Circus Bodies Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance

198 Pages·2005·2.75 MB·English

by  Peta Tait

Circus Bodies
Circus Bodies: Cultural identityin aerial performance is an extraordinary survey of 140
years of trapeze acts.
Flying trapeze acts transformed performance after 1859 with muscular male
and female performers presenting artistically graceful but athletically strenuous
flying action. In this pioneering study, Peta Tait investigates socially changing
ideas of muscular action in relation to our understanding of gender and body
shape. How do spectators see and enjoy aerial action? What cultural identities
are presented by bodies in fast, physical aerial movement?
This is an untold cultural history of bodies, explored in a range of films, such
as Trapeze (1956) and Wings of Desire (1987), and live performances, including:
• the first trapeze performers, Léotard and the Hanlon Brothers;
• female celebrities Azella, Sanyeah, black French aerialist Lala, the infamous
Leona Dare, and the female human cannonballs;
• twentieth-century gender-benders Barbette and Luisita Leers;
• the extraordinary, record-breaking, high-flying Codonas, Concellos, Gaonas,
Vazquez and Pages Troupes;
• imaginative aerial acts in Cirque du Soleil and Circus Oz productions.
‘Tait’s book brings feminist and performance theory to a popular cultural prac-
tice not yet investigated with such critical insight and verve. Tait captures the
vitality and excitement of circus performance, while opening up its relationship
to wider cultural meanings. A fascinating study of an overlooked form.’
Jill Dolan, Zachary T. Scott Family Chair in Drama,
University of Texas at Austin
Peta Taitis Professor of Theatre and Drama at La Trobe University, Australia.
She is author of Performing Emotions: Gender, Bodies, Spaces in Chekhov’s Drama and
Stanislavski’s Theatre (2002) as well as books on gender identity in Australian
theatre, and editor of Body Show/s(2000).

Circus Bodies
Cultural identity in aerial
performance
Peta Tait
First published 2005 by Routledge
2 Park Square,Milton Park,Abingdon,Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge
270 Madison Ave.,New York,NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2005 Peta Tait
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical,or other means,now known or hereafter
invented,including photocopying and recording,or in any
information storage or retrieval system,without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tait,Peta,1953–
Circus bodies :Cultural identity in aerial performance / Peta Tait.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Acrobatics—Social aspects. I.Title.
GV552.T34 2005
796.47—dc22 2004027371
ISBN 0-203-39130-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0–415–32937–X (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–32938–8 (pbk)
Contents
List of illustrations vii
Acknowledgements viii
Archive collections and abbreviations ix
Introduction: aerial bodies 1
Discursive apparatus 4
1 Graceful manliness, unfeminine maidens and erotic gods 9
Muscular flying action 9
Dangerous women 16
A gothic science 25
Ambidextrous sexing 28
Cultural paradox 31
2 Unnatural acts, female strongmen 37
Arrogant Amazons? 37
Perfected womanhood and iron jaws 40
Deadly damsels 48
Balancing butterflies 55
Triple somersaults backwards 57
Enjoying kinetic freedom 60
3 Cross-dressing and female muscular drag 66
Gender tricksters 66
Man-woman and spaces in between 70
Open secrets and silences 75
Unavoidable identity risks 77
Slippery work and nationality slippage 84
vi Contents
4 Gender competition, camp spectacles and impossible
machismo 90
Pretty tough competition 91
Action hero scandals 95
Double fashions in triples 100
Catching pains in cinema 107
Girls with muscles of steel 112
Quadruple macho acts 114
5 Androgyny to queer violence: Cirque du Soleil, Archaos and
Circus Oz 120
Banned 121
Androgynous charm 126
Aggro femmes 131
Chimeric circus 137
6 Ecstasy and visceral flesh in motion 141
Delight or anxiety? 142
Cinema’s aerial action 143
Catching body phenomenologies 147
Pleasurable flesh, ecstatic motion 150
Glossary 153
Aerial apparatus 153
Movements 154
Notes 156
References 166
Index 179
Illustrations
1.1 Léotard poster. 10
1.2 Madame Sanyeah (possibly Maude). 19
1.3 Edythe Siegrist Troupe. 32
2.1 Miss Lala at the Cirque Fernandoby Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas. 44
2.2 Folies Bergère Leona Dare, 1877, Paris by Jules Chéret. 47
2.3 Emma Jutau, Courier Barnum and London, 1883. 49
2.4 Alar, Barnum and Bailey Herald, 1896. 54
2.5 Butterfly Act, directed by Barbette. 57
2.6 Jordans and Clarkonians, Courier, 3 June 1907. 59
2.7 (Probably) Lena Jordan, The New York World, 6 September 1896: 16. 60
2.8 The Flying Grigolatis Girls, Courier, 3 June 1907. 62
3.1 Barbette à l’Empire, 1 December 1927, by Juliette et Marthe Vesque,
Paris. 73
3.2 Barbette 1926. 74
3.3 Luisita Leers on trapeze. 79
3.4 Luisita Leers poster. 83
4.1 Flying Codonas, Alfredo and Lalo Codona and Vera Bruce. 99
4.2 1937 poster of 16 aerialists including Concellos, Comets and
Randolls. 101
4.3 National Police Gazette, August 1947: 12. 106
4.4 Fay Alexander flying to Eddie Ward Jr. 109
4.5 Catcher Kenneth Anderson, Health and Strength, 79 (26), 28 December
1950: front page. 110
4.6 The Flying Vazquez. 116
4.7 Jill and The Flying Pages, Big Apple Circus, 2000–1. 118
5.1 Aerial straps from Varekai™ by Cirque du Soleil®. 130
5.2 Circus Oz 2001, Anni Davey and Kareena Oates. 134
Acknowledgements
I am greatly appreciative of Steve Gossard’s generous assistance and our invalu-
able exchanges. Thank you to circus historians George Speaight and John
Turner in England; William Slout and Hovey Burgess in the USA; and Mark St
Leon, Fred Braid and Jim Fogarty in Australia. Ongoing thanks to my theatre
studies colleagues: Julie Holledge, Meredith Rogers, Geoffrey Milne and Ian
Carruthers, and others who have looked out for relevant articles. Thank you to
my aerialist collaborators in The Party Line, and all the aerialists that I have
interviewed including the 13 Australian women in 2000. Thanks to the stimu-
lating students in my subject at Melbourne’s National Institute of Circus Arts.
I am grateful to the book’s readers for their effort and astute suggestions
knowing that they are under pressure of their own deadlines: Jane Goodall,
Tracy Davis, Ramsay Burt, Philipa Rothfield and Peggy Phelan. Once again I
am completely indebted to my longtime reader, Melissa Boyde, for her time
and immeasurable support. Thanks to the librarians at the numerous archives
listed below, CW’s Erin Foley, and the long-suffering La Trobe University
(LTU) interlibrary loans staff for their professionalism. A big thank you for
research assistance to aerialist Jane Mullett for her thoughtful contribution, aeri-
alist Kathryn Niesche for inspiration and information over the years, Sue
Whyte, Stephanie Barnaud in France, Diane Carlyle, Jonathan Marshall, Megg
Walstab, Eva Fisch, Annie McGuigan and Maria Brigida de Miranda. I received
crucial assistance from LTU Central Grants in 2000 and 2002, and from the
Australian Research Council with a Discovery Grant, 2003–5, which made this
research possible, and support from the LTU’s School of CACE and Faculty of
HSS. My sincere thanks to Talia Rogers and her assistants for their support.
Measurement conversion table
(in feet and inches to accord with historical measurements)
1 inch = 2.54 centimetres
12 inches or 1 foot = 0.3048 metres
3 feet = 0.9144 metres
Archive collections and
abbreviations
Citation refers to the first viewing of the material
BCML Braathen Collection, Milner Library storage, Illinois State University,
USA
BM British Museum Newspaper Library, Colindale, London
BP Bridgeport Public Library, USA
Clipper The New York Clipper
CW Circus World Museum, Robert Parkinson Library, Baraboo, USA
HC Hippisley Coxe Collection, Theatre Museum Study Room, London
HFNF Hal Fisher Collection, National Fairground Archive, University of
Sheffield, England
HM HorsLesMurs Archive, Paris
IL Islington Library Reference, Local History Collection, London
JJBL John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford University,
England
MANF Malcolm Airey Collection, National Fairground Archive, University
of Sheffield, England
ML Special Collections, Milner Library, Illinois State University, USA
MM Mander and Mitchenson Collection, London
ES Ecole supérieure des arts du cirque, châlons-sur-Marne, France
NF National Fairground Archive, University of Sheffield
NYPL Billy Rose Collection incorporating Townsend Walsh Collection,
Performing Arts, New York Public Library, USA
NY New York Historical Society
PAL Performing Arts Library, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne
PC Pansy Chinery Collection, Theatre Museum and Victoria and Albert
Storage, London
TM Theatre Museum Study Room, London
TS Toole-Stott Collection, University of California Santa Barbara, USA
UA K. D. Hartman’s Collection, University of Amsterdam library