What Can We Learn From the Circus? - CircusTalk

Circus News

What Can We Learn From the Circus?

Rooted in gypsy community, there is more than just a thing or two that circus can teach us about the way we live and work. Yes, my experiences with circus may have been with an award-winning contemporary circus company, but behind the veil of cutting edge aesthetics and performance, exists a parallel universe imbedded with the cultures of traditional circus. A world that operates on a completely different set of rules.

On hierarchy and getting your hands dirty

No man is better than another. It doesn’t matter if you are a Montreal-trained, internationally-recognised swinging trapeze artist, you will muck in alongside the Geordie truck driver banging in stakes and cleaning toilets. I have yet to find a level playing field quite like this anywhere else in the world. The circus will reduce you to what you are, a human being, just like the one standing next to you. You don’t have much choice about it either – the frankly colossal task of moving and raising a 500 person capacity tent by hand demands the blood, sweat and tears from every single member of the company. There is an underlying knowledge held by everyone that they are equally fundamental to the bigger picture in their own unique way. When you see the International Bookings Manager with her gloves on shifting steel, and the performers in the kitchen preparing food for everyone to eat, it distils resentment. It distils entitlement, and nurtures a collective pride, rather than an individual one.

Link to Full Article on Emily Firefly.

Do you have a story to share? Submit your news story, article or press release.