Following the establishment of the modern circus in London and Paris during the later decades of the eighteenth century, the circus began its steady dispersion around the world. The global transmission of this new sort of public entertainment by peripatetic performers and entrepreneurs was in no small measure attributable to waves of colonialism, industrial advances in transportation and communication, and motivations arising from commercial interests. This chapter charts the transference of the circus to Australasia (Australia and New Zealand), the territories of Southeast Asia (including present-day Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines), and the South Asian territories of the Indian subcontinent and China in the nineteenth century. What is little understood about the processes of circus transculturation in these regions is that circus companies originating from colonial territories undertook transnational touring projects, thus enacting aesthetic and transcultural movements between territories on the periphery of empire. This chapter brings to light the ways that circuses were agents of colonialism and empire, as well as transcultural transmitters of aesthetic innovation in the period that was both the Age of Empire and the Age of Modernity.

In 2018 we marked the 250th anniversary of the founding of the modern circus, an event traced to the entrepreneurial initiatives of Philip Astley (1742–1814). Astley enclosed a circle of ground on the south side of the Thames in 1768 where he exhibited his unusual equestrian skills for a paying public. The circus’s specialised history in different parts of the globe reveals that for just over 250 years this hybrid entertainment, with its own codes of physical and comic performance, visuality, and business management, has developed and diversified through multiple cycles of reinvention. Oscillating through phases of illegitimacy on the fringes of society and validation for its aesthetic and entertainment appeal, the circus’s restless evolution has always been influenced by unique confluences of the political environment, artistic heritage, and aesthetic trends particular to its geographic context.

Equestrian acts were the foundation of the early circus and distinguished this new institution from other theatrical entertainments in the late eighteenth century. Although the advent of new circus has normalised an idea of an animal-free circus, the present century is enjoying a resurgence in performance with horses.Contemporary companies, such as Theatre Zingaro and Cavalia, present new narratives for a contemporary age, while performing acts with a long history. In this chapter Kim Baston considers the legacy of practices that continue to inform contemporary performance through the examination of specific case studies from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Examples include the Edinburgh Equestrian Circus as a representative example of acts in the early modern circus; Jenny de Rahden’s classic high school act of the nineteenth century; the trick riding of the Loyal-Repenskys, a large family troupe of the early twentieth century; the mid-twentieth-century liberty act by Yasmine Smart; and the contemporary equestrian company La Luna Caballera. This chapter provides a snapshot, as it were, of classic equestrian acts as they were performed at a particular historical moment, focusing on the conjunction of the repeated skills of the repertoire and their re-imagination in contemporary practice.

New circus/nouveau cirque is an artistic movement that circus historian Martine Maléval locates between 1968 and the 1990s. It can be described as both an aesthetic and a political revolution that was rooted in the dynamics of the social and cultural revolutions of the 1970s. For numerous reasons this period can be identified as the source of a renewed institutionalisation of the circus that is still ongoing. Commencing with the professional careers of circus artists who were active in the 1970s and the 1980s, this chapter examines how these artists progressively defined themselves as ‘circus authors’, how they promoted innovation in the aesthetics and practices of the circus, and how they generated a long-term impact on local cultural policies and the social status of contemporary circus artists in Europe. The process through which new circus emerged and evolved can be understood using the concept of ‘artification’ (becoming an art form), a term used by the French sociologist Nathalie Heinich and subsequently applied to circus studies by Magali Sizorn. Using Maléval’s foundational research on the French nouveau cirque as its point of departure, this chapter adopts a European-wide perspective to examine the influence of new circus from the 1990s until today.

A unique circus form known as Criollo Circus (or Circus Theatre) became established in Argentina in the late nineteenth century, characterised by a performance that was divided into two parts. The first part comprised of exhibitions of various traditional circus techniques, while the second part presented a theatrical piece based on the criollista gaucho genre, a theatre genre derived from the literary movement that extolled the figure of the Argentine gaucho as an emblem of nationality. This fusion of physically based circus arts with a vernacular style of theatrical representation founded on text, melodrama, and social criticism not only produced an innovative mode of performance unique to Argentina, it also provoked changes in the evaluation of these popular performance forms. Between 1880 and 1910 the status of both the circus and the criollista-gaucho genre shifted from ‘minor arts’ to validation as the origins of the authentic Argentinian national theatre. This chapter discusses the emergence and legitimisation of the Criollo Circus, examines its stylistic and thematic characteristics, and evaluates the imprint it has left on the subsequent national circus and theatre forms. It also analyses the construction of hierarchies based on the valuation of spoken drama and high art over popular bodily based performances.

Chinese acrobatic acts and their variants are pervasive in Western contemporary new circus shows around the world. These acts represent the multiple layers of training and performance of Chinese circus skills historically in China and their transference to the West since the Nanjing Project of 1983–4, an event that injected Chinese acrobatic training and acts into the repertoires of Australian new circus and then American new circus. Highly skilled Chinese acrobats and acts were also transplanted from China directly into circus in the West to great acclaim for their precision, acting as unofficial cultural envoys from Communist China. Political and financial will has shaped the evolution of Chinese acrobatic acts for centuries, as well as their introduction to the West, where, in true circus style, an old act is made new again by seeking new audiences and presenting the act in a contemporary form that also explores contemporary values of gender, sexuality, and identity. This chapter analyses specific Chinese acrobatic acts performed in circus in the West between 2011 and 2018, their historical origins in China, and how Chinese aesthetics and political boundaries have dissolved into the hybrid intercultural performance culture of the West in the twenty-first century.

The origins of aerial performance are difficult to identify with any certainty, but ever since Jules Léotard popularised trapeze in the mid-nineteenth century, aerial arts have captured the public imagination. The role that aerial action has played, and continues to play, within performances is to provide spectacle and sensation. Although aerial action appears to demonstrate performers taking real risks, there is a distance between what the performer experiences and the audience perceives. Examining both key historical figures and contemporary practice, this chapter proposes four aesthetics for aerial performance: weightlessness, risk, gender, and physical appearance.

This chapter takes an historical and cross-cultural approach to the development of the clown in circus in Europe and the USA. It explores the points of connection and difference in the way clowning developed as the scale of circus expanded and contracted in these regions. For example, the creation of the three-ring circus in the USA placed particular performance demands on the clowns in terms of both run-ins and entrées which were quite different to the challenges faced by clowns in Europe and the United Kingdom. These demands influenced the costume and make-up of the clowns as well as the performance strategies used. The development of new circus/nouveau cirque from the 1970s onwards created new opportunities for clowns in terms of scale and style of performance, which are also examined here.

This chapter provides an overview and exploration of the methodological approaches employed by circus scholars in three edited collections published between 2016 and 2018. Reflecting the fact that the majority of published circus scholars have backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences, the chapters and articles in these collections largely employ three methodological approaches, which currently dominate circus research: history/historiography, performance analysis, and ethnography. While much circus research relies on archival sources, scholars working on contemporary circus – many of whom started their careers as circus artists – supplement this research with viewing of live performances and the use of ethnographic tools such as interviews and their own professional experience in their data collection. Of emerging importance is the use of social science methodologies such as interviews, surveys, and demographic data to explore and critique circus education, institutions, and spectatorship. Heeding Halberstam and Nyong’o’s call for a ‘rewilding of theory’ (2018), we further take account of emerging circus scholarship which insists on circus as a live, experiential set of practices and on the viability of methods which centre embodiment and note the centering of ethics in scholars’ exploration of circus training and performances, and in circus research itself.

Thirty galloping horses at Astley’s Circus in 1824 underpinned the presentation of the Battle of Waterloo, which subsequently became a staple circus act during the first half of the nineteenth century. Military action was imbedded in the early circus, indicative of both an increased number of soldiers in nineteenth-century society and its ensuing militarisation. This chapter explores the use of horses and other animals in the re-enactment of war in the nineteenth-century circus. War re-enactments expanded to encompass colonial conflicts, so circus became complicit in colonising practices and attitudes to colonised peoples in the British colonies and towards exotic animals that were shipped in increasing numbers. In the 1880s a distinctive war-re-enactment genre emerged, exemplified by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, which toured internationally and was integrated back into circus. This chapter argues that it was the action of horses and other nonhuman animals that instigated and made battle re-enactment seem authentic but that circus war action replicated the pattern of actual war in which animals went unnoticed. This pattern was reversed with the Boer War re-enactment. Directed by circus entrepreneur Frank Fillis for the 1904 St Louis Exposition, it sought authenticity by featuring the death of fifty horses on the battlefield.

Popularised in the late twentieth century, by the second decade of the new millennium well over 350 social circus programmes around the world had begun to offer classes in the circus arts free of charge, with the expressed aim of bringing about some form of social transformation. Typically boasting an ‘inclusive’ approach, goals range from fighting social stigma, alienation, and stereotypes, to bridging cultural communities, to building self-esteem, community capacity, and breaking cycles of poverty. This chapter explores the social and cultural conditions that have led to the rise of this movement and the kinds of impacts that are being observed among programme participants. It further offers an introduction to the pedagogical approaches typical of social circus programmes as well as the institutional structures they tend to adopt.Particular focus is placed on programmes operating in the Americas, placing these within the context of the global social circus movement.By offering a sketch of how social circus programmes function, the chapter demonstrates the ways in which social circus practices embody particular social values and promote particular forms of kinaesthetic sociality.