Frequently the distinction between classical family circus and contemporary circus is defined by the absence of performing animals. However, the merging of feminist politics with the performance of strong, muscular and powerful female bodies can perhaps be seen as a defining presence, and as such even more significant for the contemporary de- and reterritorialization of the artform. In Chapter One I touched on the increasing prominence of women's circus in Australia, which coincided with what is often called the “third wave” of Australian feminism in the 1990s. Several companies were formed during this period, notably Vulcana Women's Circus (Brisbane) and
Women's Circus (Melbourne). Women in Australian performing arts were, in fact, using
the artform of circus to push boundaries of the representation of gendered bodies considerably earlier, with Circus Oz and the Wimmin's Circus (Tasmania) performing circus acts with feminism at the forefront of their artistic ideology as early as 1979. Once again we are reminded that tracings that work in terms of starting points, eras and “waves” can be misleading.
As mentioned in Chapter Three, during Nanjing Project I, which began in late 1983,
Circus Oz remained firm in their insistence that women could and would train and
perform all of the skills being taught at the training intensive. The company has had a strong policy in relation to gender equality as part of its ecology since its first performances. It always featured women taking on what were considered “male” skills in classical circus culture, such as basing human pyramids and performing hoop diving. Clearly this is not to suggest that women were not performing high level physical feats in circus prior to the New Circus era. In the earliest years of aerial performance, particularly in flying trapeze, women were achieving higher skilled and far riskier tricks than their male counterparts. In Circus Bodies: Cultural identity in aerial performance (2005) Peta Tait demonstrates that female aerial artists were outperforming males by 1880, with aerialist Lena Jordan being the first artist to successfully perform the backward triple somersault to a catcher52 (Tait, 2005, p.57) While the movement for
women’s suffrage was underway, the late nineteenth century was by no means marked
by women experiencing increased rights or freedoms, nor did the dominance of female aerialists in circus come without heavy disapprobation in relation to what female bodies should be capable of and particularly how they should look. Female aerial artists from the late 1800s to early 1900s were continuously scrutinised and criticised for their performance of danger and the muscularity of their bodies. Indeed, later in the history of aerial performance there was a return to traditional gender roles, which saw female circus artists placed into much less risky roles in performance. This was not without problems in that it disturbed other gendered expectations. As Tait explains:
At the same time, male bodies in graceful flight displayed qualities contradicting manliness and muscular females went completely against prevailing social patterns of bodily restraint. In defiance of public criticism, female aerialists trained for all aspects of aerial work up to the 1930’s. By the 1950’s however, glittering female assistants working with star male flyers and heavier bodied male catchers finally succumbed to fashions in cultural identity. (Tait, 2005, p.3)
Thus, although women trapeze artists had continued to demonstrate the capacity for high level skills, they were no longer able to lead the way in skill or levels of danger. Until the late 1970s the strength of the female circus body was often masked with delicate choreography, sparkling high cut leotards and equally glittering smiles. Celia White discussed with me how New Circus began to push traditional gender roles out of the glitter and into more challenging, and subversive, terrains for female performers.
This is a conversation about artform, but it is also a conversation about gender I think. How can a woman's body do that? There is a strong underlying [strand] of women's circus through the entire history of Australian contemporary circus performance. I think it was a really critical part of New Circus. There is often a focus on the absence of animals, but the thing I remember watching was the “equal opportunity aerial act” that Jane Mullet and Stephen Champion did in Circus Oz. That, as a young emerging feminist and lesbian, stood out for me: it was about sexuality and gender for me and my work. I saw that performance and I saw that it was actually about re-defining the role of women in circus. As much as taking the animals out of circus, it was about how to get rid of those leotards and the fact that they (the women) were pretending that they were just the fluff on the side. (Celia White, Interview, September 2015)
The equal opportunity aerial act was performed on a triple trapeze53 and was a
comment on a range of state and federal legislation regarding equal opportunity54 that
53 A triple trapeze is a static (non-swinging) trapeze made up of three trapeze bars woven into one aerial
apparatus. Traditionally, this apparatus was often performed by three women with highly choreographed skills.
54 These included the New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Act 1977; the South Australian Equal Opportunity Act 1984; the Western Australian Equal Opportunity Act 1984; the Australian Sex
had been or was being passed in Australia. In typical Circus Oz style, it was extremely tongue-in-cheek, while still holding a strong message against gender discrimination, using the metaphor of equal distribution of strength and power within the trapeze performance. Circus Oz, particularly during its development from the mid-1980s to late 1990s, continued to subvert conventional expectations of women in contemporary circus performance, producing acts that pushed boundaries and provoked strong reactions from audiences.
Circus Oz women behaving badly
Aerialists Simone O'Brien and Kareena Hodgson (formerly Oates) performed a double aerial act that was just what Celia White described as definitive of the era, moving as far away from the “fluff” and sparkly leotards as possible. The act began with Simone O'Brien striking body building poses, showing off her biceps centre stage, only to be interrupted by Kareena Hodgson who ran onto the stage, pushed O'Brien over, stood on top of her then ran into the audience, after which O'Brien chased Hodgson around the Circus Oz Big Top “seeking revenge”. Their slapstick brawl continued as they made their way up onto the trapeze bar where they performed their duo act. The brash characterisation continued into the physical execution of the trapeze performance. Their movements were sharp, dynamic, and almost staccato and highlighted the strength and musculature of their aerial bodies in action, rather than being masked with feathery choreography. This performance exemplified rebellion – not only against what had become the expected, sequinned, “feminine” performance values for women aerialists, but also against the expected demeanour of women in general. O'Brien and Hodgson continued to be anything but delicate, poised and polite in performance: the glitter and showgirl smiles were replaced with mutiny and chaos. In her analysis of how central Circus Oz has been to challenging gender expectations, “Circus Oz Larrikinism: Good Gender Sport?” Peta Tait (2004) captures something important about this element in performance when, having described several such performances through to 2001, she writes, “[w]hile this gender role reversal is delivered as physical clowning, it remains provocatively disturbing. Why is it not quite funny?” (p.79)55. She later
answers her own question with the recognition that:
Discrimination Act 1984; Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986. Legislation in other states and
territories followed from the early 1990s, for example, Discrimination Act 1991 (Australian Capital
Territory); Anti Discrimination Act 1991 (QLD). All were framed to guidelines and legal requirements for
equal opportunity in employment and in areas such as property and financial services, that did not discriminate on the grounds of sex/gender, race/ethnicity, disability, political beliefs etc.
The gender fights in Circus Oz arise from female larrikins displaying competitive behaviour. They are not quite funny because female physical competitiveness is not quite acceptable even at the beginning of the twenty-first century because competitiveness is associated with masculinity. These interactions are edging towards a larrikin subversion of female competitiveness when the latter concept is scarcely acceptable in the wider Australian society. (Tait, 2004, p.80)
It is significant in this connection that the last several years have seen increasing media attention given to women’s competitive sport, with national television coverage not only of conventional “women’s” sports such as netball, but also of established women’s competitions and national representative teams in conventionally “male” sports such as cricket, soccer and basketball. Heartening as this coverage has been, changing social attitudes towards women expressing extreme physicality in competitive sport have been considerably more noticeable with the launch in 2017 of the women’s national competition in Australian Football (i.e. the national game, Australian Rules), attended by large crowds and widespread media attention. As the 2018 season opens in the AFLW competition, the continuing crowds and media hype, media creation and promotion of several star women players and so on, indicate that great physicality in women’s sport, for the followers of this national competition and Women’s Rugby Sevens, has become not only acceptable, but exciting and aspirational for younger women and girls. A proportion of the AFLW women are muscled, tattooed, powerful- looking athletes, while others have apparently a more “feminine” presence until the play starts, when they all demonstrate strength, skills, highly trained bodies, and a willingness to engage in a body contact sport with the same gusto as men.
But decades before women were finally being lauded as trail blazers in previously male-only competitive sports, they were working on equal terms with men in contemporary circus in Australia. Circus Oz has long been renowned for a larrikin style for both genders. However, Tait recognises that the women’s performances acquired a different relation to the social from those of the men. Seeing such performances, I felt the same as an aerialist myself, and, as a younger woman, it impacted on my notions of what was aesthetically, stylistically, politically, performatively possible. The
Circus Oz women’s attitudes, in combination with their skill, implied danger and risk
beyond the performance of the circus body, suggesting a further menace: the threat of women misbehaving, breaking social boundaries by exceeding anything that was
hapless male personae is both acrobatically inventive and socially defiant in that it is demonstratively mean-spirited females winning the fight with force of cunning” (p.80).
considered appropriate for their gendered identity. Tait (2004) also explores the effects of these elements of performance in relation to “Australianness”:
The female circus larrikin is making a bid to take over the territory of petulant iconoclast formerly held by male identities in Australian performance culture. She provides an exciting and vital generic identity in recent circus shows. She may be an accomplished athlete but she is not a good sport who willingly follows the rules of circus or even the gender game. Circus Oz presents the female larrikin as gender outlaw. (Tait, 2004, p.81)
These “gender outlaws” demonstrate the degree of social, cultural and creative risk that women in circus and the women's circus movement brought to the developing artform. The presence of women in intimidating roles combined with their powerful, skilled circus bodies represents a serious threat to patriarchy on multiple levels. Assumptions about male dominance are disturbed by female contemporary circus artists, through the powerful ways in which they inhabit their own bodies, their muscularity and their creative choices regarding how that muscularity can be performed and what it might represent. Combining social and artistic risk-taking in their work, leading Australian circus artists such as Anni Davey, Deb Batton, Kim Kaos, Nikki Wilks, Sue Broadway and (in)famous Circus Oz strong-woman Mel Fyfe are, as Grosz (1995) explores in Space, Time and Perversion, effectively making their own bodies sources of novel rules and laws, and in turn inscribing those onto the society in which they perform.
If bodies are traversed and infiltrated by knowledges, meanings, and power, they can also, under certain circumstances, become sites of struggle and resistance, actively inscribing themselves on social practices. The activity of desiring, inscribing bodies that, though marked by law, make their own inscriptions on the bodies of others, themselves, and the law in turn, must be counterposed against the passivity of the inscribed body. (Grosz, 1995, p.36)
Grosz continues, “[i]f women are to be granted a position congruous with but independent of men, the female body must be capable of autonomous representation” (1995, p.36). Female circus bodies in Australian contemporary circus performance present themselves to be seen being as they are, congruous with but not in comparison to male circus bodies. They invite their presence to be understood as being “such that it always matters” (Agamben, 1993). Agamben's notion of “whatever being”, discussed above (see Introduction) is particularly useful in considering how the bodies of female circus artists desire to be understood as independent of their assigned gender role as assumed by the dominant values of their culture, and without comparison to their male
each positions herself as a singularity that does what she does in the collective, collaborative context of circus – a singlularity that contributes to the making of multiplicities.