Gravity Matters: Circus as a Device. An Approach on Staging the Relationship between Human Beings and Gravity

Abstrakt

This article aims at understanding Circus as a creative device in order to provide an alternative approach to the study of contemporary circus creation. To this effect and from a plural, multidisciplinary perspective, the article will be organised in four main parts. Justifying Circus as a device for staging the relationship between the human beings and the force of gravity; specifying why this relationship is indeed at the very core of human beings’ experience and identity matters; contextualising nouveau cirque within the evolution of artistic avant-gardes from post-modern currents to our days; and providing a series of practical examples of these first two points by studying selected works from a series of contemporary artists. Such approach evidences Circus’ aesthetics of risk as a convergence point for researches in corporeality and performativity, while allowing a parallel study on the problematic of gravity as an essential condition for human identity. From both its physical and poetic aspects, this subject evolves radically through the late 20th century to the paradigms of our present, as it is visible in the work of active artists such as Aurélien Bory, Kitsou Dubois, Maria Donata D’Urso, Chloé Moglia, Yoann Bourgeois or Inbal Ben Haim.