Circus Staggering Into 2020: Say Goodbye to One Dreary Decade, But Don’t Put Your Dreams Away - Not Yet

Sequence 8 from 7 Fingers 

New Circus companies combines diverse forms, 

including aerial  and acrobatic arts 

.

FACING 2020 feels more to me facing a  new century.  Blame it on my having lived through too much disappearing circus history in the last ten years —  or did I inherit this feeling the moment Kenneth Feld announced that he was shutting down Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey for good?

SO MANY CLOSINGS give me pause, and you, too?, to wonder if there is to be a future for what is now more frequently being called  “traditional circus.” I merely call it, pardon me, circus.  Is South Pacific a traditional musical?  Gone with The Wind, a traditional movie?

THOSE TWO WORDS  may mark a condescending dismissal by a class of culture vultures who inwardly despise what circus has meant to the masses.  And so they hold a patronizing stance, while waiting for the last dog to leave the tent, the last scary clown to renounce his greasepaint and join Old Clowns Anonymous.  Waiting and ready, honing their skills in classrooms and lofts, parks  and on small stages, to make their case in larger venues as the only option left, and therefore, theoretically more marketable to the public at large. Indeed, their day may be upon us.  Read the reviews in CircusTalk, and behold. 

THE TRAUMATIC FOLD fold, two years ago,  of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey opened the gates for “new circus” advocates to assume a greater,  more believable force.  In fact, I think it is far more honest  of them to call themselves “New Circus”  and let “circus” alone stand.  Drop the “traditional.” Some New Circus enthusiasts proclaim to be witnessing a “renaissance” of what they call “circus arts.” This may be so, but it is  not a renaissance  of circus, period.  Need I even try explaining why?

7 FINGERS, a collective among early-day innovators, with roots in the old Pickle Family Circus,  set out to humanize the face of performers, as if driven to prove themselves well educated, intellectually engaged, and normal.  To make clear that they are not related in any way shape or form to that vulgar  old world of Barnum & Bailey.  The exotic other worldly mystique of circus was purged, clowns and animals removed.  The luckiest of these troupes  are finding some success, albeit with funding, before audiences who patronize theater and ballet.   To its credit, 7 Fingers does not hang “circus” on its moniker, but, to be sure and safe, they talk it up aplenty, obviously to draw in the kind of ticket buyers who want some circus acts but not the circus.  

THE TEST OF WHAT SELLS:  When did you  last see a TV promo from Cirque du Soleil or any other new circus promising any of the following:

AWESOME CHARACTER ARCS!
SPINE TINGLING SOLILOQUIES! 
BRAIN-BUSTING BODY MOVEMENT!
THRILLING TEXTUAL THROUGH-LINE CONNECTIONS!

When? 

CURRENTLY FOR ME, the most interesting thing to observe is how all this will all play out. To wonder if, out there somewhere lurks a showman yet to surface who can make circus thrive again.  More likely, the ageless delight may yet rebound, come a day imagined, long in the future,  when cultural shifts favor the public’s re-embracement of circus’s  defining staples.  Americans may then again accept circus based on a new, more trusting pact between themselves and the owner-producers — a pact more open and transparent where animals may once again be welcome in the tent.

IMPOSSIBLE TO IMAGINE so magical, instructive,  and inspiring an enterprise as animal training being outlawed forever. 

IN RECENT TIMES,  a segment of the young clamor to hear new pop recordings on vinyl, as in LP.   Down at Issues on Piedmont Avenue, near where I live, a surprising show of younger people flock to the shelves, to consider a dazzling array of books and magazines from far and wide. Can you spell p a p e r?

So, too, the circus? 

Circus may be down, but don’t count ten yet.  

To quote Douglas McPherson from London: “Let’s hope these twenties roar like the previous one!”