Kentika - Documents

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Fighting nature : travelling menageries, animal acts and war shows

Tait, Peta
Sydney : Sydney University Press, 2016

Throughout the 19th century, animals were integrated into staged scenarios of confrontation, ranging from lion acts in small cages to large-scale re-enactments of war. Initially presenting a handful of exotic animals, travelling menageries grew to contain multiple species in their thousands. These 19th-century menageries entrenched beliefs about the human right to exploit nature through war-like practices against other animal species. Animal shows became a stimulus for antisocial behaviour as locals taunted animals, caused fights, and even turned into violent mobs. Human societal problems were difficult to separate from issues of cruelty to animals.

Apart from reflecting human capacity for fighting and aggression, and the belief in human dominance over nature, these animal performances also echoed cultural fascination with conflict, war and colonial expansion, as the grand spectacles of imperial power reinforced state authority and enhanced public displays of nationhood and nationalistic evocations of colonial empires.

Fighting Nature is an insightful analysis of the historical legacy of 19th-century colonialism, war, animal acquisition and transportation. This legacy of entrenched beliefs about the human right to exploit other animal species is yet to be defeated.

Throughout the 19th century, animals were integrated into staged scenarios of confrontation, ranging from lion acts in small cages to large-scale re-enactments of war. Initially presenting a handful of exotic animals, travelling menageries grew to contain multiple species in their thousands. These 19th-century menageries entrenched beliefs about the human right to exploit nature through war-like practices against other animal species. Animal ...

Cote : 791.320 1 T135f 2016

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LIVRES

The Routledge circus studies reader

Tait, Peta ; Lavers, Katie
New York : Routledge , 2016

The Routledge Circus Studies Reader offers an absorbing critical introduction to this diverse and emerging field. It brings together the work of over 30 scholars in this discipline, including Janet Davis, Helen Stoddart and Peta Tait, to highlight and address the field’s key historical, critical and theoretical issues. It is organised into three accessible sections, Perspectives, Precedents and Presents, which approach historical aspects, current issues, and the future of circus performance.

The chapters, grouped together into 13 theme-based sub-sections, provide a clear entry point into the field and emphasise the diversity of approaches available to students and scholars of circus studies. Classic accounts of performance, including pieces by Philippe Petit and Friedrich Nietzsche, are included alongside more recent scholarship in the field.

Edited by two scholars whose work is strongly connected to the dynamic world of performance, The Routledge Circus Studies Reader is an essential teaching and study resource for the emerging discipline of circus studies. It also provides a stimulating introduction to the field for lovers of circus. [editor summary]

The Routledge Circus Studies Reader offers an absorbing critical introduction to this diverse and emerging field. It brings together the work of over 30 scholars in this discipline, including Janet Davis, Helen Stoddart and Peta Tait, to highlight and address the field’s key historical, critical and theoretical issues. It is organised into three accessible sections, Perspectives, Precedents and Presents, which approach historical aspects, ...

Cote : 791.301 T135r 2016

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LIVRES

Wild and dangerous performances : animals, emotions, circus

Tait, Peta
Hamshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Elephants, lions, tigers and leopards evoked fascination and awe, fear and excitement in the twentieth-century circus. Wild and Dangerous Performances: Animals, Emotions, Circus explores what happened when big cats roared on cue and elephants danced together. Acts in live circus and cinema reveal how humans anthropomorphize animals with their emotions. Trained animals became caught up in scientific precepts from Darwin on emotions and in opposition to animal performance. This history considers acts by Carl Hagenbeck, Frank Bostock, Alfred Court, Clyde Beatty and others in leading international circuses. Descriptions of animal performers were vivid and moving, but completely contradictory. Animals embody a phenomenology of transacted emotions and feelings in culture, recently exemplified by Christian, the lion. Contributing to the growing scholarship in animal studies, this fascinating study has much to offer to anyone interested in circus animal performance, performance history, animal emotions and animal rights and ethics. [editor summary]

Elephants, lions, tigers and leopards evoked fascination and awe, fear and excitement in the twentieth-century circus. Wild and Dangerous Performances: Animals, Emotions, Circus explores what happened when big cats roared on cue and elephants danced together. Acts in live circus and cinema reveal how humans anthropomorphize animals with their emotions. Trained animals became caught up in scientific precepts from Darwin on emotions and in ...

Cote : 791.320 1 T135w 2012

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LIVRES

Zene & Cirkus = Women & Circus

Kralj, Ivan ; Sizorn, Magali ; Quentin, Anne ; Tait, Peta ; Davis, Janet M ; Carmeli, Yoram S. ; Drasler, Jana ; Kendall, Jessica ; Fratellini, Valérie ; Damkjaer, Camilla ; English, Rose ; Herts, Laura ; Govedic, Natasa
Zagreb : Mala performerska scena, 2011

Un incontournable ouvrage de référence qui apporte une riche reflexion sur le développement du rôle et des influences de la Femme dans les arts du cirque à travers le temps et envers la communauté au sens large. Publié suite à une conférence multidisciplinaire « Zene & Cirkus » qui s’est tenue à Zagreb (Croatie) en novembre 2009, cet ouvrage regroupe les textes des conférences des historiens, spécialistes de théâtre, anthropologues, artistes et journalistes qui ont proposé leur point de vue sur la contribution de la Femme au cirque traditionnel et actuel. De plus, cet ouvrage présente plus de 191 superbes photos issues d’archives publiques et privées.

Un incontournable ouvrage de référence qui apporte une riche reflexion sur le développement du rôle et des influences de la Femme dans les arts du cirque à travers le temps et envers la communauté au sens large. Publié suite à une conférence multidisciplinaire « Zene & Cirkus » qui s’est tenue à Zagreb (Croatie) en novembre 2009, cet ouvrage regroupe les textes des conférences des historiens, spécialistes de théâtre, anthropologues, artistes et ...

Cote : 791.308 2 K894z 2011

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LIVRES

Circus bodies : cultural identity in aerial performance

Tait, Peta
Abingdon [Angleterre] ; New York : Routledge, 2005

This pioneering study is one of the major publications in the increasingly popular and largely undocumented area of circus studies. Through photographs and illustrations, Peta Tait presents an extraordinary survey of 140 years of trapeze acts and the socially changing ideas of muscular action in relation to our understanding of gender and sexuality. She questions how spectators see and enjoy aerial actions, and what cultural identities are presented by bodies in fast, physical aerial movement. [editor summary]

This pioneering study is one of the major publications in the increasingly popular and largely undocumented area of circus studies. Through photographs and illustrations, Peta Tait presents an extraordinary survey of 140 years of trapeze acts and the socially changing ideas of muscular action in relation to our understanding of gender and sexuality. She questions how spectators see and enjoy aerial actions, and what cultural identities are ...

Cote : 791.340 1 T135c 2005

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LIVRES

CIrcus bodies : Cultural identity in aerial performance

Tait, Peta

Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance is an extraordinary survey of 140 years of high-wire acrobatics. 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 sexuality. How do spectators see and enjoy aerial action? What cultural identities are presented by bodies in fast, physical aerial movement?

Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance is an extraordinary survey of 140 years of high-wire acrobatics. 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 sexuality. How do ...

Cote : 796.4722

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ARTICLES DE LIVRES

Political clowns, strong women and animal-free
Circus reimagined through 1970s avant-garde political theatre

Mullett, Jane ; Tait, Peta
2022

The radicalism of 1970s’ social movements manifest in the arts and directly in innovative theatre that co-opted circus. The anti-war, pro-worker and feminist politics imbedded in the avant-garde theatre of the 1970s were expressly reimaged as circus action that was different and political. This theatrical circus expanded the circus form and the origins of contemporary circus from Circus Oz to Cirque du Soleil can be found in the idealisation of circus at this time. But did the circus appeal to performance activists for its romantic ideal of a community living on the margins outside society or for its physical action that left impressions of thrill and excitement in the popular imaginary? This chapter explores how this reimagined acrobatic circus with strong women but without animal acts was often raucous, mutinous and irrepressible, and argues that performance activists satirised circus as much as theatre.

The radicalism of 1970s’ social movements manifest in the arts and directly in innovative theatre that co-opted circus. The anti-war, pro-worker and feminist politics imbedded in the avant-garde theatre of the 1970s were expressly reimaged as circus action that was different and political. This theatrical circus expanded the circus form and the origins of contemporary circus from Circus Oz to Cirque du Soleil can be found in the idealisation of ...

Cote : 791.301 J899c 2022

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ARTICLES DE LIVRES

Risk and colonial touring : female circus performers in aerial and lion acts

Tait, Peta
2021

When Fillis’ Circus reached Sydney in 1892 from southern Africa, there was official political intervention to ban Madame Jasia Scherazade from the lion act. Yet a female presenter in a small cage lion act had been an established role in England and Europe for nearly 50 years. Moreover, the athleticism of female circus performers was widely accepted in colonial Sydney and high-wire walker, Ella Zuila, rose to prominence in Sydney in 1872. This chapter compares Zuila’s and Jasia’s acts and weighs up whether the government’s official intervention was due to the perception of physical risk from animal attack or attributable to more complex moral concerns about the transgression of gender identity. It argues that in addition to the perceptions of physical risk during the performance and the risk of an accident during travel, there were social and political identity risks for female circus performers touring globally for economic gain. The transnational histories of Jasia and Zuila reveal that circus identities were emblematic of social complexity. In contrast to an aerial act that blurred the gender identity of a muscular acrobat such as Zuila, the lion act conveyed heightened impressions of masculine control over others, including animals, so that Jasia was confronting the premise of social and political control in white settler society.

When Fillis’ Circus reached Sydney in 1892 from southern Africa, there was official political intervention to ban Madame Jasia Scherazade from the lion act. Yet a female presenter in a small cage lion act had been an established role in England and Europe for nearly 50 years. Moreover, the athleticism of female circus performers was widely accepted in colonial Sydney and high-wire walker, Ella Zuila, rose to prominence in Sydney in 1872. This ...

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ARTICLES DE LIVRES

History of circus animals

Tait, Peta
2021

This chapter presents a historical overview of nonhuman animals (animals) in the nineteenth-century circus and travelling menagerie, and trained acts in the twentieth-century circus and cinema. The early modern circus began in the late eighteenth century around the time public menageries and zoos were emerging to influence scientific and social attitudes. Circus benefited from the way exotic animal display stimulated a growing nineteenth-century colonial business of hunting, capturing, transporting and trading wild animals to colonial centers; this ran parallel with campaigns to improve the welfare of domesticated animals. Exhibiting practices reached a monumental scale by the turn-of-the-twentieth-century with hundreds of thousands of animals as dead specimens in museums and live specimens in menageries and circus [→History of Animal Collections/AnimalTaxonomy]. By then, prominent hunters in parts of Africa and Asia were publicly warning of a worrying decline in species numbers in the wild where circus animals were obtained.

This chapter presents a historical overview of nonhuman animals (animals) in the nineteenth-century circus and travelling menagerie, and trained acts in the twentieth-century circus and cinema. The early modern circus began in the late eighteenth century around the time public menageries and zoos were emerging to influence scientific and social attitudes. Circus benefited from the way exotic animal display stimulated a growing nineteenth-century ...

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ARTICLES DE LIVRES

Animals, circus, and war re-enactment : military action to colonial wars

Tait, Peta
2021

Thirty galloping horses at Astley’s Circus in 1824 underpinned the presentation of the Battle of Waterloo, which subsequently became a staple circus act during the first half of the nineteenth century. Military action was imbedded in the early circus, indicative of both an increased number of soldiers in nineteenth-century society and its ensuing militarisation. This chapter explores the use of horses and other animals in the re-enactment of war in the nineteenth-century circus. War re-enactments expanded to encompass colonial conflicts, so circus became complicit in colonising practices and attitudes to colonised peoples in the British colonies and towards exotic animals that were shipped in increasing numbers. In the 1880s a distinctive war-re-enactment genre emerged, exemplified by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, which toured internationally and was integrated back into circus. This chapter argues that it was the action of horses and other nonhuman animals that instigated and made battle re-enactment seem authentic but that circus war action replicated the pattern of actual war in which animals went unnoticed. This pattern was reversed with the Boer War re-enactment. Directed by circus entrepreneur Frank Fillis for the 1904 St Louis Exposition, it sought authenticity by featuring the death of fifty horses on the battlefield.

Thirty galloping horses at Astley’s Circus in 1824 underpinned the presentation of the Battle of Waterloo, which subsequently became a staple circus act during the first half of the nineteenth century. Military action was imbedded in the early circus, indicative of both an increased number of soldiers in nineteenth-century society and its ensuing militarisation. This chapter explores the use of horses and other animals in the re-enactment of war ...

Cote : 791.301 A776c 2021

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ARTICLES DE LIVRES

Risk, danger and other paradoxes in circus and Circus Oz parody

Tait, Peta
2016

This chapter explores the paradoxes of the circus form, in relation to perceptions of risk-taking and the performance of danger, and by contrasting examples of flying trapeze acts and Circus Oz aerial acts. Although circus signifies large social concepts such as freedom, marginality, and human exceptionalism, the conceptual focus is on how circus performance is perceived as dangerous in visual as well as metaphoric ways. Circus aerial acts are discussed to unravel some of the paradoxical implications of perceived and actual risk. All circus acts are intended to hold an audience's attention but some acts are viewed as having more risk and therefore being more dangerous than others. Contemporary circus mitigates against the risk management that has spread into all public activity in recent decades in ways that curtail behaviour and fragment judgement and with parallels to what Mary Douglas discerns are 'political uses of danger' in the 'politicization of risk'.

This chapter explores the paradoxes of the circus form, in relation to perceptions of risk-taking and the performance of danger, and by contrasting examples of flying trapeze acts and Circus Oz aerial acts. Although circus signifies large social concepts such as freedom, marginality, and human exceptionalism, the conceptual focus is on how circus performance is perceived as dangerous in visual as well as metaphoric ways. Circus aerial acts are ...

Cote : 791.301 T135r 2016

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ARTICLES DE LIVRES

Ecstasy and visceral flesh in motion

Tait, Peta
2016

This chapter starts with a note on some theoretical ideas about spectators’ sensory perceptions of muscular bodies. Aerial bodies are received bodily, and viscerally. It is clearly an individual's social experience of motion when, for example, a woman travelling alone might consider train travel unsafe for reasons to do with her gender, and a spectator's economic position might determine the extent of his or her familiarity with train or air travel motion. Like circus, bodies in action stunts for sensory effect are ubiquitous in cinema's imagery of motion, and more recently in game-based technologies, which often have unique motion aesthetics that can induce dizziness. Wenders repeatedly uses a male driver in his other films to show characters' movement as they unsuccessfully seek 'a consummation of the spatial and emotional dynamics' in his cinema's visualization of the 'interaction of motion and emotion'.

This chapter starts with a note on some theoretical ideas about spectators’ sensory perceptions of muscular bodies. Aerial bodies are received bodily, and viscerally. It is clearly an individual's social experience of motion when, for example, a woman travelling alone might consider train travel unsafe for reasons to do with her gender, and a spectator's economic position might determine the extent of his or her familiarity with train or air ...

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ARTICLES DE LIVRES

Live performance research: digitised circus

Tait, Peta
2015

The Circus Oz Living Archive encompasses Circus Oz’s live performances over 35 years. It provides a prototype for body-based live performance documentation and preservation for artistic and company requirements and public interest. Artists have been recording non-script-based live art as it happened for several decades; the Circus Oz Living Archive was only possible because Circus Oz had filmed its own shows over 35 years. The Living Archive contains a large number of recorded performances which, collected together, facilitate comparative analysis of different versions of an annual show as well as comparisons across decades. The author has been able to utilise extensive footage at earlier stages of the project to analyse the company’s work, drawing on cultural theory frameworks and with the knowledge that the documented performance was a reliable complete record of an annual show and was authorised by its artists.

The Circus Oz Living Archive encompasses Circus Oz’s live performances over 35 years. It provides a prototype for body-based live performance documentation and preservation for artistic and company requirements and public interest. Artists have been recording non-script-based live art as it happened for several decades; the Circus Oz Living Archive was only possible because Circus Oz had filmed its own shows over 35 years. The Living Archive ...

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ARTICLES DE LIVRES

Queer circus bodies in rock'n roll circus's the dark and club swing's razor baby

Tait, Peta
2001

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ARTICLES DE LIVRES

Fleshed, muscular phenomenologies : across sexed and queer circus bodies

Tait, Peta
2000

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ARTICLES DE LIVRES

Technologies of risk, fear and fun: Human and nonhuman circus performance

Tait, Peta

This chapter contends that circus arts rely on technological invention of apparatus to advance athletic and aesthetic innovation, and that this process then influences wider social practice. The Hanlon (Hanlon-Lees) Brothers set new limits in acrobatic action with aerial technology for their nineteenth-century circus act, subsequently developing the safety net for flying trapeze and inventing new stage machinery for pantomime in their macabre theatre. The rebound action on the safety net in circus inspired the twentieth-century invention of the trampoline by George Nissen, and trampoline and its action became a leisure activity, a new circus act and an Olympic sport. This chapter asks: What theatrical emotions intersect with these performance technologies? It finds that the Hanlon-Lees (during the 1860–1870s) and Nissen (in the 1930–1940s) undertook their early artistic activity in a society under threat of war, but that they performed divergent emotional responses to risk and fear within society. Both included nonhuman animals in the performance—in support of impressions of frightening menace and comic death in the Hanlon-Lees’ theatre, and to reassure the public with comic playfulness in Nissen’s performance.

This chapter contends that circus arts rely on technological invention of apparatus to advance athletic and aesthetic innovation, and that this process then influences wider social practice. The Hanlon (Hanlon-Lees) Brothers set new limits in acrobatic action with aerial technology for their nineteenth-century circus act, subsequently developing the safety net for flying trapeze and inventing new stage machinery for pantomime in their macabre ...

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ARTICLES DE PERIODIQUES

Replacing injured horses, cross-dressing and dust : modernist circus technologies in Asia

Tait, Peta
Studies in Theatre and Performance vol.38 n°2, p.149-164, 2018

Horse performers were replaced by machines demonstrating the wonders of electricity and cinema on the third circus tour of Asia by the well-known equestrian, Clarke family in 1915. Circus was part of the wider economic shift away from equine capital. The analysis considers leading horse acts in early modernist circus and their continuing popularity with the multi-racial Asian audiences, in relation to technological change and the socio-economic legacies of European colonial dominance in Asia. Four out of six horses died on the Clarke’s first tour of colonial Asia, an exceptionally high mortality rate and three died on the second tour, and this article argues that a high rate of horse injury and mortality complicates a claim that the shift to scientific display in the 1915 entertainment was simply reflecting progressive modernisation or the shortage of horses at the beginning of World War One. While the 2015 replacement of horses provides a literal demonstration of the scientific shift from horse power to electric power during the modernist (anthropocene) era, it additionally prefigures the displacement of the live animal with filmed imagery in entertainment. International ship travel continued to hold considerable physical risk for the horse performers, which meant it posed economic risks for the circus aesthetic. [editor summary]

Horse performers were replaced by machines demonstrating the wonders of electricity and cinema on the third circus tour of Asia by the well-known equestrian, Clarke family in 1915. Circus was part of the wider economic shift away from equine capital. The analysis considers leading horse acts in early modernist circus and their continuing popularity with the multi-racial Asian audiences, in relation to technological change and the socio-economic ...

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ARTICLES DE PERIODIQUES

Burlesque costuming and sensationalist circus animal acts

Tait, Peta
Australasian Drama Studies n° 63, p.84-95, October 2013

Burlesque in theatre history came to broadly denote exaggerated comic exchanges and female performers in stylised costumes that revealed the body. Female burlesque practices included cross-dressing in male clothing and were intended to be covertly sexually titillating. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, when body flesh is on show everywhere, it is interesting to find that burlesque remains popular. But then, female burlesque was never simply an exhibition of flesh, even in the circus. [author summary]

Burlesque in theatre history came to broadly denote exaggerated comic exchanges and female performers in stylised costumes that revealed the body. Female burlesque practices included cross-dressing in male clothing and were intended to be covertly sexually titillating. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, when body flesh is on show everywhere, it is interesting to find that burlesque remains popular. But then, female burlesque was never ...

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ARTICLES DE PERIODIQUES

Blondin conquers nature and invents the circus celebrity

Tait, Peta
Early Popular Visual Culture vol.11 n°3, p.205-217, September 2013

Blondin walked across Niagara Falls on a rope in 1859 and created a sensation. His fame made him synonymous with the high rope act. Drawing on archival and secondary sources, this article explains that Blondin’s rapid rise to international prominence, the merchandizing industry surrounding him, his large earning capacity, global travel, his special shows for journalists, and at least one complicated story of female fandom, pre-empt a modern idea of celebrity. The public perceives celebrities as ‘superhuman’. Did Blondin contribute to the invention of celebrity? Blondin’s reputation and his feats slide from the conquering of geographical space into ideas of mastery over untamed nature and even control over wild animals. Blondin’s athletic skill was undeniable but the varied costumes that framed the act also reinforced cultural notions of predatory prowess. His seemingly impossible feats could be celebrated as triumphant displays of masculinity and, more broadly, of European dominance over geography, other peoples and even species. Underlying the nineteenth century idea of celebrity arising from Blondin’s physical agility were hierarchical relations between races and cultures. As his name became a brand, his act denoted extremes of spatial inversion and gravity defying action conflated with the conquest of nature’s force. [author summary]

Blondin walked across Niagara Falls on a rope in 1859 and created a sensation. His fame made him synonymous with the high rope act. Drawing on archival and secondary sources, this article explains that Blondin’s rapid rise to international prominence, the merchandizing industry surrounding him, his large earning capacity, global travel, his special shows for journalists, and at least one complicated story of female fandom, pre-empt a modern idea ...

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ARTICLES DE PERIODIQUES

Ice Burns : identity fluidity and sensory body perception

Tait, Peta
Performance Research : A Journal of the Performing Arts, 2013

Cote : CIRQ-444-NON

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