In the West’s collective consciousness, the circus is first and foremost performance art. Some see it as a deeply-rooted, and perhaps even immutable, form of expression, and are campaigning to see it gain a place on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. For others, its innate artistic inclination makes it destined to remain forever changing and incomplete. But both sides agree on this notion of “genre”. As global conversations have intensified, notably thanks to the Internet, and as the contemporary circus community has begun the process of dismantling categories, this Euro-centric vision is being left behind, with the focus shifting to a widening of perspectives in time and space.
Let us start at the beginning. Historians generally claim 1768 to be the year in which the genre was born, naming it modern circus to differentiate it from the Ancient Roman circus games that once took place. Historian Caroline Hodak nevertheless prefers the term equestrian theatre, using the word circus to describe later developments from 1850 on. Sure enough, in 1768 Lieutenant Philip Astley treated London to an equestrian show peppered with acrobatics and clownish antics, in a wordless narrative that wove a story. The circus’s theatrical structure in the sense of a series of breath-taking miscellaneous acts with no common narrative thread only emerged in the late 19th century on. But before the circus, “circus arts” already existed: the art of acrobatics is 6,000 years old, juggling has been around for 4,000 years, tightrope-walking dates back fewer than 3,000 years, and dressage can be traced back to time immemorial. Clowns have existed for as long as humanity itself, it might appear, although the Elizabethan theatre character we know today took shape no earlier than the 16th century. This ancient past might lead us then to consider the modern circus genre as nothing more than a fleeting chapter in a long-standing history, although when describing them in generic terms, referring to the concept of later circus arts is necessary – hence the quotation marks.
In terms of the space they occupy, a similar approach to contextualising the question must be taken. Today’s circus spans the globe in six overarching ‘families’, which I will list here before providing a concise summary of them all:
1. The modern circus genre, which ironically, we tend to refer to as - classical circus, or more often, traditional circus;
2. Cabaret, which shares many traits with the aforementioned genre, such as a succession of virtuoso acts, but differs in having a narrative thread;
3. Contemporary circus, which resembles the two above genres in terms of the type of performance given, but draws on other art forms, and experiments with, or reinvents, the ‘rules’;
4. Community circus, which is not a type of performance art, but rather a social and educational technique, although performances are sometimes given;
5. Chinese variety art, a genre that differs widely from the four listed above, but draws on the same “circus arts”, or more precisely the same concepts, which would appear to be universal: extremely rare or virtuoso talents, white-knuckle risk, and the aim of serving up pure spectacle;
6. A patchwork of ethnic practices that are all entirely self-contained and separate (such as Mongolian contortion and the Mexican Voladores). In fact this sixth category cannot truly be considered as a whole due to its miscellaneous nature, and even less so as a genre: the activities it encompasses are not even united in their conception of performance. Yet now in the age of globalisation and a new, rejuvenated vision of “circus arts”, they have their place here in their quest to push bodily expression to extremes.
Some practices such as tightrope-walking on steel cables or slacklines (elasticated webbing), fire juggling (which is extremely widespread) or “juggling meets” and other large-scale gatherings of amateur practitioners are difficult to include in this category, unless you consider them to be ‘ethnic’. Perhaps recent inventions on the contemporary circus scene, such as screen circus and new magic, which we will look at later, and even fakirism, might add yet more texture to this palette of different styles: let us not forget that the circus arts today come in thousands of different shapes and sizes, some static, some mobile – and the process shows no signs of slowing down. Let us take a closer look at the categories currently in existence.