The Artification of Trapeze Acts: A New Paradigm for Circus Arts

Introduction

Circuses, known in the 18th century as minor theater in England and théâtre secondaire in France, won success and legitimacy by seeking innovation and taking advantage of emerging social practices such as equestrian sports and physical training that could be made to look spectacular (Hodak, 2006). In that vein, circus directors began to include trapeze acts in circus performances around the mid-19th century, and these are still some of the core acts in any circus. However, with the development of the so-called ‘new’ circus in the 1970s, artists coming from other arts and other countries, influenced by other styles of composition (be they theatrical or choreographic) and other types of transmission of skills, went on to suggest different ways of treating aerial acrobatics, thus shifting the perceived sense of the performance. One troupe, the Arts Sauts ¹ company (1993–2007), was instrumental in turning trapeze acts into an independent discipline, an ‘art in its own right.’ ²

In accordance with the postulate that art is a social construct, I will examine the types of recognition this activity receives and the change in its status on the basis of an investigation combining ethnographic description and documentary research. I identify various ‘artification operators’ (Shapiro, 2007; Shapiro and Heinich, 2012) for trapeze acts, and more broadly, circus performance, from the mid-19th century to the present. Indeed, the practice has undergone formal, institutional, discursive, ethical, and other transformations. Trapeze acts are a very specific type of activity – vastly different from training animals or juggling, for instance – and are primarily characterized by risk-taking and a combination of prowess and imagination. This makes them a preferred field for observation for the circus, which is best understood as a borderline object somewhere between entertainment, sport and art.

This article examines the stages in this process of status change. It first documents historical integration of gymnastics into circus rings starting in 1850, tracing how it followed the logic of spectacularization of outstanding body work. I will then show that the highbrow recognition gained by the circus in the 19th century shifted during the 20th century. Circuses later became popular entertainment and suffered declining public interest and an unprecedented economic crisis starting in the 1950s, leading various persons to take action: to rescue the circus heritagization (i.e. conceding national heritage status to the circus) on the one hand, and demanding full recognition as an art, on the other. The issue of the circus’ artification actually merges here with its quest for recognition and legitimacy. But if we are to revisit the history of the circus through the prism of artification, and more specifically, to analyze the shift from ‘spectacular’ to ‘artistic,’ we must remain alert to semantic shifts. The term ‘artist,’ for example, was used to describe trapeze performers in the ring, but took on different meanings over time. Aesthetic, terminological, institutional and legal modifications are equally important.

Although there is general agreement that the origins, and above all the conditions, for a renewal of the circus should be located in France in the 1970s, our analysis includes an international perspective. The circus has always been favorable to the circulation of artists, but the development of new aesthetic visions has generated the development of other markets devoted to the circus arts within which actors, their skills and their values circulate. Here, artification has accompanied the emergence of a new contemporary circus, with its own institutions and relations to prowess and art, which exists alongside the traditional circus. In this sense, and because there is a break in the values and definitions of art, we consider it a new paradigm.

Spectacularization and Sensationalism

In the mid-19th century, when gymnastic activities were expanding considerably in Europe, circus directors began to present acts stemming directly from the gymnasium, including the slack rope, hoops, and trapeze acts. Following the logic of innovation introduced a century earlier by Philip Astley, the big top became a space dedicated to the spectacular and the sensational, in a broader context of expanding leisure activities in industrialized European countries (Corbin, 1995).

La course aux trapèzes (The Race to the Trapezes), a show performed by Jules Léotard (1838–1870) on 12 November 1859 at Paris’ Cirque Napoléon, was a milestone in the history of the circus. The first act of what was to become the Flying Trapeze, it showed a way of using the trapeze that differed considerably from the rational physical education exercises practiced in the health-oriented or military gymnasiums. Léotard, who pioneered immoderation, was discovered in Toulouse by acrobats from Cirque Napoléon, whose director, Louis Dejean, exercised at his father’s Amoros-oriented gymnasium. ³ The Léotards’ equipment made it possible to fly from one rigging to another, surpassing the earlier use of the trapeze which was more static. In addition to physical excellence in gymnastics, prowess and feats were valued. By staging risk-taking, both real and calculated, he produced a spectacular act that was thrilling and sensational.

Léotard’s renown extended beyond the borders of France: between 1859 and 1868 he performed in the world’s largest cities (Paris, London, and New York). In 1860, Louis Dejean extended Léotard’s contract with the Cirque Napoléon and raised his wages, already very high for entertainment at that time, to prevent him from leaving to join a foreign competitor (Lartigue, 2009: 47). The press reported his feats, and Léotard even published a memoir (Léotard, 1860). At the time, trapeze performers were popular with the public and the press. Postcards, programs and books (see, for example, Strehly, 1977 [1903]) called them ‘gymnasts,’ ‘athletes,’ ‘acrobats’ and/or ‘artists.’ These terms indicate how highly circus actors were valued while also functioning as sales pitches aimed at spectators.

The process by which the circus gained recognition in the late 19th century should be placed in the context of intense competition between venues offering leisure activities. The fact that the word ‘art’ appears in the circus scene, as well as the word ‘artist’ (used already in the early 19th century to designate musicians and interpreters in the performing arts) suggests that the meaning of the words, their utilization and the framework in which they are pronounced, must be questioned when analyzing the artification process. Various meanings can be identified. The first has to do with the status designated to workers in the circus ring. Another stresses excellence, combining feats, authenticity and beauty. Léotard’s ‘incredible daring,’ ⁴ would win him repeated praise for his excellence and exceptional abilities. Thus, one journalist wrote that although he was ‘neither a sculptor nor a writer, nor a great actor … the man who has superlatively captivated the most spirited city in the world … is the lord of the trapeze, the Napoleon of the tightrope.’ ⁵

The circus, which is not one of the fine arts, is sometimes compared with arts recognized by the critics. What the public was looking for, however, was mainly virtuosity and beauty, the theatrical and idealized staging of surpassing one’s limits and producing strong emotions, as found in the values of the emerging modern sports world (Vigarello, 2002).

Popularization and Heritagization

A change was forthcoming, however, in the audience for circus shows, which would affect how particular acts were viewed and appreciated. As early as the Belle Époque several Parisian circuses and racetracks closed. ⁶ Some circus managers sought to broaden their spectatorship at the turn of the 20th century, by addressing the young public, especially through a reworking of clown acts (Noiriel, 2012). Whereas until 1870 the circus public in Paris was mostly composed of aristocrats and the bourgeoisie (who were extremely fond of equestrian performances), subsequently the audience included people from a wider range of social backgrounds, depending on where shows were performed. Faced with competition from music-halls and movie theaters, circuses responded by presenting more outrageous productions, inspired by the gigantic scale of circuses from the USA such as the Barnum & Bailey Circus, which received an enthusiastic response from audiences when they toured at the turn of the century.

The permeability between the circus and music-hall scenes is sometimes viewed by critics as a form of deterioration. In 1901, Thomas Edison immortalized the American trapeze performer and vaudeville artist Charmion (whose real name was Laverie Vallee, 1875–1949) in one of his first films (Trapeze Disrobing Act). Charmion used the development of moving pictures to publicize her act, and added the excitement of undressing to her dangerous stunt (Gils, 2014). In 1930, a newspaper article entitled ‘the decadence of the circus’ criticized this proximity with music-hall performances, and above all the intrusion of ‘chorus girls’ into the circus ring (Normand, 1930). The association of the circus with low-status entertainment became an obstacle, then, to its recognition. Therefore, while in the first decades of the Third Republic (1870–1940), the circus catered both to high society and working-class audiences, by the 1920s it was redefined as childish, popular entertainment.

After the Second World War, French circuses were administratively detached from the Bureau of Theaters of the Ministry of the Interior and transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture. This was a clear indication that they had ‘fallen into disgrace’ (Wallon, 2002: 218). Prowess, now prominent in sporting arena shows, was no longer confined to the circus scene.

Whereas in the 19th century its technical, technological and scenographic innovations had earned the circus its legitimacy, in the 20th century its acknowledgement as an art was thwarted by the need, beginning in the inter-war period, for reproducible techniques, tied to the stabilizing of composition. At the time, many acts were handed down from father to son, or from mentor (‘père d’élève’) to disciple. According to Noël Devaulx, author of a book on Alexis Gruss Jr, ⁷ no significant innovations can be found in circus acts in general or in trapeze acts in particular, since the turn of the 20th century:

Was it still possible to add spectacular improvements to the standard acts? The flying trapeze had certainly undergone rapid changes since Léotard, but hadn’t it already practically achieved its cultural form by 1900? … Two hundred years of the circus had perhaps exhausted its inventive resources. (Devaulx, 1977: 26).

When Devaulx’s book was published in France in 1977, circus audiences had already declined. In fact, enthusiasm for the circus had started to wane in the 1950s, even in the USA. Only artists trained in the Eastern and Asian communist countries continued to find success (Barré-Meinzer, 2001: 50). The big-name traveling circuses such as Amar and Pinder carried on until the price of oil rose sharply in the 1970s, when they went bankrupt.

In the 1950s, collectors and ethnologists engaged in the heritagization of the circus by setting up collections and organizing exhibits. An especially significant collector was Georges Henri Rivière, a member of the Friends of the Circus Club, who founded the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in Paris. The exhibition ‘Circus Arts and Traditions’ presented at the Palais de Chaillot Museum in 1956 seems to mark the end of an epoch, preserving and assigning value to the traces of a then-disappearing type of spectacle. Painters and poets such as Picasso, Cocteau and Apollinaire had already seized on the circus and its imagery, but the intellectual elite who enjoyed the circus shows of the early 20th century went on to appreciate it differently. Exhibitions represented not so much a de-artification as a shift in the hierarchy of tastes and practices, with an additional innovation: a contrast between highbrow and lowbrow, while the circus became a stylized, ritualized show of virtuosity.

Heritagization, which consists of ‘preserving the past as it was or apprehending it anew so as to put it into a collection’ (Dibie, 2006: 101), started when the circus became a popular spectacle. Whereas circus managers had ‘turned to the people’ in the 1920s (Noiriel, 2012: 30), later public policies for heritagization and attempts to gain recognition for the circus as part of a heritage rested on the idea of the circus as part of the common weal (Unesco, 1988), something to be preserved. This happened within an all-encompassing conception of ‘the people,’ and not merely one referring to the ‘inferior’ part of a hierarchical whole, in which ‘the people’ designates a social class (Wieviorka, 2012: 50).

The renewed interest of the intellectual elites, and the valorization of the circus through its heritagization did not put an end to its enduring crisis (diminishing audience numbers and the financial difficulties were real). However, it is in this context that a change began to occur. Two concomitant factors were decisive in the circus’ ascent to the status of art: the creation of schools and the development of a new aesthetic.

Training Becomes Academic

Nearly 50 years after the School for Circus Arts opened in Moscow, two schools opened in Paris in 1974: the Fratellini School and the Carré Monfort. The establishment of these schools, the first in western Europe, were expected to achieve a particular aim: that the circus be viewed as an art form.

In the 1970s the issue of circus performances receiving recognition as art had become central and was defended, to a large extent, by the protagonists of the process by which training became academic:

For an art to be alive, it must have a school. In places that have schools the circus is very much alive … We needed a place to … enable [young artists] to understand that the circus had to become an art once again, a pure one, a true one, indifferent to the laws of the mass media. (Fratellini, 1989: 156, 179)

The namesake for the Fratellini School was Annie Fratellini (1932–1997), granddaughter of the clown Paul Fratellini of the famous Fratellini Trio, and the first woman to impersonate Auguste, the equivalent of Coco the clown. She had left the circus to pursue opportunities in jazz, the music-hall and the movies before her partner, the filmmaker and clown Pierre Étaix (1928–2016), persuaded her to return to the circus and helped her to found her circus school. The Carré Monfort, named after actress Silvia Monfort (1935–1997), organized an exhibit about the circus in 1973. She then went on to program a show designed by Alexis Gruss Jr for the bicentennial of the arrival in Paris of the Astley’s Amphitheatre. When the Council of Paris offered her the chance to open the city’s first participatory cultural center, she created a circus school:

I was increasingly convinced that there was an urgent need to provide artists with the time and means to train new students, to inject fresh blood into the circus, and above all to give other people broad access to their skills and tradition … In my opinion, the creation of a circus school was absolutely necessary not only for the blossoming of the art of the circus in France, but for its very survival. (quoted in Devaulx, 1977: 9)

Before those schools opened, training was typically received from family members who were already circus performers, or their colleagues. Artists who were not born into circus families were either recruited for their proficiency or mentored by ‘father/teachers,’ artists who prepared them for the craft by teaching them their skills and the circus ring culture. The few training outlets available outside the family circle such as gymnasiums for trapeze-workers, were rarely called ‘schools.’ The kind of training they offered was primarily technical and focused exclusively on a single discipline, which contrasted with the art-school model. Although the Fratellini and Monfort schools did not make a clear break with the hereditary and crafts guild model, they still contributed to artifying the circus by making training more academic. The process resembles the transformation of training in painting (Heinich, 1993), music, and dance that had happened three centuries earlier.

The determination of the actors involved, and the recognition they enjoyed within the circus milieu (from artists, political decision-makers, and companies of all sizes) contributed to the success of these schools and of the process they set in motion. The position occupied by these actors and their active support of the circus scene were decisive, offering powerful leverage for its legitimacy. The central actors, including Annie Fratellini and Alexis Gruss Jr, were heirs to renowned circus families. Another important figure was Pierre Étaix, ⁸ a most versatile artist, who was an actor, a clown, a graphic designer (who designed posters for Jacques Tati’s films) and an award-winning filmmaker who won an Oscar for best short film in 1963. Completing the set of central actors was Silvia Monfort, ⁹ a prominent figure on the French film scene. She was also active in live theatre, performing in many plays from the classic and contemporary repertoire so that she was encouraged by Jacques Duhamel (1924–1977), minister of Cultural Affairs at the time, to become a theater director. In 1972 she created the ‘Carré Thorigny,’ where she organized the first performances of the Alexis Gruss Jr Old-Fashioned Circus in the courtyard of the Hôtel Salé. ¹⁰ The schools founded and promoted by these actors produced concrete effects including changes in the model of transmission of skills, and the development of various sorts of artistic and institutional collaboration. The schools were also positively received, which further contributed to the artification of the circus. Indeed, the alliance between artists from circus families and those from established disciplines in the art world (Becker, 1982), such as theater and independent art cinema, lent symbolic surplus value to these initiatives.

By the end of the 1970s, the circus scene was in dire straits and repeatedly appealed to the government – and to the Ministry of Culture in particular ¹¹ – resulting in the transfer of circuses from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture to the Ministry of Culture in 1978. This change of administration was of the utmost importance: the government thus acknowledged the circus as a cultural form in its own right and accordingly introduced a supportive policy. More specifically, to address the crisis in the circus scene, the Ministry of Culture coordinated the action of the various government departments that had previously overseen circuses, including the Ministry of the Interior for traveling circuses and the Ministry of Agriculture for menageries.

The Minister of Culture Jean-Philippe Lecat launched a plan to save the circus, aiming to support it but also enabling it to retrieve its authenticity and ‘traditions’:

The circus scene has suffered enormously from the contagion of the music-hall and radio … In fact, the circus has its own disciplines, with their very basic gestures, their acrobats and jugglers, disciplines based on training animals, but not sophisticated animals. The traditional circus animals are horses … And I believe that the circus of tomorrow will be a circus that looks like a circus, not one that looks like a fake music-hall under a circus tent. That is definitely a very bad route for circuses. ¹²

Several initiatives were proposed by the Ministry, including the creation of a Grand Arts Award, the opening of a national school and the establishment of a fund for the modernization of the circus scene. The fund was set up in 1979 but was replaced by the Association for Teaching the Circus Arts in 1980. Two years later it became the Association for the Support, Promotion and Teaching of the Circus Arts in 1982. The new decade ushered in a new period. Henceforth, government policies and resource provision aimed to promote artistic creation in the circus. This generated a change in the economic model for circuses, which had previously been organized as private businesses. It also influenced the identity of circus artists.

Enhanced Value for Creation

A second factor turned out to be decisive for the artification of the circus: the development of new kinds of compositions for circus acts. The 1970s were also the beginning of what would later be called the ‘new circus’ in western and northern Europe, Australia and North America. In France, the pioneers were the Bonjour circus (which played at the Avignon festival in 1971) and the Puit aux Images, founded in 1973. As a side note, although Canada never developed a big top tradition, Guy Laliberté created a street performance company there in the 1980s after a visit to Europe where he experimented as a strolling musician and fire-eater. In 1984, he co-founded the Cirque du Soleil. In Australia, meanwhile, the Circus Oz developed shows featuring social satire since its founding in 1978. It also rediscovered traditional circus techniques, especially the trapeze, playing with the (primarily sexual) imagery connected with it (Tait, 2005). The artists in these companies viewed themselves as both part of a reinvented popular tradition (the big top and fairground theater) and as partaking in artistic experimentation with utopian aims. They ‘quit the theaters’ and developed an aesthetic that radically departed from what had been designated as the traditional circus: eliminating animal-training acts, using spaces other than the circus ring, and challenging the act as the basic structural unit. This new circus, still in its infancy, seemed to respond to the spirit of May 1968: the demand for democracy, for recognition of popular skills, but also for an accessible art for the masses. In France, the political aspirations of circus protagonists were facilitated by the reorientation of cultural policy during the 1968–1981 period, one characterized by a ‘tendency to politicize cultural issues’ (Loyer, 2008: 3). In an attempt to close the gap between the arts and the ‘people,’ a number of strategies were adopted: a move to reach all sorts of publics, as well as the legitimation of the minor arts.

Spurred by socialist Jack Lang, Minister of Culture after the election of President François Mitterand in 1981, the scope of cultural policies was enlarged to include arts that had previously been ignored and denied state support. The vector of this change was the creation of prestigious institutions devoted to ‘popular’ or ‘minor’ arts (Looseley, 1997: 123). With this decompartmentalization and upheaval within the hierarchy of the arts, a ‘broadening of culture’ happened, and in the case of the circus, this also represented a broadening of the boundaries of art. But while the general aim was supporting the circus, policy-makers had a narrower interpretation and aimed to support a circus composed of creators. In fact, Jack Lang, was not that different from his predecessor, only adding his own unique style by making ‘creation’ the focus of his policy (Loyer, 2008). The Centre national des arts du cirque i.e. CNAC (National Centre for the Circus Arts), was inaugurated in 1986, Jack Lang having accompanied the installation of this higher school for ‘circus arts’ in Châlons-en-Champagne, where a circus building still existed. The school was dedicated to training innovative circus artists.

The first years of the CNAC were conflict-ridden. There was strong opposition between ‘the people who knew the business’ (experienced circus artists) and trainers from outside the circus (sports or other artistic disciplines). Several directors were appointed in rapid succession, each producing conflicts by introducing their own conception of the circus and how it should be taught. The first director of the CNAC was Richard Kubiak, who had previously run one of the Polish circuses. In 1987, he was replaced by Guy Caron, founder of Montreal’s national circus school and the first artistic director of the Cirque du Soleil. Kubiak, supported by the advocates of a ‘conventional’ circus, prioritized technique and prowess, whereas Caron emphasized the show as a whole and original creations. In 1990, when Bernard Turin, a French visual artist and amateur trapeze artist, was appointed to head the school, the CNAC version of the circus was propelled into a dynamic creation. He invited renowned stage directors and choreographers, such as Guy Alloucherie, Joseph Nadj, and Philippe Decouflé, to design the graduation show, thus bringing the work of the pioneers of the 1970s to a successful conclusion. The search for dramatic tension was used to serve the circus ring, conventions were challenged, and the position and power of various actors were reconfigured. Experiments abounded, as did the initiatives of guest artists: acts went beyond the ring or played with it, while the artists became adept at many roles (circus performers, musicians, dancers, and so on). Collaboration with choreographers and theater directors also changed the relationship between the performers and their techniques. According to Joseph Nadj, who staged the seventh graduation show at the CNAC in 1995 (entilted Le cri du caméléon – The Cry of the Chameleon):

[the CNAC students] have great technical abilities and perform amazing figures, learned in a mere four years. But that is still the raw material … [They] still have to learn the difference between the spirit embodied in interpretation and the language of technique. (quoted in Goubet, 2002: 63–64)

Here, the choreographer encourages CNAC students to understand the difference between the performing of stunts and the use of their skills to transmit an artistic message. This work of Josef Nadj with the students on interpretation was subsequently developed in acrobatic and aerial acts, always in connection with changes in the performers’ relation to risk-taking. The use of safety lanyards, for instance, considerably extended technical and acrobatic possibilities, and enabled a form of decentering necessary for interpretation. The Flying Cranes act created by Piotr Maïstrenko (1985) from the Moscow Studio – a creative space opened in 1972 – can now be viewed as heralding the renewal of composition for and based on circus techniques; the act is longer, the safety net is used as a theatrical prop, and the point of departure for the act’s construction is a theme developed in an aerial ballet (in this case the death of Soviet soldiers during the Second World War). The Flying Cranes has won several prizes in international competitions as well as the enthusiastic endorsement of critics for its combination of aesthetic innovations and technical virtuosity (with triple somersaults, tailspins, and bodies trained in ballet dancing).

In France, several companies specializing in aerial acrobatics, such as the Arts Sauts, have taken the autonomy of disciplines to its logical conclusion: the trapeze suffices unto itself. This represented a complete upheaval in the temporal and spatial construction of the circus show. By mounting whole spectacles showing only aerial acrobatics, and working on the sets, music, lighting, and costumes as ‘creations’ in their own right, the Arts Sauts developed more complex exercises (with combinations of figures, spaces and apparatuses) and introduced a form of decontextualization. The spectator, reclining in a deck-chair, sees a show forming a unique ‘universe’ in a ‘bubble-tent’ conceived for the presentation of ‘aerial choreography’ on both standard apparatuses and others specially developed for the show.

The recent history of the circus is characterized, then, by a gradual differentiation of genres: on the one hand, traditional circus, on the other, contemporary styles. The concept of circus arts entered professional rhetoric in France in the 1980s at a time when various genres were being identified, and the circus was gaining legitimacy through institutionalization. The expression, now in use around the world, asserted the possibility of viewing not only the circus as art, but each of its disciplines as well. It also designated the boundary separating traditional and contemporary aesthetics.

The opening of the CNAC extended the logic of professionalization introduced by the Fratellini and Monfort schools, but above all it represented a turning point in the way the artistic activity of the circus was conceived. The recognition of what came to be known as the contemporary circus turned away from ‘internal’ artification (of the performance itself) to take the path of ‘external’ artification (Maisonneuve, 2009). This was accomplished through its connection with other recognized artistic fields (first theatre, then contemporary dance), with the introduction of other practices, and through shifts in the meaning and intentions of circus acts. This process produced new conventions regarding what is defined as relevant to circus art, as well as how acrobatic performance is comprehended.

Shifts in Prowess and Intellectualization

Beyond the issue of recognizing circus as art, what is at stake is how social actors define their activity. Three definitions may be distinguished. First, the artist is seen as a showman who stages a performance, a definition that refers both to the show and to the performer, whose key quality is virtuosity. A second case concerns the artist as an actor who interprets a role, a definition that refers both to a spectacle and to an art, as well as to capacities of personalization. Finally, the artist is understood as an author and an inventor; this definition refers to art and to capacities of personalization and innovation.

In the experiences of the artists I interviewed, as in the recent history of the circus, these definitions of art on the trapeze are sometimes combined. The first definition, usually defended by trapeze performers working in traditional circuses, brings the categories of beauty and virtuosity into play to assert that trapeze acts are an art. The artistry then resides in the ars, a technique aimed at excellence, to be assessed as such. Another definition of artistry on the trapeze is summoned when the technique is viewed as serving an original creation and reveals the uniqueness of the artist. It is noteworthy that in aerial disciplines, technical limitations as well as efforts to develop a unique performance (‘to be the only one to …’) contribute to the impression of being the author of one’s act and limit the intervention of a choreographer or stage director. In fact, the presence of an ‘independent viewpoint’ is usually preferred (Cordier, 2007).

The reason for this preference is that the artist’s value would no longer be tied to his or her technical mastery as much as to his/her ability to interpret, for one thing, and also to create. However because mastering the trapeze involves assimilating a technical culture, and because the use of apparatuses in a show facilitates the exhibition of that technique, trapeze performers need to produce arguments and justifications for presenting their activity as an art. Therefore, when a trapeze performer from the Arts Sauts company says ‘what is interesting about the trapeze is the physical action and what you can bring out through that action,’ his manager adds:

At the same time, what you create, all of you together, in Kayassine [the company’s second original spectacle in 1998], is images. There are tableaux, and colors, that act directly on the spectator’s imagination. In that sense, you can almost say that the show is very much like an art film, and that is what makes it original, and gives it personality. (quoted by Moreigne, 2001: 85–98)

These quotations reflect the difficulty experienced in claiming to be an artist when confronted by the normative model for contemporary art, which looks down on prowess and virtuosity. This difficulty is acutely felt by the Arts Sauts because they continue to respect the traditional conventions in their use of the flying trapeze. Here, the manager plays the role of mediator between the discourse of the trapeze performer and one that conforms to the artistic circus context, where prowess is acceptable inasmuch as it achieves a dramatic composition with a conceptualized symbolism, and distances itself from technique for its own sake.

At this stage there is a move to detach the circus from the aesthetic as well as technical conventions governing traditional circus shows. The work of the French troupe Rhizome (founded in 2009) is a case in point. The troupe’s founder, Chloé Moglia, was trained as a trapeze performer. However, the troupe now offers shows without a trapeze, exploring empty space, staging the performer’s work on physical substance, fatigue, and muscles in slow movement, soundlessly:

The trapeze, and more specifically suspension, the martial arts, drawing, science and philosophy are so many doors opening onto a dynamic of sensory questioning and changing perspectives. Each of these practices provides a specific way of perceiving the world and confronting the chaos of reality. This enables them to nourish the approach that consists of creating the requisites for the appearance of forms in sensitive resonance with the world. (rhizome-web.com, n.d.)

Over and beyond words, the work undertaken by this artist and others partakes of a paradigm change: the meaning of the performance and the context in which spectacles are assessed are modified. The influence of other ways to perceive the body (including practices such as Tai-chi, yoga or the Feldenkrais method for heightening awareness of movement) contributes to a shift from the primacy of work, viewed through technical virtuosity, to the primacy of expressing interiority, perceivable in bodies sometimes portrayed as quite ordinary (everyday clothing, exposing of fragility, occasionally relaxing muscular tension, and so on). Here, the artist’s identity is no longer entirely defined by use of the object/trapeze, which is sometimes relinquished and replaced by specific apparatuses for particular projects. Instead, their identity is qualified by association with terms such as dancer, performer, and so on. Acrobats then claim to be full-fledged artists, and ‘not just trapeze performers.’

Today, recognition of the contemporary circus as such relies on other media relays and on a revival of interest among journalists and art critics (Rosemberg, 2004). The socio-demographic profile of its audience increasingly resembles that of theater and contemporary dance (Lévy, 2001). In that respect, it is much less a family affair than traditional big tops, which are still viewed as shows for children. For the contemporary circus, recognition also rests on its actors’ new status. Indeed, since the French law no. 85-660 dated 3 July 1985, circus professionals have the status of authors, paid in royalties. Furthermore, since the law no. 94-361 passed on 10 May 1994, their ‘acts and circus stunts’ are governed by the code of intellectual property and categorized with choreographic works. According to French law, this code protects the rights of authors to all ‘intellectual works,’ the main eligibility criteria for inclusion in that category resides in the work’s originality, and in the imprint left by the author’s personality. While the legal texts from 1985 mainly addressed ‘traditional’ acts and forms, attention subsequently turned to circus compositions, conceived for an author-centered art circus, and in so doing they accompanied the development of the contemporary circus.

The development of a circus d’auteur has been attended by a flow of critical, analytic and reflective discourse. The singularizing artistic approach induced an individualization of responses to the oeuvres. Intellectualization, which has been observed in music (Menger, 1983), theater (Proust, 2006) and hip-hop dance (Shapiro, 2012), has gradually increased with the expansion of the contemporary circus. It is both an ‘operator’ (Shapiro and Heinich, 2012) and an effect of the artification process.

Globalization of the Artified Circus

One effect of the artification of the circus has been the establishment of new circulation networks worldwide, which benefits the new circus compositions. French cultural action propelled by a Ministry of Foreign Affairs agency has been instrumental in the dissemination of contemporary circus, with its oeuvres and artists; for example, funding is provided for circulation and cooperation between artists, and support can be arranged for the creation of circus schools in other countries. The Arts Sauts company, already well-known abroad, was appointed to develop international exchanges with circus artists, in Asia in particular (Moreigne, 2010: 79). The circus was used, then, as an ambassador for French culture, playing the card of a popular, innovative practice that brings people together and combines the idea of a ‘universal art’ with cultural distinctiveness.

A new market for the dissemination of contemporary circuses is developing, and this includes countries where no circus tradition exists. This ‘artified’ circus started in France and then spread throughout the world. Companies are now established in Canada (in the wake of the Cirque du Soleil), Vietnam, and northern Europe. In addition to shows staged in theaters, festivals have been created, including: Hors Pistes (Belgium), the NOVOG Cirkusa Festival (Croatia), Cirko (Finland), Circa (France), and Montréal complètement cirque (Canada). The goal of these events is the enhanced value ascribed to ‘creative’ circuses. Professional networks such as CircusNext have also been created and their organization has been reinforced. The network was originally set up by the French Ministry of Culture with the Jeunes Talents Cirque festival, but began to spread throughout Europe in 2009. A ‘Collaborative platform’ for helping creative artists, CircusNext’s primary aim is to achieve political recognition for the circus as an art. ¹³

As we have seen, the artification of the circus has leaned heavily on increasingly academic training that encourages students to become ‘makers of aesthetic conceptions.’ ¹⁴ France is not alone in this respect. Montreal’s National Circus School (established in 1981), the National Institute of Circus Arts in Melbourne (created in 1999), The École supérieure des arts du cirque (ESAC) in Brussels (officially recognized in 2003 as the École supérieure pour les arts by Belgium’s French-speaking community), as well as Stockholm’s University of Dance and Circus (DOCH) are all higher education institutions for training in the ‘circus arts.’ They combine encouragement to create with the intellectualization of training by awarding university diplomas.

Students graduating from higher education schools in the western world are destined for a career in contemporary circus companies. This finding, uncovered by the European Federation of Circus Schools or FEDEC (Jacob, 2008), ¹⁵ raises the question of the market’s capacity to absorb all the new candidates. These students, whose studies were often supported with public funding, find it difficult to work in traditional circuses or those emphasizing technical skill, and therefore have limited professional prospects. For example, over half of the artists in Cirque du Soleil are actually former athletes. Given this problem, and in a context of increased international competition, the technical requirements for entering these degree-level schools are becoming more demanding. Furthermore, admissions committees are also paying more attention – at the CNAC, in particular – to performing ability, with a revival of the act, and of ‘small frames’ combining demonstrations of technical achievements and creativity.

Shared conventions, circulation networks, and movements of students and teachers all tend to reinforce the idea of a genre (the contemporary circus genre) if not its standardization in a globalized context. To provide some examples: Marie Andrée Robitaille of the DOCH is from Quebec and was trained in Montreal; Gérard Fasoli taught trapeze at the CNAC and ran the ESAC in Brussels before leading the CNAC. In several ways, the format has become more uniform, including length of shows, disciplines exhibited and increasing aestheticism. Some differences can still be observed which relate to what constitutes art, and are tied to national traditions and differing conceptions of the boundaries between art and entertainment. They also pertain to the possibilities of circulation when national markets are still insufficient. ¹⁶ The Canadian model values risk-taking and technical excellence in spectacular shows, whereas French companies tend to emphasize the originality of the intentions and the artist’s unique performance. Although public funding is now being developed in Canada, Quebec circuses design their shows for the export market, ¹⁷ adjusting and sacrificing the autonomy of both artists and oeuvres (Heinich, 2000) on the altar of project feasibility. And if contemporary French circus artists criticize the North American model embodied by the Cirque du Soleil, it is because the undertaking is ‘commercial’ and considers performers mere players enacting sketches, dispossessing them of their work.

In France, access to the social protection scheme for intermittent workers in the performance industry (régime des intermittents du spectacle) has contributed to the independence and autonomy of artists, enabling them to devote themselves full-time to their activity. More broadly, government action has profoundly modified the organization of the circus scene, as it did for the theater (Proust, 2006), by differentiating family-based setups from companies. The break with commercial circuses provided an impetus for the artification process, one that has now resulted in a clear-cut separation between different genres as well as between legal forms and economic models.

Conclusion: De-artification and Disenchanted Artification

Whereas trapeze performers are recognized as artists in the various places where they appear (both in traditional big tops or cabarets and on contemporary circus scenes), a shift has occurred in the rationales guiding the evaluation of circus shows. As illustrated by the Circus Year in France in 2001, the shift is not only semantic but also normative, resulting in a distinction between ‘support for creative work’ and ‘valorization of the circus heritage’ (Ministry of Culture, 2001). This points to the possibility of de-artification of the traditional circus forms, brought about by the tremendous valorization of creative work.

Opinion is split regarding intervention of the French administration and its funding. For traditional circus performers (the ‘heritage-bound’), the idea of circus arts sounds like an imposture. It threatens their supremacy in a circus world to which they claim to be the authentic heirs. For the others (the ‘contemporaries’), artification is presented as a problem: some people question, or even reject, the art label. In doing so they emphasize the ambiguity of the different statuses: while these artists aspire to be independent, they remain eligible for public funding such as the special unemployment support scheme for performance artists. They also express a sense of dispossession in the face of potentially normative evaluation rationales.

‘Contemporary’ trapeze performers, for instance, express their desire to continue working in the ‘popular’ vein, a quality often tied to an extended, mythicized definition of the circus. As Yann, a 40-year-old in 2003, explains, ‘It’s a popular spectacle … that everyone can understand. You can see it as very deep, or you can see nothing special. You can see acrobatics, you can see …’ Direct legibility and appreciation of the exertion, it is believed, is what makes aerial acrobatics a popular, ‘lowbrow’ art, one that places the concrete and realistic above abstractions (Hoggart, 1957).

Additionally, there is the possibility of many interpretations, pulling together the different sorts of circus audiences around a single form. Another issue is raised in statements such as this one from Marina: ‘I don’t like the word artist, I don’t like to say that … I haven’t found a good definition, but I’m not interested in the word artist, like, I prefer circus craftswoman’ (Marina, age 39, Elbeuf-sur-Seine, 2006). This trapeze performer is not merely portraying the artist as a craftsperson, by valuing the traditional form of the work, she is also reclaiming what sometimes escapes control in collective creations: the craftsperson masters the entire process, from the work on the physical process to its staging.

When there is concern over losing one’s identity (‘is what we are doing still circus?’), the assertion of ‘lowbrow-ness’ sounds like a backwards way to distance oneself from the arts ‘reserved’ for an elite, and uphold the mark of a specific circus identity. This demonstrates an awareness of the distinction-producing process induced by the artifying mechanisms observed in France in the history of circus trapeze performance, which steered from the logic of the spectacle and the spectacular to the logic of art. It also indicates how difficult it is to grasp the question of artification over a relatively long period of time, in a space situated on the borderline between sport and art, where the word ‘art’ is neither absent nor semantically stable. The use of the expression ‘popular art’ is by no means insignificant here, when utilized to revive the value of what is potentially scorned, and establish a distance from the rules affording a passageway to the status of art.

The stakes in terms of identity are considerable, inasmuch as they determine whether one is viewed as a mere performer or also as a creator, and in this context, the mechanisms of artistic recognition are closely tied to institutional logics of evaluation and funding which place great emphasis on innovation. The actors then resort to arrangements such as those observed in the newfound valuation of prowess.

The structure of circuses has been completely overhauled since the 1970s, under the impetus of actors, circus families, artists from different countries, circus-lovers and utopians reconnecting with a popular show. New institutions have been created (such as the Fratellini school and the CNAC), new conventions developed (replacing shows composed of acts with overall shows, refusing to reduce the circus space to the ring, changes in the perceived meaning of performance), and other forms of organized collectivities (project-based companies). These concrete operations, described in this article, are characteristic of the artification process of the circus scene. They have helped to structure a different circus world around a new paradigm. Two types of circus coexist: one that is craft, with hereditary transmission and insertion in a tradition, and another that is an art, valuing the creative individual, paragon of advanced modernity. Despite these differences, bodily cultures and performance practices, as well as the institutional functioning and necessities of the marketplace, sustain circus protagonists within composite forms of spectacles and regimes that are theoretically incompatible, since they refer at once to craft, profession and vocation.