Top 3 Circus Trends of 2021

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Top 3 Circus Trends of 2021

Sometimes I think I have the best job in the world, especially when I count the number of circus shows I get to see in a year. In spite of the pandemic, this year has been no exception thanks to technology, and an invitation to join the voting committee for the International Circus Awards as editor at CircusTalk at that time.

After watching 60-plus circus shows in one month (thanks to Aaron Marquise of CCIAC), I can testify that some qualities of circus remain strong or have grown stronger in hard times; persistence, teamwork, and the willingness to face old problems with new questions are a few simple examples. Two of circus’ most enduring qualities are adaptability and innovation, and quite interestingly, these qualities have also shown up in this year’s trends. How can a trait be both enduringand a trend, you might rightly ask? I’d say it’s because circus reinvents itself and its qualities for every age, and the pandemic age seems to have sped up the processes of innovation and adaptation in the past year and a half, shining a new light on the uses of each quality. For example, innovation in 2018 might have been using a robot on stage as a circus partner, whereas innovation in 2021 could be hiring nearly every circus artist in your country for one production and creating a new acrobatic language through experimentation with that group (as with Gravity & Other Myths’ The Pulse). So without further ado, I offer my personally observed…

Top 3 Circus Trends for 2021


1. Playing Not Just with Light, But Also Darkness

It should surprise no one that lighting designers have taken lighting to the next level in surprising ways this past year, especially by playing with its counterpart, darkness.

Contemporary circus is no stranger to starkly lit productions, but fortunately, this year there seemed to be a conscious effort to examine the power of lighting effects to truly augment the performances, either by affecting the mood onstage or by becoming part of the scenography itself. 

So many circus shows this year began– or even ended– in dimly lit venues, but the more intriguing among them really pushed the envelope and experimented with projection techniques and more to gain the effect they desired. These projections and techniques often augment reality and provide a sense of space outside of the confinement of a studio or empty auditorium.

The showA Deer in the Headlightsby Cirque Le Roux (France) used color tableaux to convey the moods of their characters and to replicate cinematic scenes, whereas inMoln by Kompani Giraff (Sweden), for example, color projections or their absence transformed the stage and related props frequently, with the use of lights in tiny windows and glowing juggling balls that became powerful props.

InPiste, Piste, Piste by Luis Sartori do Vale and Mira Ravald (Finland, Brazil), Company Portmanteau uses two simple light projectors which themselves became characters that not only altered the landscape the stage (by adding texture with stripes and dots, for example), but also created virtual props (music notes, one-dimensional juggling balls) that the two human performers interacted with.

2. Melding Disciplines Together

Circus creators have been blending disciplines for years now, but in 2021, the singularity seems to have occurred at last. As circus becomes more contemporary and the line between acts and disciplines blurs, transitions are becoming more seamless. So much so that it can sometimes be difficult to figure out who the ‘real’ juggler or Cyr wheel artist is in any given act or show. 

This fascinating, incremental tilt away from the classic structure of circus, with its distinct acts on distinct props, often adds layers to the dramaturgy of a performance thus adding more than visual appeal. It is really fascinating when all of the cast has advanced juggling skills, or knows the basic trapeze vocabulary, or has acrobatic range and can mingle with a soloist to expand connection points. A good example of this from the ICA nominees was La Galeria by Machine De Cirque (Canada). The show featured long sequences of juggling and hand-to-hand acrobatics where all cast members seemed equally invested in the action and only an expert would be able to note who the specialists were.

Maybe most interesting is that it isn’t even entirely clear to the layperson if these moments are solos, duos or whole cast acts, and that the less apparent the devices of circus are, the more complex the language of expression is. For example, Casus Circus’ two-man showYou & I (about a queer couple living their best life) pops in and out of circus methods as a wordless storytelling technique that also includes dance, theatre and miming technique while somehow maintaining the overall definition of a circus show. Perhaps we can thank circus schools for this progress, as training methods develop and circus schools have assured that each student is well-versed in multiple disciplines. But also, the movement vocabulary of circus seems to be expanding incrementally with each instance of discipline- and act-blending–meaning circus shows are influencing other circus shows and helping the trend to expand and innovate even more.

3. Breaking Down the Form

The question of what circus movement quality is and who gets to define it has been brewing for several years. Historically, it has been the circus teachers and schools who defined excellence in form– and prior to that, the circus ancestors and trailblazers who have invented the forms themselves. Perhaps it is the nature of the artist to always explore boundaries and push back against them, but circus artists have been especially adept at questioning the ideology of good form and codified movement styles in an interesting and related parallel with the current global movement to reexamine societal priorities in general.

While people around the world are reassessing societal practices around things like capitalism and environmentalism, or are awakening to the social inequities toward gender, race, and disability, artists respond more directly. Some circus creators connect their work to that level of questioning and use circus not simply as a personal tool of expression, but as an unapologetic snapshot of this moment in history. 

Combining the engaging power of circus with such an artistic statement often has a tangible impact on people’s feelings about important issues. But how can subverting the form of the art that one has studied lead to a broadening perspective of ideas for creators and audiences alike? One example is by stepping away from rules around virtuosity in service of a freer range of movement possibilities. This more human range of expression– a Martha Graham-like breakthrough in the circus world– creates a poetic, expansive feeling that opens up the form to more nuanced storytelling. Is a refugee character hanging off of a symbolic wall required to point their toes? Does a person sharing their monologue about their experiences with discrimination in the midst of their dance routine still need to model a physical ideal of form that leads in turn to further discrimination in the art form? 

These philosophical moments are being explored, show by show, in a practical and tangible way. For example, Gravity and Other Myths created their very human and intimate showI Want To Touch You during the height of the pandemic when the performers finally got permission to gather and reflect on their touch deprivation by using touch itself. The performers dive into the whole range of human motion, from combat to tentative first touch with one another. By fighting, falling, and flopping, they defy the rules of traditional acrobatics which produce predictable movements, and in doing so redefine form by allowing their narrative to inform their technique and by introducing the audience to nuanced concerns around the general understanding of safety and risk.

Another example of redefining form from ICA is FOCA Formosa Circus Art’s showDisappearing Island. Part art installation and part immersive circus, the show explores the sustainability of Shezeio Island in Taiwan. Using unique tools and interacting with the public in surprising, immersive ways, the show’s point was not only to entertain people so much as to capture their attention by interacting with the local environment in surprising ways– and to, perhaps, begin a discussion. In one moving scene that echoes concerns around COVID safety, people in full protective gear spray disinfecting substances on fallen juggling balls, creating a moment of reflection from the onlookers. 

While another eye might see another series of circus trends in 2021, each of us would probably agree that regardless of what trends stand out to us, it is a healthy response in circus for trends to arise and deepen during the challenges we are facing as a sector. Thanks to ICA for reminding us of these human responses to our times and our environment and giving us the connection and chance to reflect on the continuing innovation and adaptation of circus.

The ICA Awards ceremony took place on October 9th at 3 pm EST and included a full roster of guest hosts announcing over 8 awards for excellence, including two special awards: The CircusTalk Critics’ Choice Award and the Audience Choice Award. Many congratulations to the winners of the 2021 awards!

This article was also featured in Du Ma Xi

Kim Campbell
Writer -USA
Kim Campbell has written about circus for CircusTalk.News, Spectacle magazine, Circus Now, Circus Promoters and was a resident for Circus Stories, Le Cirque Vu Par with En Piste in 2015 at the Montreal Completement Cirque Festival. They are the former editor of CircusTalk.News, American Circus Educators magazine, as well as a staff writer for the web publication Third Coast Review, where they write about circus, theatre, arts and culture. Kim is a member of the American Theater Critics Association.
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Kim Campbell

Kim Campbell has written about circus for CircusTalk.News, Spectacle magazine, Circus Now, Circus Promoters and was a resident for Circus Stories, Le Cirque Vu Par with En Piste in 2015 at the Montreal Completement Cirque Festival. They are the former editor of CircusTalk.News, American Circus Educators magazine, as well as a staff writer for the web publication Third Coast Review, where they write about circus, theatre, arts and culture. Kim is a member of the American Theater Critics Association.