at the Monfort last year.
HUMANOPTÈRE by CLÉMENT DAZIN & CIE LA MAIN DE L’HOMME
From 2 to 17 February. 2018, Théâtre Monfort
A carefully choreographed piece of continuous collective juggling themed around workplace gesture and experience. In this trailer, lighting puts the accent on the complexity of working together.