Tales from the top
What the circus ringmaster saw
We watch in awe. We gasp, we cry, we cheer, we laugh, we go “Wow!” We close our eyes. We force them open again and glimpse the trapeze artist reaching out one powdery hand for the rolling bar. There’s a moment we think she won’t jump, that she’ll stay on the small platform two storeys above us, that the trapeze will swing back empty high across the ring, back and forward with no one riding it. But the girl in the sequins reaches forward, grips the bar with both hands… and soars.
Next year will mark 250 since circus was born in Britain. On an abandoned patch of marshland near London’s Waterloo, showman, entrepreneur and equestrian rider Philip Astley laid out a 42ft ring with a piece of rope and filled it with astounding physical acts – jugglers, acrobats, clowns, strongmen, bareback riders. It was 1768, a time of revolutions, but the revolution Astley created was a whole new art form. This spectacle was the world’s very first circus.
The anniversary of this British-born popular art form will be celebrated in the new year by a countrywide celebration; not only contemporary and traditional circuses but theatres, museums, orchestras, archives, opera singers, filmmakers and designers are joining in.
In Norwich, the Lord Mayor’s show will be transformed into a circus parade. In Newcastle-under-lyme, Astley’s birthplace, contemporary circus company Nofitstate is pitching its big top, the New Vic theatre has commissioned a new play, Astley’s Astounding Adventures, and the local shopping centre has been renamed Philip Astley Walk. In Bristol, the Royal West of England Academy is holding an exhibition, Sawdust and Sequins: The Art of Circus, accompanied by performances in the galleries.
There’s barely an art form that hasn’t been sprinkled with the glitter of the ring, from Sir Peter Blake’s circus collages to Vivienne Westwood’s fashion designs. The Beatles’ song Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite, on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, was inspired by a poster John Lennon owned of 19th-century black British circus proprietor, Pablo Fanque.
Circus is an enduring dream. It was mine. As a small girl, I watched the circus parade past the end of my street. Within hours, the park where I played was transformed into a world of wondrous, exotic people and beasts. I saw men walking on stilts and wobbling on a high wire, clowns squelching, white horses teetering on their hind legs, and an elephant strolling around a sawdust ring. I longed to run my hand over the deep ridges of its trunk, to feel the rhythm of its stride, to be transformed into the shimmering lady who smiled down from its back. Then, the next day, the magical world was gone, leaving nothing behind but swings and slides.
I never lost this common dream. But unlike others, I had to live it.
When I grew up, I ran away to the circus and became the woman in the sequinned bikini with the feathered headdress and powdery hands. Every day, we’d arrive on an unpromising site, build the big top and transform a puddled wasteland into a place of sparkle and sensuality. The ring didn’t only transform me, it transformed the world around. People came to see the tent as much as the trapeze artists.
Even the smell inside this closed world was different – musky and rank. We weren’t acting in front of an audience. We were sharing the same physical sensations as them; they carried the smell of our sweat. You literally breathe in circus. It has a sensuality shared by no other art form.
Circus in Britain today is still recognisably the stuff of storybooks. There are tumblers, acrobats, contortionists, trapezes and clowns. There are camp boys in tights, girls in sequinned outfits, and fishnets are still stretched over powerful thighs. The thrill is still physical, and the possibility of a fall ever-present. But circus has evolved into new forms of expression, in the same radical spirit that Astley founded the very first performance. It’s been reworked and reinvented by fabulous contemporary companies, such as the female-led, London-based Upswing and Mimbre.
Many contemporary companies are setting off on the road again, moving out from the theatres and parks where contemporary circus was nurtured back in to big tops for their celebratory “Circus250” shows. For many, circus isn’t only an art form, it’s a lifestyle. Even contemporary circuses, such as Cardiff-based Nofitstate, tour with a tent and live in trailers. The 40-strong company are as familiar with a lack of running water and dodgy power as the corde lisse and pole acts. Circus is also family, whether contemporary or traditional. It’s common to find couples and siblings working together in both.
In 1768, with Astley recently returned from the wars, the cavalryman discovered that with a circus ring exactly 42ft in diameter, the centrifugal forces allowed a rider to stand upon the horse’s back. He performed an equestrian show with his wife Patti, who rode around smothered in a swarm of bees. Now, every circus ring anywhere in the world is 42ft across – including the new ring for Nofitstate’s Lexicon, their 250th anniversary show. Traditional circuses are also evolving. Zippos’ Cirque Berserk is now played in theatres as much as in tents. So, 250 years after the first circus, the links between new and traditional are being retied.
My personal 250th celebration will be to return to touring in my circus caravan, a 1970s 11ft Eldiss with no washing facilities but a built-in bar. The fishnets may no longer fit, but circus is my family. In 2018, we will appear once again at the end of your street. As we say in the circus: see you on the road.
Dea Birkett is ringmaster at Circus250 (circus250.com). A BBC World Service documentary, Who Killed the Circus?, is available on iplayer
‘I ran away and became the woman in the sequinned bikini’