The Routledge Circus Studies Reader

The Routledge Circus Studies Reader offers an absorbing critical introduction to this diverse and emerging field. It brings together the work of over 30 scholars in this discipline, including Janet Davis, Helen Stoddart and Peta Tait, to highlight and address the fields key historical, critical and theoretical issues. It is organised into three accessible sections, Perspectives , Precedents and Presents , which approach historical aspects, current issues, and the future of circus performance. The chapters, grouped together into 13 theme-based sub-sections, provide a clear entry point into the field and emphasise the diversity of approaches available to students and scholars of circus studies. Classic accounts of performance, including pieces by Philippe Petit and Friedrich Nietzsche, are included alongside more recent scholarship in the field. Edited by two scholars whose work is strongly connected to the dynamic world of performance, The Routledge Circus Studies Reader is an essential teaching and study resource for the emerging discipline of circus studies. It also provides a stimulating introduction to the field for lovers of circus. The Routledge Circus Studies Reader offers an absorbing critical introduction to this diverse and emerging field. It brings together the work of over 30 scholars in this discipline, including Janet Davis, Helen Stoddart and Peta Tait, to highlight and address the field’s key historical, critical and theoretical issues. It is organised into three accessible sections, Perspectives, Precedents and Presents, which approach historical aspects, current issues, and the future of circus performance. The chapters, grouped together into 13 theme-based sub-sections, provide a clear entry point into the field and emphasise the diversity of approaches available to students and scholars of circus studies. Classic accounts of performance, including pieces by Philippe Petit and Friedrich Nietzsche are included alongside more recent scholarship in the field. Edited by two scholars whose work is deeply rooted in the dynamic world of performance, The Routledge Circus Studies Reader is an essential teaching and study resource for the emerging discipline of circus studies. It also provides a stimulating introduction to the field for lovers of circus. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 List of illustrations 11 List of contributors 13 Acknowledgements 24 Introduction: circus perspectives, precedents and presents 28 Part I: Perspectives 40 Aesthetics 40 Chapter 1: Aesthetics 42 Chapter 2: The staging of actions: heroes, antiheroes and animal actors 64 Chapter 3: An epic of new circus 77 Chapter 4: The man in the red coat: management in the circus 92 The clown 106 Chapter 5: Clowns and clown play 108 Chapter 6: Diminutive catastrophe: clown’s play 132 Cross-arts 142 Chapter 7: Circus music: the eye of the ear 144 Chapter 8: Art and androgyny: the aerialist 163 Chapter 9: When the future was now: Archaos within a theatre tradition 180 Gender and sexuality 198 Chapter 10: Respectable female nudity 200 Chapter 11: A queer circus: Amok in New York 225 Race 234 Chapter 12: Celebrated, then implied but finally denied: the erosion of Aboriginal identity in Australian circus, 1850s to 1950s 236 Sideshows 262 Chapter 13: Freaks of culture: institutions, publics and the subjects of ethnographic knowledge 264 Chapter 14: The Jim Rose Circus Side Show: representing the postmodern body in pain 296 Child performers 304 Chapter 15: Sensational imbalance: the child acrobat and the mid-Victorians 306 Spectators 324 Chapter 16: Ecstasy and visceral flesh in motion 326 Chapter 17: Marginal body: the British acrobat in reference to sport 340 Part II: Precedents 356 Origins 356 Chapter 18: The circus and nature in late Georgian England 358 Chapter 19: The American circus 376 Chapter 20: P.T. Barnum: the legend and the man 386 Chapter 21: Notes on the Mexican–American circus 404 Chapter 22: The circus and modernity: a commitment to ‘the newer’ and ‘the newest’ 413 Politics 430 Chapter 23: Bending the body for China: the uses of acrobatics in Sino-US diplomacy during the Cold War 432 Chapter 24: When pigs could fly and bears could dance: a peculiar institution 457 Chapter 25: A contemporary history of circus arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina: the post-dictatorial resurgence and revaluation of circus as a popular art 461 Physical exceptionalism 480 Chapter 26: To reach the clouds: my high-wire walk between the Twin Towers 482 Chapter 27: Thus Spoke Zarathustra 488 Animal performers 494 Chapter 28: Why circuses are unsuited to elephants 496 Chapter 29: View from the big top: why elephants belong in North American circuses 516 Part III: Presents 524 Chapter 30: Female circus performers and art: the shift to creative art forms and its implications 526 Chapter 31: The resilient body in social circus: Father Jesus Silva, Boris Cyrulnik and Peter A. Levine 535 Chapter 32: Risk, danger and other paradoxes in circus and Circus Oz parody 555 Chapter 33: The Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas: an American strip-tease 573 Chapter 34: Contemporary Nordic circus: introduction to the art form 580 Chapter 35: Contemporary circus research in Québec: building and negotiating an emerging interdisciplinary field 587 Selected Bibliography 599 Index 638 This volume brings together the work of over 30 scholars, including Janet Davis, Helen Stoddart and Peta Tait, to highlight and address the field's key historical, critical and theoretical issues. It is organised into three accessible sections, perspectives, precedents and presents, which approach historical aspects, current issues, and the future of circus performance