Women in Circus and the Women of Wunderkammer

I know I already wrote about C!RCA's contribution to this year's edition of Montreal Completement Cirque. And I wrote quite a lot, at that. But this particular point deserved its own post.

If there's one thing I am proud of when it comes to circus, it's the role of women. While there are definitely gender roles in circus, some disciplines are considered more masculine and others more feminine, it's not at all uncommon to see those roles reversed and broken. Moreover, women have typically always held the same place as men, especially in traditional circus. After all, man or woman, you've got to bust your ass to learn those skills and that earns you respect. A woman in circus is just as strong as her male counterpart.

 Antoinette Concello, known as the greatest woman flyer of all time

and the first woman to do a triple somersault on the flying trapeze.

And yet somehow, I feel that I see more and more shows that consist of a bunch of guys and “the girl”. Or that during a group act, the men will do the majority of the tricks, and the girl will do the one that involves the splits. Or worse still, big strong men and flaky damsels in distress…

Sigh…

I’m sure that existed in traditional circus as well. But now that circus is more theatrical, the skills and theatre as so intimately linked that you can’t always see the female acrobat’s prowess behind the acting.

The example of this that always comes to mind is the Cyr wheel act in Corteo. I saw Corteo when it premiered in Montreal a million years ago, so maybe its changed, but at the time, the act was presented as two guys playing around on these big wheels. Then a girl comes in and to tease her, they place her on the wheel and start spinning her around. They even do double Cyr wheel at one point. The woman acrobat screamed the whole time. Now clearly, she’s a skilled artist. But the fact that she is a competent acrobat took a back seat to the image of a scared little girl.

Then there are the women of C!RCA. I’m not sure who deserves more applause, the badass lady acrobats or director Yaron Lifschitz for having the vision to showcase the badassery of his very strong and skilled female artists.

This is no small feat. It’s not hard for a strong, powerful woman on stage to come off as masculine. This can very quickly turn into tomboyishness, and that, into caricature. The talented ladies of C!RCA manage to balance that strength with femininity. And even though the characters they portray make no excuses for their sexuality, they remain in complete control of that sexuality and are no way objectified by it.

Like I said, no small feat.

And that’s just the ‘acting’ component!

These women are just as likely to be the porter of a figure as they are to be the one tossed into the air. It’s not often that you see a man standing on a woman’s head. And it should be made clear that this isn't the "girl ports one trick" equivalent of "girl's only trick is the splits". These woman play a huge role in all the group hand-to-hand acts. They catch, they  fly, they port. These are acrobats cut from a very fine cloth, indeed.

Ladies of C!RCA, as a woman who does a circus discipline typically regarded as male, I tip my hat to you.