I love circus books. I love Dr. Seuss. So when I was given ‘If I ran the circus‘ by Dr. Seuss I was excited!
Unlike a lot of books aimed to be read by children Dr. Seuss books are fun to read! The plots aren’t mind numbingly predictable and the vocabulary is nicely varied. But the thing that always made them stand out to me was the superb illustration. The amazing colours, characters and even the lettering made Dr. Seuss books a joy to read.
‘If I ran the circus’ is no different, as you might imagine it’s a brilliantly surreal take on traditional circus (I’d guess mostly heavily influenced by Barnum & Baileys). Elephants on stilts, a walrus who can stand on one whisker, a juggling dot “Who can juggle some stuff, You might think he could not” and many more amazing attractions feature in ‘Circus McGurkus’ which the book centres around.
It’s a fun book, perfect for any youngsters learning to read or possibly any circus performers looking for some inspiration!
I think circus is slowly starting to get the idea and power of the Internet, slowly changing its attitude.
Juggling has been on the net with a global community for many years now, it was far ahead of other circus disciplines in its embrace of the ‘WWW’. I suspect that is partly due to the personalities involved and the relative ease to describe tricks in photos, words and numbers (the close and now obvious link with Maths and Juggling) as opposed to the more difficult to descride acrobatic/physical circus disciplines.
But the rest of circus is catching up, there are now straps artists sharing moves, routines and ideas online with a global community. 6 years ago that didn’t happen.
The more people investing time and passion in a given subject means the more the subject grows and develops. Not just in terms of technique but also artistic approach. But this only happens if artists are willing to show their work to the world. Share their new knowledge and let others help develop it. it’s a scary thing to do. It leaves you feeling exposed and vulnerable. But gives you and others a chance to grow.
Technology is changing the world as we breath, it’s making sharing stupidly easy. And that’s a great thing.
If you have not already been privy to the movie “Freaks” you have seriously missed out. In 1932 Tod Browning brought together a group of natural and self-made freaks to create the largest sideshow ever to exist real or fictional. These wonderful people had the opportunity to show themselves and their skills off in a way and to a wide an audience that was previously inconceivable. Tod Browning’s intention was to take down the veil of the creature from these performers and show their more humanistic sides, their loves, their sadnesses, their everyday lives. Though the ending does takes away from that intention, in real life the people portraying the freaks earned a certain level of fame in their lifetime. The Hilton Sisters were most famous conjoined twins due to the movie, their musical skills and certain publicity stunts. Schlitze the Pinhead while always beloved, was never forgotten by his fans. Johnny Eck could arguably be the most famous of his time due to him having no lower torso or legs. With an identical twin brother who was born in complete form they made a successful career on the stage with acts like sawing a man in half (well you can just imagine).
But these smartypants weren’t just pretty faces. Oh no. The Hilton Sisters played the piano in tandem and sang like nightingales. The diminutive Daisey Earles was a professional actress as was her brother Harry an actor. There were fire-eaters and knife-throwers among them. Even the infamous “Bird Girl” Elizabeth Green knew how use showmanship to her advantage.
The movie is categorized as Drama/Horror; but while there is intrigue and drama and action at the end I supposed in the 30’s it would be seen as a horror. Nowadays the only horror I would see is in not accepting this movie and these people as – and yes I’m gonna say it – “one of us.”
This film has been in the making for a while and now it’s near completion.
World Circus Culture, follows five circus acts from different countries as they rehearse and compete at the “Academy Awards” of circus competitions, the Monte Carlo Circus Festival. Through these personal stories, the film will open peoples’ eyes to the true culture, art, business, and history of circus on an international scale as never seen before.
They’re are looking for a bit more support, have a look here for more info on how you can help.
It’s been almost two months since my last post, and for that my humblest apologies (hmmmm, going a bit Stephen Fry there!). In that time I have collected many notes of subjects and themes, for essays and other writings, but it seemed appropriate to make my first post after my hiatus, and my first in 2012, as Circus Geeky as possible, and thus I shall devote this entry to the recent “Séminaire MaMux: Mathématiques, musique et relations avec d’autres disciplines”, which took place in Paris last Friday, January 6th, with the subject “Théories du jonglage et applications musicales”.
To go into detail about any single facet of the day would demand much more than a single blog post, and so I shall content myself with giving an overview of the day, rather than a detailed study of the lectures and demonstrations.
Quick background: IRCAM, in their own words, “carries out research and development into the symbolic representation of musical structures, languages and computer paradigms adapted to music.” They are a Paris based organisation, with their own (Piano and Rogers designed!) building adjacent to the Pompidou Centre. For some ten years they have organised and hosted a monthly meeting “MaMux” – which explores the relationships between music, mathematics and other disciplines.
This month the theme was “Juggling Theory and it’s Musical Applications”, which came to life thanks to the work of the minimalist composer Tom Johnson (who has been based in Paris for some years). I began an exchange with Tom in 2008, and he has since been involved in collaborations with various jugglers: including teaching for a week on the Juggling and Music research course in Stockholm, and composing pieces for the Gandini Juggling group.
His own compositions are usually mathematically based, and it happens that he has been particularly interested in recent years with the mathematical phenomena of tiling, which relates very directly to juggling’s siteswap notation. This is what drew him into the world of juggling.
On this occasion, the seminar moved from it’s usual (low-ceilinged!) room to the Petite Saal of the Pompidou Centre, to accomodate the juggling patterns that would be demonstrated. In the course of the day people came and went, but around 30-60 people were always present in the audience (a big audience for MaMux, largely made up in this case of the Parisian juggling scene).
The seminar (whose usual themes include “Systèmes évolutifs à mémoire”, or “Langages synchrones”) began at 2.30pm with a lecture from Jean-Christophe Novelli and Florent Hivert, of the Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée and the Université Paris-Sud. After a general introduction to juggling theory they jumped quite quickly into the deeper mathematics lurking behind, in the form of combinatorics. This was clearly a lecture by mathematicians with an interest in juggling, rather than the other way round, and that was to be the feel of most of the rest of the day.
A particularly elegant state map, and a particularly geeky jumper: both modelled by Jean-Christophe Novelli of the Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée.
Following their presentation, Tom Johnson took the podium, accompanied by the mathematician Franck Jedrzejewski, the juggler Jonathan Lardillier (a recent graduate of the Fratellini circus school in Paris), and myself.
Tom spoke about the mathematics behind his work, and showed how the maths could become juggling, and the juggling could become music. He described the compositional processes behind some pieces he had worked on, and some current projects, before Jonathan demonstrated his solo version of Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music” (2 balls in each hand, phase shifting with one hand), and I spoke briefly about the piece “Dropping Balls” that Tom composed for me, and which I would perform later in the evening.
Franck Jedrzejewski went even deeper into the mathematics behind music, especially the “well-formed scales”, which form the basis of Tom’s current compositions for jugglers.
After a brief interval, the day finished with a showing of the video from the Premiere last September of Tom’s piece “Three Notes for Three Jugglers”, written for Gandini Juggling (and played on electronically triggered sound emitting balls), and my own performance of “Dropping Balls” (a spoken word / singing piece).
It is hard to know how much importance to place on an event of this kind – a subculture of a subculture colliding with another, specialists of such precise subjects meeting others. But that an organisation of such prestige as IRCAM, with the support of the Pompidou Centre, could host such an event, and bring together such people, is, in my opinion, something extremely valuable and important in the continuing story of juggling, of circus and of art. I am proud to have been part of this event, and feel that we have taken another small step forward in blurring the fake distinctions between art and science, between mainstream and intellectual art, and find ourselves moving ever onwards to greater things in our work.
Parkour has risen in popularity over the last decade or so but as many know it’s not really a new art form. Before the tun of the last century John Higgins was a professional jumper bringing breathtaking jumps to the masses. In this video Mr. Higgins (54 years old at the time) shows of some of his skills and inventive stunts.
You can read a full article about Mr Higgins entitled ‘The Champion Jumper of the World’ by Oswald North first published in The Strand Magazine and reprinted in Charlie Holland‘s book ‘ Strange Feats & Cleaver Turns‘.
There is also some information about Higgins here (including reports of him jumping over a car and even hourse and cab).
Here’s a nice video of a very skilled Gymnast, Paul Hunt, doing a comedy routine which could easily be part of a circus show. A few of the moves also look very similar to moves seen on a Trapeze.
Really nice to see a Gymnast using his skills in a comical slapstick way.
Contemporary circus seems to have lost some of the sheer craziness that used to be associated with it. This stuff still takes place, it’s just it’s more associated with extreme sports and energy drinks.
These kinds of stunts don’t always go right though….
Given the backgrounds of most of us Circus Geeks – at least the more prolific of us writers – I sometimes feel we overlook some of the other circus skills that are out there. Today’s lesser talked about circus skill: Corde Lisse.
This is Allie Cooper. She’s a rope artist based in California whom I met at a circus party some time last year. She’s very lovely and put together one of the most enjoyable promo videos for her rope act that I’ve seen. In some ways it reminds me of Danny MacAskill’s Way Back Home.
Being half french means half my family live in France. I was recently chatting with my grandparents over the phone and they were telling me they had watched 3 Circus programs on TV that day; one was the “International Festival du Cirque de Monte-Carlo” (an annual Circus festival and competition held in Monaco), the second was “Sous les etoiles du cirque de pekin” (A Live Stage/TV Circus show based on Chinese Hero Mulan from what I can make out.. ) and the third was “Le gala de l’union” which I think maybe the French version of the English Royal Variety Performance in a Circus big top with circus acts… And, of course, the next day they indulged in more quality circus with “Le Plus Grand Cabaret du Monde” – A top quality televised Cabaret regularly aired in France which our very own CircusGeek Founder Arron Sparks has starred in.
I enjoy watching Circus as much as I enjoy performing it so when they told me about what they’d watched I was a bit jealous to say the least… It got me thinking and asking the question – why is there hardly any Circus coverage on UK television? Is it just the UK that doesn’t have much coverage or are other countries the same?
It’s probably worth noting that the reason there was so much circus on TV in France when I spoke with my grandparents was because of the festive season, with the exception of Le Plus Grande Cabaret Du Monde I don’t think they broadcast circus on a regular basis. However it is still a lot more than we get in the UK. Although it is possible to see some quality Circus Acts on the box these days here in the UK, it seems they are always linked with a reality TV show or game show where the actual Circus Act is not really the main focus.
I suppose it’s down to a number of reasons, obviously and primarily it’s down to the broadcasters wanting to get the maximum viewing figures and Circus isn’t number one on their list for boosting their audience, which is understandable considering our general publics view on Circus. I guess the second main reason is the quality and type of circus happening in the UK right now, for instance if there was an International circus competition hosted in the UK such as Cirque de Demain which would bring the best of the best in Circus to the UK I’m pretty confident that would get some coverage, even if it was at 3am, at least it’s a start. The quality of traditional circus in this country has deteriorated which doesn’t help the case. And “New” circus which is being created is more aimed at Theatres and is reaching in other directions, so it leaves the TV producers with nothing to work with really.
There is a lot of talk about developing Circus audiences and generally developing Circus in the UK and unfortunately it seems the best way to reach an audience is through TV. To me it feels like the people really pushing the Uk Circus scene are more concerned with creating thought-provoking / narrative lead work which is great for a seasoned theatre audience and I have no problem with – as it is developing a new type of Circus, BUT it is completely unreachable for the general public who at the end of the day already have their pre-conceptions of Circus and will never go to a Theatre to see the latest developments in UK Circus. There’s nothing to bridge the gap and get the general public to, firstly, appreciate Circus as Circus, which gets their attention and then, secondly, introduce them to where else Circus can go.
In conclusion it seems the French seem to have a pretty good balance of Traditional and Contemporary Circus and their audiences appreciate that. TV can help, I’m sure, we just need to find the way…
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 23,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 9 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
GEEK: \’gēk\, noun
From the low German geck, meaning “fool” (1914). 1: A carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off of a live chicken or snake. 2: A person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked. 3: An enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity (computer geek).
— geek•dome, noun
— geek•i•ness, noun
— geeky, adjective
— geek, verb
I am actually considered a geek because I eat, or geek, fire. Any time we eat random items nowadays (lightbulbs, bugs, etc.) it is considered geeking. Though originally this term was reserved for biting (geeking) the heads off of chickens with great show, usually dressed is white.
I got new toys Thursday. Shiny new toys. Sharp, dangerous, shiny, new toys. And I’m so giddy I may throw up 🙂
I bought the swords I need for my Ladder of Blades act. I’m building the ladder from scratch. I like this idea because in the process of building it not only will I learn a lot, about the blades and the construct of the ladder, but I will gain a stronger connection to my gear. I’m hoping it’ll end up feeling like an extension of myself. This is really important because I’m stepping it up with this act, it’ll officially be the most dangerous act we do. Let me reprise a part of an earlier blog where I mentioned injuries I normally only associate with shark attacks. And then Thursday I was additionally cautioned against loosing my acheles tendon. So this is where I say “Don’t Try This At Home,” there is no please about it. As if filleting my calf wasn’t caution enough, or repeatedly cutting my feet; but for some reason I am still gung-ho about this act. Thank you Mom for the ballet lessons, they are about to come in very handy. I need to work out, build my muscle strength up so I don’t wibble wobble. My center of balance has to be true. I can’t make a mistake. Which is why I was insistent about spending my own money to build the ladder so it would be mine, so I could connect with it. Any blood will be my own. Slightly grotesque, maybe, I prefer to think of it more as ritualistic. Like tearing down and rebuilding your first motorcycle engine.
First thing I did was to go to someone who knew what the hell they were talking about, our trusted Mike Todd. Sideshow, sword-swallower, weapons-master extraordinaire, he has even defied death in the name of Circus Sideshow. A wealth of facts and a library of history, he takes our art with an air of respect and glee. Needless to say I trust him. So I called him up, 6 months ago, just to get info and the specs of the ladder, what I would need and the like. He took the time to expand on the info and give me more information I would need, cautions, etc. He even went so far as to say that when I was ready he would go with me to help pick out the blades. Disco! Because you know I don’t know what I’m doing with it comes to swords you step on. Besides, I’m a knife girl, short blades I understand, but long blades escape me.
Thank you Dad! He’s the one who insisted on giving me an American Express gift card for my X-mas present. He said that if he gave me cash it wouldn’t feel like a present and besides I’d just spend it on bills anyway. Dang you Father and your generosity! (shaking fist in the air) What am I going to do with a gift card? Bing! My dad totally solved a problem for me, because all those blades were not going to come cheap and I had been saving up – sorta. I called up Mike and he was a bright ray of sunshine on the phone, I nearly fell off my chair. Hey I live in LA, no one is that happy on the telephone here, we think you want something. But it’s Mike, so I was okay. We went last night to a couple of shops, turns out military supply shops are a good place to start, but apparently they had a run on their machetes – which makes me concerned on a few levels – so we went to the mall. You know those Oriental stores in the mall full of things you can get in Little Tokyo for cheaper? Well as it turns out in the back there’s weaponry, who knew? Oh what a plethora of swords, knives, axes, and blades they had; but I had criteria to stick to. The blades had to be of stainless or carbon-steel, preferably shiny and wide because it reads better from stage. Some blades are harder to walk on than others while they might seem easier to the audience, and other turns of thought. But no matter what it’s still a blade that can cripple me, there’s no faking it, so no matter how giddy I was I had to take this seriously. Fake or cast metal ran the chance of breaking under my weight and that’s when I lose a body part. I took a few deep breaths while I was there. I was nervous no matter what.
But I found four beautiful blades, I want one more. I think an odd number is more pleasing to the eye. I am happy. I picked out four different shapes and looks to go with an aspect in the show we are working on. Since the ladder itself is being custom-made this is not as big an issue as we can design the recesses in the ladder to match the blades to make them as level as possible. I’m going to help with the design and the building so that I know my ladder that much better. The way I figure it, the better I know it the better off I will be. But for now I’m enjoying being giddy over my new swords. The simitar is awesome, I finally have a pirate sword, one is super ornate – which I think is good for stage, and one is a down and dirty machete – though it may need to be prettied up just a bit. You gotta just love new toys!
If I’m honest I’m not the biggest fan of Hula Hoop as a Circus discipline, I tend to find most routines very similar in structure style and tricks. Today, however, I stumbled on the video below and to my surprise, really enjoyed it. A nice mix of hoop manipulation, juggling type moves, body rolls and actual hula hooping. To me this is a new style in Hula Hooping (feels almost a bit “street”) and it will be interesting to see where it goes…
Oh, it proves ever so useful. Just strap them down. I prefer to use straightjackets, double reinforced cotton duck. Or if you find yourself without, and following a theme (I love themes) use duct tape. In this case tape them to their chairs. I am also fond of packaging twine. Thin yet strong these little wonders are very deceptive. Bonus – got some old dentist chairs lying around? They allow you to strap their heads back so they’re always facing towards your stage. They won’t be going anywhere. Now you have yourself a captive audience. If you feed them and promise to release them unharmed they also might provide you with some (honest?) feedback.
Ladies and Gentlemen, enjoy the show!
This gives you a chance to improve, to work out an idea you’ve had, to stretch out something to an extreme to see if it works. It’s like a mini workshop. You want to try out a new character you been batting around your head for a month, whip it out. Want to see if that extra flip or stunt will fly or flop with the audience, let ‘er rip. How about that secret new act you’ve honed on your own, shine baby shine!
Performing in front of your friends isn’t just a great workshop it’s also great chance for simple practice in front of an audience. Cirque and Sideshow performing is still performing and some still have stage fright. Wonderful point here is that with your bondaged audience members they really are captive and they aren’t going anywhere, so you have no fear of someone getting up and leaving for any reason. Potty breaks are just going to have to wait. You can relax, breathe. Take an extra moment and then start. Adrenalin will be pumping and half working against you in this respect, so just breathe.
Friends are wonderful, so giving, so accommodating, so selfless in giving up their time without hardly having to be asked. Their gift to you is your extra preparation and workout with your art, act, and self. *Just allow an hour of lead time to catch and tie down said friends.
(*this blog is assuming an audience of 5-10 friends, depending on how fast they all are)
Today is as good as any to reflect on some of the negative aspects of the circus community and how circus still needs dragging circus into the 21st century, from moral as well asaesthetic and creative standpoint.
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