Nick van der Heyden, queer circus performer, garnered an approving laugh from a room full of circus students in Tilburg. He just told them that he had found a new lease of life by doing his performances as an acrobat from now on as a drag queen. 'They thought something of that here at school. There, the new circus was mainly a matter of the simplest possible outfits and drab t-shirts.' He persevered and is now one of the forerunners of the latest innovation in circus.
Circus festival Circolo, now active in the Netherlands for over a decade, closely follows developments in circus. They go less for the big acts, but focus on the new - or experienced - creators who are looking for different paths. Those paths can come from anywhere in the world, but are now mainly found in western Europe, not only because freedom is great there, but also because war and pandemic have currently made the paths to Russia and the Far East a bit more difficult.
Response to empty glitter
The seminar with which the 2022 festival unofficially opened on 19 October offered a nice insight into the latest developments, which, as in the rest of the world, are about identity and diversity. Artists are exploring what drives them, and how they can make their personality a stake in their art.
This is where Nick van der Heyden, with his queer house act, fits right in. He brings colour to a world that for a while had to have none of it. After all, the new circus was also a bit of a reaction to the glitter and showbiz of the old circus. It was also a reaction to the Cirque du Soleil in which the act is more important than the artist performing it. However, the austerity of the circus of the 10s also had something oppressive about it, Van der Heyden experienced. In the 2013 promo video below, Van der Heyden can be seen in the then-common outfit.
It was only when he was allowed to put on a show for a friend at a club in Ibiza in which everything had to be as crazy as possible that he regained his enthusiasm. Now he is part of a movement that is bringing back the glitz and glamour in the circus in its very own way.
Always the female
Circus as a new, narrative or abstract, form of performing art is a development that is thus shocking. And everyone now has to find their own language in it. Amanda Homa, a Brazilian with Japanese roots, experienced this when she studied at circus college in France (the Mecca of European circus innovation), and later set up her own show with a male white partner. 'I discovered that whatever we did, we were looked at very traditionally. I was still mainly the female and my white partner the male. Now we are working to change that image, but it is very persistent.'
Ethnicity also plays a role, as she and a few of her fellow students who were also from Latin America experienced: 'Whatever we did, people immediately thought it was ritualistic and mystical, because that is part of the image people have of Brazil. If I did an exercise very slowly, people immediately thought it was typically Japanese, because they think Japanese art is about slowing down'.
Amanda's path to be seen as a human being, and not as a representative of a prejudice against a people or culture, fit into the development towards an art that is more personal than the impression-oriented spectacle of the old circus.
Third hand
During the seminar, Karim Randé also spoke about this. For him, the new identity he had found in the circus was very concrete. The acrobat had suffered a complicated ankle fracture in a circus accident, which after a number of operations was also found to have a wound infection. 'The pain was unbearable, and further treatment would mean that I would never get back into the circus business. I couldn't handle that thought. I asked the doctors to amputate my leg from just below the knee so that I could continue with a prosthesis.'
Now at has been playing the circus stages for about five years with an act that is in some ways more extreme than he could do with two healthy legs. Indeed, his latest innovation involves one that now allows him to climb with three hands, instead of two.
Another big advantage is that, with his infectious energy and comedic talent, he can also use his stump as a pet: 'although I will never take my prosthesis off that way outside a circus context, because people tend to want to get scared of it.'
Military acrobats
In any case, what Circus Festival Circolo - from Thursday 20 October to 30 October in Tilburg - makes clear is that circus has become an art form to be taken seriously, at least in Europe. In Morocco, it is even different. There, acrobatics does have a very long tradition, explained Sanae El Kamouni, founder of the Groupe Acrobatique de Tanger, a mixed multicultural circus company.
The followers of Moussa, a mystic scholar from the 15th century, are a guild of acrobats specialising mainly in the human pyramid. That particular form of acrobatics gained fame in the Middle Ages because it was a technique for climbing a city wall without ladders when laying siege to a city. In the 19th century, it became a kind of monastic order, with set rituals and customs. The Groupe Acrobatique de Tanger wants to free the talent that exists in Morocco a bit from the strict traditions of the Moussa, and to do so it seeks contact with other traditions from Africa and from Europe.
The show they bring now is colourful and dynamic, and quite European, or should we say 'French' in its joie de vivre and sense of drama.
Appropriation done right
During the presentation in her Keynote at the seminar, Sanae showed a video message from one of the artists, a dancer from Cameroon. This rapper and hip-hop artist talked about how happy he was to appropriate forms and stories from all the cultures he encountered, from the 130 folk cultures in his own country, to hip-hop, modern dance and Western acrobatics: 'We can only get better as human beings if we absorb each other's culture.'
In Tilburg, we can participate in that for 10 days.
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