This summer, I caught up with Abby Neuberger and Michelle Troszak at a contemporary circus festival in Paimpont, a small town in the Northwest corner of France. They are students at Flic, a full-time circus preparatory school in Turin, and they were performing their end-of-studies collective show there at the festival, Arrête ton Cirque. Abby, […]
CONTINUE READINGThe New York International Contemporary Circus Festival brings North American circus, along with one international piece, to Marcus Garvey Park for three days of free, outdoor shows. The second edition of the festival will take place this summer from the 19th through the 21st of August. I spoke to Monique Martin, a programmer with the […]
CONTINUE READINGWhy is contemporary circus so often less dramaturgically rigorous than dance? Dance sometimes seems like Circus’ sophisticated older sister—more confident, fully-formed, less desperate to please. Maybe by closely observing the differences between the circus world and the dance world, we can bring circus out of its extended adolescence. Is there a problem in circus education? […]
CONTINUE READINGIn the first half of the last century, circus meant one thing only—a tented show, with acrobats, animals, and clowns. These shows were pure spectacle, displays of unusual skill which transcended the day-to-day experience of their audiences. Beginning in the 1970’s, however, the definition of circus began to stretch and change, as the opening of […]
CONTINUE READINGDisconcertingly, Zimerman and de Perrot’s Hans Was Heiri begins with subtraction. A lone figure—Dimitri de Perrot, the show’s musician—enters stage left, sits down at a DJ station, and begins to tinker. All of a sudden, the sound in the room drops precipitously—he has cut out a track of “audience noise” that had been playing, indistinguishable before […]
CONTINUE READINGCirque Phénix, the permanent chapiteau that houses Cirque de Demain, wallows like an enormous tortoise in a muddy park on the edge of Paris. For four days every year, the circus community descends on this desolate corner of the French capital to see old friends, meet new ones, gossip, drink, and watch an obscene amount of […]
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