Scuse: Radical Postcircus by Frédérique Cournoyer Lessard

Circus News

Scuse: Radical Postcircus by Frédérique Cournoyer Lessard

Let’s talk about radical art. Maybe it happens in two ways. Either something smashes into a culture so abruptly that new aesthetic shards are flung far and wide due to the sudden impact. Or, there’s a creeping—an underground new way of thinking, making, and seeing that seeps into the scene. Maybe the circumstances are less of a binary and more fluid. There are always radical creepings in artistic scenes, and if one artwork happens to explode, it’s because there was a foundation of pre-laid dynamite. Frédérique Cournoyer Lessard (she/they) is not the first person to pair projection and circus, to tell an autobiographical story, to explore an apparatus at unusual heights, or to make a political work. These elements of hybridization and dissected circus disciplines have been creeping for some years now, but by the end of Scuse–Sorry in English–I felt like I had been bowled over by a radical circus show.

The show itself was a microcosm of the same phenomenon. A story trickled in, and then, very naturally, became something altogether different. It’s subtle, then quick. Like when kids play a game and suddenly it becomes too real: an “I don’t want to play anymore.” In the show, Lessard describes these moments in her life with the word “epiphany.” But for how my gut sank and heart pounded, how my skin crawled, and how I frowned as she told her story, the word is too soft, too billowy. 

I saw Scuse at La Chapelle, an intimate black box theater, during the Montreal Circus Festival. Technically, what I saw was a first staging, a work in progress, but if I hadn’t known, I wouldn’t have guessed. The show is far beyond the beginning stages. It’s smart, well-crafted, and beautifully performed with sincerity and nuance. Lessard, an accomplished and awarded circus artist and filmmaker, considers it a circus documentary. Estelle Frenette-Vallières (she/her), the visual designer for the production and Lessard’s real-life, long-time friend, spends most of the show seated on stage left surrounded by audio and visual equipment. She provides a supportive framework for Lessard and the story. 

As a reviewer, my job is to contextualize, critique, describe, praise, tear down, or otherwise dissect a show and hold its parts up to the art form’s past and future, comparing it to the canon of work that it is in conversation with. I have laid out descriptions and my impressions here, but the power of this work does not lie in how it’s analyzed. Rather, the most meaningful part of this show–to the circus canon and beyond–will be the conversations it will spark. At the end of the show, Lessard and Frenette-Vallières explicitly and genuinely open themselves to conversation with the audience. Similarly, I offer this review as one way to continue the conversation.


Photo: Brin Schoellkopf

Called Frédérique, because her mother didn’t care if she was a girl or a boy.

Lil-Fred in elementary school.

Girl-Fred, because there was a Boy-Fred.

From an early age, Lessard struggled to understand the spoken and unspoken rules of the gender binary–why being labeled one thing automatically precludes you to be something else.

“Frédérique, why don’t you go and play with the other girls?”

At 7 years old, I learned that, even if it was HIM who cheated, it was “my” fault…*

Throughout the show, Frenette-Vallières presents the audience with codified definitions of pertinent words: girl, guilt, cute, man, accepting, disgusting. We, the audience, experience how these words have molded young Lessard into an identity and prescribed behaviors. But their clever placement in the script halos them in absurdity, inviting the audience to question and unlearn the supposed authority these words hold.

What I didn’t see at that age, was the insidiousness of the division of genders, and to what point innocent comments can begin to instill values in a child that will go on to contribute to the culture of domination in the world.

A lyra sequence with her pants around her ankles complicated Lessard’s movement on the apparatus. The presence of the pants flopping about brought attention to their absence on other body parts. Treated differently, it could have been comedic, but the word “exposed” just kept coming to mind.


Lessard is an outstanding athlete. You can tell that she has mastered her apparatus and contortion in the codified ideals of contemporary circus virtuosity. She uses this foundation to then distort virtuosic expectations. The choreography is fully driven by emotional intention. The narrative jumps to Lessard as a high school student at Montreal’s École National de Cirque (ENC). She was one of ten students from grades 7 to 11. 

I was having a blast. I was having such a good time because I was doing what I loved, but also because, for the first time in my life, I felt like I had no constraints…

ENC looms. Its reputation in the international circus community is big and wide. Its abutting geography and cultural connection to Cirque du Soleil cast a specific, tandem shadow on the global circus industry. Its prestige is a pedestal. Pedestals are respectable, but they also keep their ornaments glinting in the light. To vocalize an event that might tarnish such an institution is brave. To do it in its hometown is bold. To tell that story in such a way that does not harbor blame nor demand reckoning, but simply lays out events for an audience to digest, educes powerful meaning. 

…there was no framework, no classifications. There wasn’t such a division between gay people or straight people. Between girls or boys… women, men. No division between young or old. Coaches or students. Minors or adults.


I’ve read heady theories about how the performing body–particularly the aerialist body–can’t not be sexualized by the viewer. These theories say desire and lust are innate in the presence of flight, speed, musculature, physical exertion, and extreme flexibility. It’s easy to perform toward this and to augment choreography with sensual attributes. And sexy circus is vigorously praised. But to theorize isn’t to live it; only aerialists know how it feels to fly and bend and lean into the allure of the movement or purposefully try to break it. And only we know what it’s like to exchange that with an audience. It makesme think of Jean-Paul Zaccarini’s poetry in Falling Through Circus, which seamlessly and simultaneously double/triple casts his corde lisse and his audience as his lover, his client, his muse, his abuser. 

A basement apartment on Berri street. That night, we listened to “Ready Or Not” on repeat.

Photo: Margot Dejeux

The lyra’s single point, the place where the rope was attached, hovered maybe a foot off the ground. Taken out of context, Lessard’s choreography might have elicited hollers and applause (because circus is sexy, and sexy circus acts are praised). Just as we, the audience, had been asked to unlearn the definition of words that structure our culture, I felt we were being asked to unlearn the innate, sensual definition of aerialists and aerial movement. We were asked to consider the codified ideologies about the discipline–about circus–in a new light. My brain sat in this theoretical space. My body did not.

The brilliance of the scene was how understated it was. The context was clear–we all knew what was happening–and its impact was palpable: I have not felt so viscerally disgusted during a performance in quite some time.

Ready or not/ Here I come/ You can’t hide/ Gonna find you/ And take it slowly


The scene slowly segued into a different, messy, torn-apart world. Stuffing, maybe the inside of bedding, was strewn about. Lessard wore it, stuffed it into her tights and clothing, creating what read as both grotesque shapes and layers of protection for her body. Everything was right in how wrong it felt. The sound of dripping water; the light as if you were standing in front of the fridge at 2 am but didn’t know why you were there; an animated hand that searched an animated face at a chaotic, disjointed speed.

Photo: Brin Schoellkopf

Lessard’s rape–Legally, there is no possibility of consent between a 26-year-old and a 16-year-old–and her following relationship in which she experienced sexual coercion–an insidious form of abuse that affects more than 70% of couples in Quebec. It has become a public health problem, since numbers have only gone up with the pandemic–do not make her ashamed. Rather, she says she feels shame for how societal structures and the ensuing domination and abuse have created a love-hate relationship with her femininity; that the two moments in her life she felt most like a “woman” were when she had epiphanies about her body: when she felt disgusting, and the extent of her abuse. As a woman, that hit me hard. 

DasArts has developed a multi-part methodology for giving feedback to a creator about a work in progress. Part of the method includes viewers making comments beginning with “As a…” It’s a useful way to contextualize a comment with a facet of the viewer’s identity. For example: As a reviewer, I want you to see this show. As a woman, I think this show isn’t art; it’s a protest, and it needs to be shouted from the rooftops. As a creator, this show is the best example I have seen of how a circus discipline can be fully imbued with emotional and narrative meaning. As a spectator with historical and kinesthetic knowledge of circus, I believe Scuse is exemplary of the postcircus movement. 


Lessard and Frenette-Vallières end the show with a series of questions. Some of these are:

Would there be as much violence towards women if we didn’t live in a society that educated its boys and girls so differently? By limiting the division between the genders, would we have more equality? Is non-binarity the modern feminism?

I left the show with a few questions myself: Would those working toward equality, visibility, and justice for each of these communities/issues feel that their cause would be diluted by being combined? Even if the gender binary fades, won’t there always be violence from one group toward another? Will this work be seen as radical to future circus historians, or are we entering a place where this will be considered the norm for circus? Will you and I help lay a foundation for the next explosive work by continuing this conversation?

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*The show was in French with English subtitles provided. The text included here was provided by Lessard.

Autrice-interprète 

FRÉDÉRIQUE COURNOYER LESSARD  |  Artiste et conceptrice visuelle ESTELLE FRENETTE-VALLIÈRES  |  Chorégraphe LAURIE-ANNE LANGIS  |  Chorégraphe acrobatique NADIA RICHER  |  Scénographe spécifique MARIE-FRANCE COURNOYER  |  Coach spécifique ÉRIC DESCHÊNES  |  Chorégraphe spécifique ANNE-FLORE DE ROCHAMBEAU  |  Son JÉRÔME GUILLEAUME  |  Costumes MÉLANIE BRISSON  |  Costumes spécifiques CAMILLE THIBAULT-BÉDARD  |  Soutien financier CONSEIL DES ARTS DE MONTRÉAL, CONSEIL DES ARTS ET DES LETTRES DU QUÉBEC, CONSEIL DES ARTS ET DES LETTRES DU CANADA, TOHU et EN PISTE.

Main image: Photo by FC Lessard

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Madeline Hoak
Professor, Performer -United States
Madeline Hoak is an artist and academic who creates with, through, and about circus. She is a Writer for CircusTalk, Adjunct Professor of Aerial Arts and American Circus History at Pace University, Editor and Curatorial Director of TELEPHONE: an international arts game, and curator and director of Cirkus Moxie, a weekly contemporary circus show at Brooklyn Art Haus. Madeline has performed, coached, produced, and choreographed at elite regional and international venues. Her background in dance and physical theater is infiltrated into her coaching and creation style. She is passionate about providing her students holistic circus education that includes physical, historical, theoretical resources. Madeline initiated the Aerial Acrobatics program at her alma mater, Muhlenberg College, where she taught from 2012-2017. She is also a regular contributor to Cirkus Syd's Circus Thinkers international reading group. Her circus research has been supported by Pace, NYU, and Concordia University. Recent publications include "Teaching the Mind-Body: Integrating Knowledges through Circus Arts'' (with Alisan Funk, Dan Berkley), a chapter in Art as an Agent for Social Change, "expanding in(finite) between," a multimedia essay in Circus Thinks: Reflections, 2020, and "Digital Dance & TELEPHONE: A Unique Spectator Experience." Madeline has presented academic papers at numerous conferences including Circus and its Others (UC Davis), International Federation for Theatre Research (University of Reykjavík), the Popular Culture Association, Gallatin (NYU), and McGill University. Madeline earned an MA from Gallatin, New York University’s School of Independent Study, where she designed a Circus Studies curriculum with a focus on spectatorship.

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Madeline Hoak

Madeline Hoak is an artist and academic who creates with, through, and about circus. She is a Writer for CircusTalk, Adjunct Professor of Aerial Arts and American Circus History at Pace University, Editor and Curatorial Director of TELEPHONE: an international arts game, and curator and director of Cirkus Moxie, a weekly contemporary circus show at Brooklyn Art Haus. Madeline has performed, coached, produced, and choreographed at elite regional and international venues. Her background in dance and physical theater is infiltrated into her coaching and creation style. She is passionate about providing her students holistic circus education that includes physical, historical, theoretical resources. Madeline initiated the Aerial Acrobatics program at her alma mater, Muhlenberg College, where she taught from 2012-2017. She is also a regular contributor to Cirkus Syd's Circus Thinkers international reading group. Her circus research has been supported by Pace, NYU, and Concordia University. Recent publications include "Teaching the Mind-Body: Integrating Knowledges through Circus Arts'' (with Alisan Funk, Dan Berkley), a chapter in Art as an Agent for Social Change, "expanding in(finite) between," a multimedia essay in Circus Thinks: Reflections, 2020, and "Digital Dance & TELEPHONE: A Unique Spectator Experience." Madeline has presented academic papers at numerous conferences including Circus and its Others (UC Davis), International Federation for Theatre Research (University of Reykjavík), the Popular Culture Association, Gallatin (NYU), and McGill University. Madeline earned an MA from Gallatin, New York University’s School of Independent Study, where she designed a Circus Studies curriculum with a focus on spectatorship.