The Economic Lives of Circus “Artists”: Canadian Circus Performers and the New Economy

Stephens, Lindsay

doi:10.22230/cjc.2015v40n2a2817

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…In 2001, circus arts was recognized as a legitimate art form in the province of Quebec (Leroux, 2016a) and, a few years later, in 2009, by the Canada Council for the Arts (Katyana Stephens, 2015). Consequently, circus schools and companies progressively opened their protected and secretive creative spaces to scholars leading to a limited yet widespread research endeavor (Leroux, 2016b).…”

Section: A Socio‐cultural and Embodied Conceptualization Of Creativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Embodied Journey of an Idea: An Exploration of Movement Creativity in Circus Arts

Richard

Glăveanu

Aubertin

2022

Journal of Creative Behavior

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Knowledge about embodied creativity is in its infancy. In circus arts, performers are nowadays 'owning' their creativity making this performance domain fruitful to study embodied creativity. Building on sociocultural creativity perspectives and radical embodied cognitive sciences, the current study aimed at exploring movement creativity by tracking the journey of embodied ideas in a Circus School. Specifically, this research questioned how the interactions between actors, audiences, affordances, and actions support the emergence and evolution of movement ideas. A narrative ethnographic research design, gathering process observations in situ, was used to scrutinize the movement ideas generated by student-artists, teachers, and artistic advisors over a 4-month period. Reflexive thematic analysis led to the design of an exhaustive mapping which illustrates the key findings. Namely, the journey of an embodied idea is influenced by stimulating spaces and collaborative socio-cultural environment which ignite the actors' desire to create. This desire, in turn, unfolds into multiple ideational pathways paved with research strategies (e.g., improvisation, constraints, variability) and emotions (i.e., pleasant and unpleasant). Embodied ideas then go through an assessment process leading (or not) to its growth. Results are discussed in light of embodied, pedagogical, and emotional considerations offering an alternative to the conceptualization of idea.

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Section: A Socio‐cultural and Embodied Conceptualization Of Creativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Embodied Journey of an Idea: An Exploration of Movement Creativity in Circus Arts

Richard

Glăveanu

Aubertin

2022

Journal of Creative Behavior

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“…There is considerable risk in aerialism, including financial, gendered, physical, and emotional. Circus workers are precarious workers (Stephens 2015). They experience economic precarity, as well as other forms of risk since circus companies offer limited contracts and few benefits.…”

Section: Aerialism and Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“You Have to Accept the Pain”: Body Callusing and Body Capital in Circus Aerialism

Walby

Stuart

2021

QSR

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Little sociological research has examined the work of circus aerialists. Drawing from interviews with 31 circus aerialists in Canada, we explore what aerialists say about their bodies. Circus aerialism is an intense form of physical work, and aerialists endure intense pain during training and performance. Engaging with sociologies of the body and injury, we examine how body capital is generated, maintained, and lost in the career of the aerialist, as well as how injury accelerates this process. Injury and “aging out” of the circus are prominent themes in what aerialists say about their bodies. Arguing that circus aerialism is an undervalued form of work in which risk accumulates in aerialist bodies, we explore how aerialist bodies provide tacit cues about how to avoid injury and when to consider retirement. In the conclusion, we explain how this work contributes to sociologies of the body and circus.

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“…In doing this, I found similar emergent sensations were shared by my acrobatic and my academic practice. Using established scholarly practices of writing, reading, coding, counting, organizing, and textual analysis, some concepts surfaced with more articulated force, they became the formal intellectual products of this process (Stephens, 2012, 2016); they explain phenomenon and link to other concepts. But despite this evidence of scholarly work, these “thoughts” emerged in an eerily similar way to the movements of my acrobatic practice, in that they were also informed by the desires, feelings, and sensations of my body.…”

Section: Attending To Sensationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming Acrobat, Becoming Academic: An Affective, Autoethnographic Inquiry Into Collective Practices of Knowing and Becoming

Stephens

2018

Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies

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This article mobilizes a Spinozo–Deleuzian understanding of affect to articulate connections between embodied sensation and academic thinking, connections which surfaced during my ethnographic and autoethnographic research as a circus performer. I argue against reifying differences between the production of knowledge and of movement, suggesting we explore similarities in the conditions of their emergence including reflection, multiplicity, and responsiveness to repetition. In so doing, I challenge hegemonic ideas about who belongs in the body of an academic; inviting us to better understand our “less-rational” and more collective selves in becoming purveyors of academic knowledge.

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The Economic Lives of Circus “Artists”: Canadian Circus Performers and the New Economy

Cited by 8 publications

References 28 publications

The Embodied Journey of an Idea: An Exploration of Movement Creativity in Circus Arts

The Embodied Journey of an Idea: An Exploration of Movement Creativity in Circus Arts

“You Have to Accept the Pain”: Body Callusing and Body Capital in Circus Aerialism

Becoming Acrobat, Becoming Academic: An Affective, Autoethnographic Inquiry Into Collective Practices of Knowing and Becoming

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