Can You Describe Circus in 5 Words?
It is difficult to sum up a whole art form in 500 words, let alone 5, but by streamlining our…
Read moreIt is difficult to sum up a whole art form in 500 words, let alone 5, but by streamlining our…
Read moreOnce a year, as part of its programme of activities, Circostrada tends to organise a professional field trip outside Europe,…
Read moreIn the wake of job losses and setbacks for the circus sector due to the coronavirus pandemic, Projet Lumière has…
Read moreTwo women connected through their life’s work with circus, Sosina Wogayehu and Jasmine Straga, have recently responded to Circostrada‘s report…
Read moreBig tops are being built up across the UK. With sidewalls raised and seats spaced out, tented circuses are resuming…
Read moreAs a circus artist based in the Netherlands, these are some of the observations I’ve made during this self-quarantine. They’re…
Read moreLike many others, Covid19 forced me to retreat into unemployed isolation at home. This period allowed me to reflect on…
Read moreNo one doubts that health, the economy and education are valuable. Culture, however, is having a harder time mattering to…
Read moreRisk is something circus people talk about constantly, but there is something private about it too. The risk is an…
Read moreJust over three years ago, Erwan Tarlet left his work to embark on an artistic career. He is 26 years…
Read moreThe following speech is an edited version of a provocation delivered by Yaron Lifschitz at the 2020 ISPA Congress in…
Read moreTensions are running high in the venue as the circus theatre students prepare for their upcoming show. Circomedia, based in…
Read moreIf I were to ask, “What is the purpose of art?”… What would we answer? Beauty? Catharsis? Social questioning? Expressing…
Read moreAfter reaching my late-40s, becoming more visibly trans, having a child, and losing most of my employment prospects, I finally…
Read moreAs the lights flashed and the music pulsated, I took a swig of Irish whiskey from my plastic balloon-animal dog…
Read more“As a female base, I realized that by literally lifting people up, I could quickly change audience perception. I had…
Read moreIn her article titled Are Female Clowns Like the Others? circus artist, and author of the book The New Clowns: A…
Read morePitch’d Circus Arts Festival director Cormac Mohally of Lords of Strut tells Ellie O’Byrne why circus deserves to be recognised…
Read moreJon Sopel has a new book out this month – A Year at the Circus. But the BBC’s North America…
Read moreSimilar to dancers and professional athletes (Hill, 2016), contemporary circus artists may score relatively high on the personality characteristic perfectionism. People…
Read moreIn the staunchly conservative, predominantly catholic German village of my childhood, we children eagerly anticipated three occasions each year: Carnival…
Read moreI love the circus. I love it for the fun, the laughter, the sense of transgression. For me the never-never…
Read moreShows like America’s Got Talent, The World’s Best and Showtime at the Apollo have become permanent fixtures of network television…
Read moreThe age-old relationship between audience and performer “The action of clapping is actually a quite primitive one, initially being used…
Read moreCircus was created to fill a gap left by ‘serious’ theatre. Now a new generation of performers is rejecting bureaucratisation…
Read moreI hovered 30 feet off the ground, trying not to look down, a long loop of fabric my only support….
Read moreThe CIRCa festival is the mecca of contemporary circus. As it’s director, Marc Fouilland likes to call it “le rendez-vous…
Read moreIn many ways, 2018 has been a great year for circus. This is really saying something when you consider that…
Read moreIn a British circus, you will no longer find big cats, dancing bears or sea lions balancing on balls. Anne,…
Read moreAlex Mizzen is a creative who uses circus and dance-theatre to make evocative, challenging works. She is a world-class hand-balancer,…
Read moreTypically, talking about site-specific circus means talking about a large outdoor space that’s converted (with, say, scaffolding or cranes or…
Read moreI grew up as a very artistic, athletic, and insecure child, and I always tell people that circus saved my…
Read moreI FOUND OUT I WAS PREGNANT ON A FRIDAY EVENING… My husband and I had just embarked on the “make…
Read moreI was almost thirty years old when I joined the circus school in my new city, Ghent, around the turn…
Read more“Hey!” I hear from behind me. I turn around. A queer person is running down the stairs from the spoken-word…
Read moreDear circus artists, We need to talk. Not about your circus practice, though – not here, not this way. It’s…
Read moreSarah Poole, a circus educator at ENC, asked us to publish this response letter about the climate of support at…
Read moreSay the words “Canadian circus” and most people will think of the esthetically dazzling, astonishingly successful productions by Montreal-based Cirque…
Read moreMiss La La was the star of the show when Edgar Degas painted her in 1879 hanging by her teeth…
Read moreThis past Sunday, Apr. 15, the Barefoot Monkeys’ Spring Show performance dazzled with fire, props (the professional term is toys),…
Read moren April 19, circus artists from around the world will reunite at their old school in Belgium to mark the…
Read moreLa Grainerie in France is currently programming a series of shows called Creatrices created by women. This article discusses the…
Read moreA young man nervously explains to his girlfriend that there’s somebody else in his life. His twin sister suddenly pops…
Read moreI was sitting in the chapel-turned-classroom at Ecole de cirque de Quebec, listening to Julie Lavergne talk about the overview…
Read moreWomen in circus. What images come to mind? Historically, circus was a place of huge emancipation for women. It offered the…
Read moreDear Stav, and all other Interested Individuals, Thank you for your article and your comments. I have been working at…
Read moreThis post is in defense of the female artists (including myself) who performed in Cirque de Demain this year, not…
Read moreWe’ve all seen it. The dance duet. One woman and one man (sometimes there are two men, but for now…
Read moreFestival Mondial du Cirque de Demain in Paris is one of the world’s most famous circus festivals, about to celebrate…
Read moreAt the International Circus Festival in Monte Carlo, an unlikely figure is leading the charge to transform the circus for…
Read more–TRIGGER ALERT– Full disclosure: the victim of this story is the same age today as I am. Full disclosure: I…
Read moreThere is nothing more satisfying than walking out of theatre having been inspired by an amazing circus show. However, a…
Read moreI FELL out of love with the circus early, and I remember the moment almost exactly. In the 1970s, our…
Read moreIn part one to this story, I presented an outline of how performing arts education and production is supported differently…
Read moreBrisbane’s circus sector is internationally recognised. What conditions led to such creativity and how can its future be secured? From…
Read morePerforming arts have been a powerful human ritual for millennia. The Washington Post recently published a beautiful, interactive online piece…
Read moreIt was the fifth night of the Circuba Festival 2017, and day six of spending upwards of eight hours in…
Read moreQuébec, as a stateless nation, expresses its nationalism through culture and language. What is the national narrative of Québécois circus…
Read moreYou are watching a circus performance. The artists, for whatever reason, have a noticeable number of technical errors. The overall…
Read moreInterest in the circus has never been higher. Where there were three circus schools in North America 15 years ago,…
Read moreWhile some circus owners hope that with innovation they’ll be able to survive, others are not so optimistic. Dancing bears;…
Read moreThe Circus world is experiencing more and more activities and events that focus on gender and its influence in circus…
Read moreSo there’s this thing where the animal rights movement is attempting to prevent one of Ringling’s tiger trainers, Alexander Lacey,…
Read moreIn her heartfelt introduction letter in the playbill to Cirkus Cirkör‘s show Limits, founder Tilde Björfors explains why the time…
Read moreDea Birkett, ringmaster of Circus250 (the UK and Ireland-wide organization coordinating 250 years of circus in 2018) writes about the need…
Read moreLate last year Yaron Lifschitz (above), the CEO of Brisbane’s circus company Circa, made an incendiary speech slamming the major arts companies…
Read moreJanet M. Davis, a professor of history and American studies at the University of Texas at Austin and the author…
Read moreWith the launch of Circus Talk News came the unfortunate announcement of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey closing up…
Read moreWith the announced closure of the famed Ringling Brothers Circus, it may appear that a beloved form of entertainment…
Read moreThe Circus Isn’t Coming to Town Recently, Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus announced they will be shutting down their…
Read moreSo, as you have probably heard, Feld Entertainment has decided to end the 146 year run of the Ringling Bros…
Read moreIt’s been a difficult few months for the circus world. In November The Big Apple Circus filed for bankruptcy. Then…
Read more“People shouldn’t see the closing of Ringling as the closing of circus, but as the changing of circus.” – Shana Kennedy,…
Read moreThe hallowed brand may soon be no more, but variations on the circus form continue to thrive, and new models…
Read moreWhen Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced on Saturday that it would be folding after 146 years, I…
Read moreYaron Lifschitz, CEO of the Brisbane based circus company, Circa, challenges the traditional funding paradigm by demanding to open up…
Read moreThere’s always been a fog of mystery settled around my perception of the circus. I’ve seen the performers come on…
Read moreRooted in gypsy community, there is more than just a thing or two that circus can teach us about the…
Read moreHow circus arts companies are training artists to become both actors and acrobats. Once upon a time, so the axiom went,…
Read moreA new initiative to transform circus in Britain threatens to strip the Big Top of its intoxicating magic. I gasped,…
Read more