Description
Book SynopsisThis book examines how circus and circus imaginary have shaped the historical avant-gardes at the beginning of the 20th century and the cultures they help constitute, to what extent this is a mutual shaping, and why this is still relevant today.
This book aims to produce a better sense of the artistic work and cultural achievements that have emerged from the interplay of circus and avant-garde artists and projects, and to clarify both their transhistorical and trans-medial presence, and their scope for interdisciplinary expansion. Across 14 chapters written by leading scholars from fields as varied as circus, theatre and performance studies, art, media studies, film and cultural history some of which are written together with performers and circus practitioners, the book examines to what extent circus and avant-garde connections contribute to a better understanding of early 20th century artistic movements and their enduring legacy, of the history of popular entertainment, a
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Arts for all Senses: Circus and the Avant-Gardes – Introduction
Anna-Sophie Jürgens and Mirjam Hildbrand
PART 1
HISTORICAL CIRCUS, POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT AND AVANT-GARDES – INFLUENCES AND INTERRELATIONS
Chapter 2
A Treasure Trove for Avant-garde Artists? Metropolitan Circus Performances around 1900
Mirjam Hildbrand
Chapter 3
Circus, Dada, Vaudeville: Historical Avant-Garde – Between Popular and Experimental Theatre
Martina Gross
Chapter 4
‘Attractive Novelties’: Spectacular Innovation and the Making of a New Kind of Audience within Colonial Modernity
Martyn Jolly
PART 2
STAGING CIRCUS OUTSIDE THE RING: AVANT-GARDE EXPERIMENTS IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
Chapter 5
Typocircus and the Czech Avant-Gardes
Anne Hultsch
Chapter 6
The Present as a Trick or the Assault on the Spectator’s Psyche: Circus and the Soviet Avant-Garde
Oksana Bulgakowa
PART 3
STAGES OF TECHNOLOGY: CIRCUS, AVANT-GARDES AND (NEW) MEDIA
Chapter 7
‘Like a Three-ring Circus’: The Avant-garde Appropriates the Circus in the Battle between Distraction and Attractions
Tom Gunning
Chapter 8
The Animated Circus and New Arts of Motion
Kristian Moen
PART 4
CIRCUS-AVANT-GARDE BODIES: CONTEMPORARY ARTISTIC PHYSICALITIES
Chapter 9
‘Glitter and Broken Bones’: Professional Wrestling, Circus, Avant-Garde and the Radical Participatory Body
Claire Warden
Chapter 10
Glam Clowning: From Dada to Gaga – A Conversation with Le Pustra
Anna-Sophie Jürgens and Le Pustra
Chapter 11
The Aesthetics of Queer Work: Loïe Fuller’s Exhausting Life as Performance Art in Stéphanie Di Giusto’s The Dancer (2016)
Wesley Lim
PART 5
CIRCUS AND AVANT-GARDES REIMAGINED SINCE THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Chapter 12
Political Clowns, Thrilling Strong Women and Animal-Free Excitement: Circus Reimagined through 1970s Avant-Garde Political Theatre
Jane Mullett and Peta Tait
Chapter 13
Avant-Garde Gestures and Contemporaneity in Today’s Circus
Louis Patrick Leroux
Chapter 14
‘Today for the last time’? On the Cultural Meanings of Circus and the Avant-Gardes – Some Final Provocations
Mirjam Hildbrand, Anna-Sophie Jürgens and Aiden Essery
Notes on Contributors
Index
