Koreografen/regissören och dans/nycirkusartisten John-Paul Zaccarini från London är gästprofessor i nycirkus på Danshögskolan 2007-2009. Gästprofessuren finansieras av Vetenskapsrådet.
The following text is an abstract from John Paul Zaccarini's description of his research project "The subject of circus", where the outcome will be a book. Circus is popular again; the traditional, tented family shows are still pulling in the crowds, but it is new circus that has captured the public imagination. With this has come an interest from other mainstream art-forms in utilising the range of techniques and images found in circus except that none of these artists are doing circus, rather they are using elements of circus; visual artists, contemporary choreographers, theatre directors, film makers. Anthropologists and historians are writing studies on circus, yet none of them are circus artists themselves .
Why are we suddenly interested in circus? And what is it anyway? What does it mean for contemporary culture? Is it just another addition to a popular culture of distracting entertainment or does it have something to say about the place we find ourselves in right now? Is it a craft to be disassembled, utilised, reconstituted in another (art) form or is it an art in its own right?
What is there to contribute to the literature and theory of live performance by writing a book about circus? At its most vulgar it is a display of tricks and spectacular skills, but this can be said about ballet or contemporary dance, or indeed any medium that relies on the body and its limits. Perhaps danger and risk are the keywords but again these too are not absent in the above, even if the danger as in circus, may sometimes result in death.
Are there any foundational principles in circus, in its training, rehearsal and performance not shared by other physical performance mediums? Principles that should be discovered or recovered? Or perhaps they are in need of inventing? If circus (and throughout I refer to a circus that would replace new circus which is no longer new by any standards) is to make the transition from a popular entertainment that seduces, distracts and plays into the hands of the material conditions that foster it, to an art form that challenges and makes space for the new, then it must acknowledge or uncover the ontological conditions of its possibility, its intrinsic dynamics and drives, the economy within which it circulates, to its detriment or otherwise and the vissicitudes of its own internal libidinal economy.
There is much literature of this kind being produced around the topics of dance, theatre, live and visual and sonic and multi/cross-disciplinary art. None in the field of circus.
What might some foundational principles be? This very much depends on where one is standing, in which world. If I approach circus from the point of view of its material conditions, economic and cultural, if I place circus in the world of commerce and exchange value then those principles would revolve around standards of commerce, exchange value and thus my starting point is profit, selling points, entertainment, distraction; the world of the commodity. If I approach circus from the point of view of the conditions of its possibility, what drew me to be in the crcus, make circus in the first place then those principles would be based in ideas of authenticity, risk, challenge and the development of my powers in such a way as to also develop, challenge, place at risk the powers of the spectator. These two standpoints are not always mutually exclusive; between artiste and artist is only an "e".
Artist/Artiste, Subject/Object, Authentic/Ideological, Bliss/Pleasure, Sublime/Beautiful are just some of the distinctions that prove useful as starting points to discuss circus but become progressively more treacherous to maintain.
Here I will attempt an evaluation of these two worlds with the help of psychoanalytical theory and its points of contact with political philosophy.
Part one takes the symptom, from Freud and Lacan, as an invaluable tool to uncover the motives for making circus in the first place. Why choose circus to sublimate an instinct rather than tap-dancing, rock climbing or making sure all the objects on your desk subscribe to right angles? What enjoyment, compulsive or not, does it hold and what keeps us repeating it?
Part two shifts to a more political perspective without loosing sight of the psychoanalytic, studying how the concept of Ideology palpably informs much mainstream circus. Against this I examine how the alternative modes of organisation within some circuses provide a useful model for rethinking social organisation as a whole and how the principle of conflict is at the heart of the circus act itself.