The History of Aerial Dance and the Interplay of Contemporary Circus Arts
- Katie McCoy
- Apr 19, 2023
- 6 min read
MU4094 Aerial Dance 2, Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick
Aerial dance and contemporary circus arts are two of the most diverse forms of modern dance in our society, and a dance genre with a major cultural identity that has shifted our knowledge of postmodern dance as well as cultural and self expression.
“The diversity of this popular performance form makes it one of the most exciting and fascinating areas of cultural activity to explore and to analyse for its contributions towards society” (Tait and Lavers 2016).
There has always been a strong desire for mankind to fly. In the early days of ballet dance and professional gymnastics, it was common to see these athletes and performers using and dancing with ropes as an integrated part of their performance. In fact, this is part of what prompted the development and the use of pointe shoes for female ballet dancers, as a way to give these dancers more height off of the ground as an illusion to ‘levitating’ in the air. Aerial dance is known as a modern dance style of dance with its ties being rooted to different circus arts practices, and is the newest genre of what people and society deems as modern dance,
“Contemporary circus is now firmly established as being one of the most popular forms of live performance, with shows featured as a major part of many arts festivals…” (Lavers et al. 2020).
With aerial dance being a newly recognized genre of dance and contemporary arts practice, there is little that has been written of it and there has yet to be much research conducted,
Aerial dance is such a new genre in the dance field that the most recent Encyclopedia of Dance does not list it. The book does, however, list circus dance. The entry describes the relationship of circus arts to dance, particularly to ballet, in the 1800’s (Bernasconi and Smith 2008). From what has been written by Jayne Bernasconi and Nancy Smith in their book Aerial Dance (2008) while conducting their research on this genre, Bernasconi and Smith state that they found “the two pioneers in this form spontaneously pursued their dancing in the air as a natural progression of their need to fly, without any knowledge of one another” (Bernasconi and Smith 2008). These two pioneers are Sephanie Evanitsky, a dancer with a passion for visual arts, and Terry Sendgraff, a dancer with a great circus and gymnastics background; these two performers have helped to pave the way for aerial dance as a part of the modern dance genre. This essay will outline the history of aerial dance, cultural identity within the genre, and the interplay of circus and aerial dance.
Contemporary Circus by Lavers et al. states that aerial dance and circus acts are very much increasingly diverse artforms in which they often tend to play into and along with many other contemporary arts forms such as singing and voice and with many other genre of dance; the performers and dancers within the contemporary circus are well known for their engagement within each of these intertwined artistic practices and are known for embracing the ‘hybridity’ that is contemporary circus (Lavers et al. 2020). One thing that is very much prevalent in aerial dance and within contemporary circus is the physical body and theatre.
The early aerialist and circus performers of the 1870’s were very much applauded and praised, that is, when it came to male performers. Male aerial dancers, gymnasts, and circus performers were essentially the ones who demonstrated a type of manly ideal and masculinity and were the embodiment of discipline within a performer. The act of female dancers and performers displaying any of that masculinity or performing ‘masculine’ acts were deemed as not natural and raised up criticism from the public and many outside perspectives,
“...muscular bodies went completely against prevailing social patterns of bodily restraint…While males retained an aura of manliness, females were seen as unfeminine” (Tait 2005).
This cultural identity within aerial and circus arts as well as the different gender roles is crucially important when discussing the history of aerial dance and the interplay of circus and aerial dance. In protest to these different social patterns for female aerialists and performers, female dancers began to train in all features and facets and all of the same aspects of aerial dance that male aerialists were performing in at the time in order to knock down the views of discouragement of masculinity of feminine bodies. Because of this, female aerialists began to significantly outperform that of their male counterparts. In turn, the response by this action by female aerialists was this,
“While the earliest flying action seemed to give female performers masculine qualities, by the twentieth century aerial dance had become associated with femininity in popular perception” (Tait 2005).
The association of muscular female aerialists with femininity, as well as the view of male aerialists and performers as feminine in their own practice, prompted a significant cultural shift in aerial, circus arts, and modern dance in the mid-twentieth century, “...the developed muscular bodies and physical power of accomplished female aerialists was unprecedented elsewhere in society until the late twentieth century” (Tait 2005). As the years progressed with aerial dance as a postmodern dance genre, the bodies of female aerialists began to be viewed by the public as “physically inferior” (Tait 2005) as the performers' acts gradually became more and more complex and more innovative. With this vision of female aerial dancers growing in popularity, so did the idea of feminism within the art form.
Circus acts have long been connected by many different aspects to a variety of acrobatic performances from many other cultures from around the world. The interplay of aerial and dance and the practice of circus arts have been prevalent over the years, where the postmodern dance world has seen the incorporation of a variety of artistic practices. The contemporary circus arts began to expand its dynamic in the mid-twentieth century with the aim to promote the exploration of the human body in different artistic and physical ways. Peta Tait in The Routledge Circus Studies Reader explores for a suitable definition to define the everchanging artform that is circus arts in a postmodern dance society, to which is stated,
“In searching for a unifying definition to accommodate this diverse performance form, Peta Tait contends that circus is a body-based form that is artistic and acrobatic and distinguished by specialized apparatus ranging from weight-bearing belts and mats to complex rigging” (Tait and Lavers 2016).
This definition portrays the interplay between aerial dance and certain aspects of aerial dance as an artistic practice interplay with the aspect of contemporary circus practices. Tait and Lavers also states that circus can also be defined as “skilled physical action with recognizable equipment” (Tait and Lavers 2016) which is what sets it apart and contrasts circus from other forms of dance and physical performance in theatre settings. Defining circus as having equipment is an example that both circus and aerial dance do in fact interplay into one another, as both dance forms are required to have some variety of apparatus for different performances. In terms of skill levels, aerial dance and contemporary circus arts both undoubtedly require a great amount of physical strength and agility to perform acts that push the limits and boundaries of other dance genres within theatre. Contemporary circus performers generally perform acts that depict their muscular ability and their agility on an apparatus while making it seem smooth, clean, and effortless. This ties back into aerial dance and this idea of masculinity and femininity amongst aerial dancers and how those are displayed by performance. Circus arts and aerial dance both require a display of prowess in their performances which both art forms have difficulties expressing at times, “The range of approaches in relation to the presentation of prowess in performance is one of the many challenges that performers now face…” (Lavers et al. 2020).
The history of aerial dance is quite a complex one to discuss, with many different layers to uncover. Circus arts has such a rich history with the genre having many different links to many different cultures through art, dance, and agility and physical movement. Aerial dance and the contemporary circus arts are seen throughout their histories to interconnect with each other, with similar performance types, similar use of apparatuses, and similar gender roles with the presence of masculinity versus femininity; This idea about masculinity versus femininity, more particularly within aerial dance performance, is crucially important to the development and evolution of aerial dance as a genre and to its history in general; The idea of muscular female bodies being viewed from outside perspectives as being feminine rather than masculine is just as prevalent in the history and development in contemporary circus arts as it is in aerial dance. Aerial dance and circus arts go hand in hand with one another, being two alike unique performance forms. The circus arts has contributed a great deal to the history of aerial dance and has allowed these performers and dancers to grow into their own artistic practices because of these connections and links.
Bibliography
Bernasconi, J. C. & Smith, N. E. (2008) Aerial Dance, Leeds: Human Kinetics
Tait, P. (2005) Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance, London: Routledge
Lavers, K., Leroux, L. P., Burtt, J. (2020) Contemporary Circus, London ; Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Tait, P. & Lavers, K. (2016) The Routledge Circus Studies Reader, London: Routledge
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