Résumé :
Thanks to its multidisciplinary, playful, risky and bodily character, social circus practice has great potential to overcome and transform boundaries and hierarchies, support identity building and undermine essentialist views. This paper stems from the author’s long-standing engagement with circus and social circus practices, and is based on ethnographic investigation of contemporary circus practices in Italy. The case of social circus is analysed to look at the ways in which Organised Cultural Encounters (OCE) foster ‘meaningful encounters’ (Wilson 2016), delineating new lines of enquiry into the nexus between subjective and social effects of social circus. The article argues that the specificities of circus practice – embodied knowledge, trust and creativity – hold a significant potential within the cultural encounter frame. It describes the strategies employed by circus educators to manage bodies and emotions during the circus workshop, claiming for the need to include unpredictability in the design of social circus as an OCE.

Localisation : Traitement documentaire B

DOI  : 10.1080/07256868.2017.1379962

• Ex. 1 — Consultation sur place