Launched by four European partners, the Beta Circus project lays the groundwork for contemporary circus practice in partnered countries by offering artists on-trend professional training, with the inaugural curriculum focused on magie nouvelle. Here’s how the program’s first year went down– and how they’re making magic happen.

The Beta Circus project was put together by four partner organisations – Bússola in Portugal, Teatro Necessario in Italy, Ludifico in Serbia, and Rigas Cirks in Latvia – with two central goals: to address a lack of advanced professional training for contemporary circus in their countries, and, at the same time, to support access to new aesthetic trends in the circus field, for artists and audiences. 12 artists were selected from 11 countries to participate following an open call. As a starting point, the four partners chose to focus on magie nouvelle.

The Beta Circus project was structured not as a closely defined curriculum but as an open-ended introduction to the form. Taking place through a string of short intensives spread over almost a year, it involved a large number of activities but was gathered around a central axis of six workshops with six teachers. These tutors embodied not only different artistic styles but also entirely different techniques and subgenres in magie nouvelle. In most cases, they would also give public performances during their training week, presenting their work to local audiences and giving the artists the opportunity to see techniques they had learned in class in action on stage. In this sense, the project was itself like a foundational course: an introduction to magie nouvelle that gave the artists multiple perspectives and multiple chances to find contact points between the techniques and their own ways of working.

Another step in this direction was the final presentation that the group prepared in Riga with Valentine, and which was performed in Riga and Novi Sad in March 2022 to put a cap on their training. As the organizers looks back on their experience, they note that most of the Beta Circus artists recognise (somewhat reluctantly) the value in the pressure of a performance but also felt limited by a lack of time and access to their usual resources. As such, applying their training to creation remains the next step.

Below is a short documentary about the project, as well as a link to the online publication. For those who wish to learn more about Beta Circus, this link provides them with a detailed project outline and description.

The Publication

Article content provided by Beta Circus.