The days of lions and elephants parading around every Big Top are gone, but the circus arts are flourishing with a new breed of highly trained performers more breathtaking than ever. What’s more, today’s circus is officially both an economic and artistic success.
In his authoritative book The New American Circus (1995), Ernest Albrecht, editor and publisher of Spectacle Magazine, charts the ‘reinvention of the circus as an authentic form of art’ as it emerged from the counterculture revolution of the late sixties. His analysis of the trials brought by economic crises, battles with animal-rights activists and the founding of circus schools focuses on four circuses, the most famous being the internationally acclaimed Cirque du Soleil, based in Montreal, which has led the way in the development of circus arts and taken it to new heights, literally.
The downturn in fortune of the great American and European circus traditions was a combination of many convergent factors. As John Ringling North, co-owner of North America’s most successful circus, said in 1956, “The Big Top was the victim of TV competition, labor troubles, terrible weather for canvas tents, traffic problems for audiences trying to get to the circus and increased freight rates for railroads trying to bring it to them.” Shortly thereafter Life magazine declared the Big Top dead.
The re-establishment of the Big Top has occurred along two distinct strands. There has been the revival of traditional circus, epitomized by the success of Kenneth Feld’s Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and running parallel to this has been the reinvention of the circus, as Albrecht writes, based on a new business and entertainment model which merges circus with theatre to create what has been termed ‘new circus.’ The latter relies solely on breathtaking performances by human artists and thanks to the phenomenal global success of Cirque du Soleil, has been mooted as the direction circus arts is likely to take in the future.
Both traditional and new circus businesses depend on having a strategic vision, focused on securing consistently high attendances, coupled with substantial reinvestment of profits into training future generations of circus artists.
The number of training facilities for the circus arts has been steadily increasing for decades around the world, and favours the shift toward ‘new circus’ arts. In France there are over 200 schools for circus arts; the Australian government invested nearly AU$14 million in 2004-05; Arts Council England has established a comprehensive forum for circus arts; and in the USA circus arts receive widespread support, including support from the National Endowment of the Arts. Instruction in circus arts is offered from basic through to professional level. The standard for the latter does of course vary from place to place, but a quick glance at the entry requirements for just about any vocational course in circus arts would indicate that the instruction on offer is to an exceptionally high standard by comparison to, say, your average drama school.
André Simard, Aerial Acts Designer for Cirque du Soleil and former Olympic gymnast, is famous for his attempts to “meld the rules of biomechanics, as applied to athletic training, with the evocative power of the performing arts.” Simard has choreographed show-stopping acts for Cirque du Soleil as well as conducting training courses at Canada’s École Nationale de Cirque. For him there is no question whether the circus arts represent a legitimate art form.
And for it’s worth, and it is worth quite a bit, consistently high attendance figures would show that the public is in agreement. Whether it’s because circus speaks the universal language of laughter, or in this time of the War on Terror the public feel comforted by the kind of escapism circus can offer, is unclear. But there is no doubting contemporary circus, either in traditional or ‘new circus’ format, is big business.
In 2004 Cirque du Soleil reported sales of $500 million and in 2005 estimated that over seven million people would see one of its shows. Even New York’s nonprofit Big Apple Circus, a relatively small scale affair, has an annual operating budget of over $18 million.
Like any business, commercial risks are there to be taken, risks which justify the rewards. In general, the traditional forms of contemporary circus are seen to be easier on the wallet, which belies the view that traditional somehow equates to cheaper and inferior. By contrast ‘new circus’ has occasionally caused offence by eroding some of the family oriented values traditionally associated with the circus. Not only are tickets and merchandise notoriously expensive, one English Cirque du Soleil reviewer recently had cause to remark, albeit tongue in cheek, “For the crime of shattering the illusion of audience participation, there can be no forgiveness.”
