New Directions in Circus Research

UPDATE:

What a fantastic day was had! For those of you unable to attend on the day, here is a run down of who spoke and what happened...

Click here to hear the talks...

Centre for Creative Arts, Faculty of Humanities & Social Science, La Trobe University and ACAPTA present:

New Directions in Circus Research ~ Public Symposium.
Monday 5 December 9am to 6pm

ACAPTA panel: Why do Artists need Research?

Chair Gail Kelly is the highly respected director of ACAPTA with three decades experience directing innovative and award winning performances including with Circus Oz.

Dr Jane Mullett started an arts degree in the 1970s, she found feminism  and joined the first Womens Theatre Group. She travelled with Swiss Circus Royale, then joined Circus Oz, working as an aerialist, a musician and truck driver. She was the first Head of Training for the Flying Fruit Fly Circus. After winning a Winston Churchill Fellowship to look at circus schools around the world she began a campaign to establish a national tertiary circus school, which eventually lead to NICA. Today she is a Research Fellow in the Climate Change Adaptation Program, RMIT University working on a national project responding to the challenges of climate change for Australia's sea ports. Her Phd: “Circus Alternatives: The Development of New Circus in Australia, the United States, Canada and France.”

Rockie Stone is an Australian circus performer with a drive to create art with her body. She has a versatility enabling her to make work in a variety of forms and settings. Rockie has been a core ensemble member of Circa (2002-05) and Circus Oz (2007-10), has performed throughout Australia and internationally. She has a Science degree from University of Melbourne, has studied at National Institute of Circus Arts, and just last year attained a Postgraduate Diploma Performance Making from Victorian College of the Arts.Rockie is one half of Acrobatic duo ConcentricCircus, one quarter of live art collective Transparency Collective, and is currently a practicing freelance performing artist and physical theatre director.

Dr Andrea Lemon is a well-known playwright who has produced innovative and exciting theatre and plays over three decades and she ha been director of the Women’s Circus. Her Phd: ‘Tough as Buggery’: Traditional Australian Circus, Community and Belonging’.

Hamish McCormick is an ex circus/sideshow performer turned film maker. His company Carnival Cinema documents the performing arts scene in Australia particularly the Circus community making promos and ‘behind the scene’ doco’s for the likes of: La Clique, Circus Oz, The National Institute of Circus Arts and Strut n Fret Production House, and National Circus Festival. He has also shot two TV series for stand up comic Jimeoin, directed, shot and edited 2 short docos for the band The Cat Empire. He’s a one-stop shop for video production - Shooting, Editing and Directing.

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Philosophising about the Circus Body

‘Phenomenological Sensory Bodies in the Circus’.
Professor Peta Tait.

I am interested in what circus reveals about humans and society, what it means to be human. The circus originally developed out of human-animal partnerships and trained wild animal bodies doing human-like action from the 1890s merged animal and human animal identity. Therefore what is humanness? This is a major question in contemporary philosophy. This paper discusses how the bodily reactions are significant for circus and its the reception and how bodily unease might influence a discussion of animal performance. When tiger trainer Mabel Stark claims an inherited ability called “animal sense”, she implicitly groups human with animal (1940: 25). Her “animal sense” conveys a way of knowing about others and how sensory experience is often omitted from human descriptions of engagement in the world. Where do circus animals come into Merleau-Ponty’s (1996) ideas of bodily schemata and how it fleshes the world (Acampora 2006)?

Professor Peta Tait, is Chair in Theatre and Drama at La Trobe University, and publishes on the practice and theory of theatre, drama, and performance. Her most recent books are: Wild and Dangerous Performances: Animals, Emotions, Circus (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance (Routledge 2005).

‘The Appearance of Playfulness in Contemporary Circus: Example Cirque du Soleil’ Stine Degerbøl, University of Copenhagen

Stine Degerbøl is a Phd candidate at the University of Copenhagen. Her background is in aerial artistry with contemporary circus and she worked with an all female company called UTOL. She is researching embodiment in circus.

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Theorizing Circus History

The Circus and Modernity: a commitment to the newer and the newest.
Dr Gillian Arrighi, Newcastle University

High profile circuses of the long nineteenth century demonstrated a ‘commitment to the new’ that embraced many of the socio-cultural concerns now generally accepted as belonging to or emerging out of modernity. In this paper Dr Gillian Arrighi examines the ways that these circuses functioned as a conduit for ideas about what it was to be modern, proposing moreover that their demonstrations of modernity contributed to their huge popularity.

Dr Gillian Arrighi is a Lecturer in Drama in the School of Drama, Fine Art and Music at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has published on Australasian circus history, performing animals, amusement parks as sites of performance, and theatre pedagogy. She is the associate editor of the scholarly e-journal, Popular Entertainment Studies and has almost completed co-editing a volume of critical essays about popular entertainments.

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Panel: Circus Oz: Living Archive

‘The Circus Oz Living Archive: the ‘first stagger-through’
Dr David Carlin, Reuben Stanton, Associate Professor James Thom, Dr Kim Baston (RMIT University)

This panel presents an overview of the Circus Oz Living Archive project, and a snapshot of work in progress at the stage Circus Oz would call the ‘first stagger-through’. We will discuss the interdisciplinary nature of the research questions and methods, some emerging ‘knotty problems’, and opportunities for circus research that we see emerging from the Living Archive. The Circus Oz Living Archive ARC project explores how the development of a rich media archive may catalyze the creative participation of diverse users – Circus Oz, peers, fans, scholars and the general public.  The aim is that the ‘living archive’ will become a shared online space for creative dialogue on the history and artistic future of Circus Oz, providing a new model of digital engagement for the performing arts.

The Circus Oz Living Archive (2010-14) is an Australian Research Council Linkage project led by RMIT University with partners Circus Oz, the Australia Council, the Performing Arts Collection of the Victorian Arts Centre Trust and La Trobe University.

Dr David Carlin is a writer, director and Program Director of Media within the RMIT School of Media and Communication.  David brings to the Circus Oz Living Archive  experience as a film and video documentary maker and former show director of Circus Oz. He has taught and led projects at RMIT focused on social and participatory media, and has scholarly and creative publications in the field of memory, narrative and media archives. The Circus Oz Living Archive project provides him the opportunity to draw together these diverse interests and knowledge in leading an exciting inter disciplinary team of researchers from academia and industry. 

Associate Professor James Thomis a computer scientist with extensive experience in text retrieval, document databases and image/video retrieval. His main contribution to the Circus Oz Living Archive project is in the technology that supports content based video retrieval and combines it with community tagging. He is the main supervisor for the computer science PhD candidate working on this project.

Dr Kim Bastoncompleted her doctorate on the function of music in theatre and circus at La Trobe University. She currently works as a researcher at RMIT on the Circus Oz Living Archive, and is a lecturer in circus history and culture at the National Institute of Circus Arts. She has spent many years being a musician, composer and performer. 

Reuben Stanton’s is a Phd candidate and his primary interest lies in exploring the effects of new technology on working and creative practice.  He has worked in design and technology roles for over ten years; as a web developer and information architect; as a researcher as part of the Australian CRC for Interaction Design; and as an independent software developer.  Reuben is excited by the possibilities offered by the Circus Oz Living Archive with regard to ideas around history, narrative, collaborative video production, and shared experience.

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New Circus New Centre: Combining Festival, Studio, Archive library

 ‘Skill & Art & Information. National circus development mission of CIRKO Center.’
Tomi Purovaara

Tomi Purovaarais the director of CIRKO Center. Established in 2002 CIRKO is the national development center for circus art which opened its new premises in spring 2011 in Helsinki. CIRKO is a center for rehearsals, residencies, performances and festivals. Also some circus company (e.g. Circo Aereo. Race Horse Company) offices and the premises of the Finnish Circus Information Centre and the Finnish Youth Circus Association are located in CIRKO. Purovaara has worked on the field of culture since 1993 as producer, writer, manager and director. He worked as the managing director in the Finnish Circus Information Centre in 2006-2011. Purovaara has published several articles and two books about contemporary circus in Finnish language. The first book will be published by Stockholm University during 2011 with the title Contemporary Circus. Introduction To The Art Form. Purovaara is a member in the Stage Arts Committee in the Arts Council of Finland. Further information: www.cirko.fi

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Skype Presentations

”Further Reflections on the Methods of Teaching Artistic Research”
Dr Camilla Damkjaer, Stockholm University

How can we clarify the artistic methods we use in circus through the methodologies of artistic research? And how can we use similar tools with circus education in order for the artists to find and explore their own artistic methods? This presentation will be a reflection on the experiences of introducing methods from artistic research in circus education. It is based on a project that was conducted at the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm during 2010 and 2011.

Camilla Damkjaer, Visiting senior lecturer at The University of Dance and Circus (Stockholm) and Stockholm University. She finished her Ph.D. in 2005 with the thesis The Aesthetics of Movement – Variations on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Since then her research has focused mostly on contemporary circus. From 2007-2011 she held a position as a research fellow at the Department of Musicology and Performance Studies, Stockholm University.  She has also been responsible for the theoretical part of the Master Program “A Year of Physical Comedy” at the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts (2009-2011). She is currently teaching at The Department of Musicology and Performance Studies, Stockholm University and The University of Dance and Circus.  

CirQueer: Melting Gender, Bending Genre. Ivan Kralj, Director, Festival novog cirkusa

In performing arts circus is a transgender art form, a form between genres. The hybrid art of circus enabled exposing even the most ambiguous self, revealing the question of gender identity as one of the most intriguing ones. This presentation argues that curiosity and fear were and are essential fuel of the audience’s attention when approaching the bearers of unclear gender labels. Circus artists who defy labeling double the risk in public exposure, melting the brackets that try to define them.

Ivan Kraljis the director of Festival Novog Cirkusa in Croatia (www.cirkus.hr), project manager of Circus Information Archive in Zagreb and initiator of various projects in the field of cultural revaluation of circus in South-Eastern Europe. After years of experience in investigative journalism which brought him several awards, Ivan directs his media work towards critical writing on culture and social phenomena. He is the editor of the book “Women & Circus” (Mala performerska scena, Zagreb, 2011) and creative producer of Red Room Cabaret.

To find out about the book 'Women and Circus' and the free shipping offer they are making available to ACAPTA members and Circus Symposium attendees, click here...
 

A one-day Symposium

Presented by La Trobe University’s Centre for Creative Arts, Faculty of HSS and Australian Circus and Physical Theatre Association (ACAPTA)

Does circus need research? Circus artists discuss this question with researchers.

Circus is a major creative industry in Australia encompassing new contemporary companies and traditional circuses and Australian artists have a major impact internationally.

Circus achievements need to be preserved through documentation and analysis. Circus artistry evolves through innovations out of knowledge of past achievements.

Australian and international scholars present recent projects and research approaches: Circus Oz: Living Archive; creative processes; philosophising about the circus body; rethinking circus history.

Featured speaker from Finland, Tomi Purovaara, author of Contemporary Circus. Introduction to the Art Form (2011), will be presenting on Cirko, a circus centre that brings together information centre, studio training facilities, festival venue, and research resources with visual archive library.

Funded by the Centre for Creative Arts, FHSS, at La Trobe University.

WHEN: 5 December 9am to 6pm
WHERE: La Trobe University Franklin St City Campus
MORE INFO: Professor Peta Tait 03 94791712
COST:  Registration Free

BOOKING FAST SO GET IN QUICK!