If you approached a group of strangers on the street and asked them what comes to mind when they think about the circus, they would probably include a wild animal, a roaring lion, or a horse. This is not surprising, as the history of modern circus is filled with animals: Astley’s circus, which is considered the first (institutionalized) circus in circus research, was originally an artistic riding school. Its shows were dominated by horsemanship and enriched by jugglers and fairground artists, and took place in the circular, eponymous ring. In the twentieth century, military horses were accompanied by wild animals such as lions, tigers, and elephants (Tait 2012). In France, owing to the omnipresence of animals in shows, circus was assigned to the Ministry of Agriculture instead of the Ministry of Culture until 1980 (Guy 2001).
Even though this is a very brief outline of animals in circus history, it seems to be uncontested that circus has played an important role in the history of animal representation ✿.
Una Chaudhuri’s list is fitting here:
there have been stretches, in the Western literary tradition, from Aesop’s Fables to Will Self’s Great Apes (1998); in the Western dramatic tradition, from Aristophanes’ The Frogs (405 BCE) to Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2000); in film, from Eadweard Muybridge’s “zoogyroscope” in 1879 to Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005); in popular culture, from Mickey Mouse to the Animal Planet TV channel; and in popular performance from gladiatorial contests to the Las Vegas duo Siegfried and Roy. (Chaudhuri 2017)
Animals are nearly always present in popular culture circus representations, whether in films (e.g., Water for Elephants (2011), Dumbo (2019), advertisements (e.g., ‘Gut gebrüllt, Löwe’ (Amp 2016)), toys, or on children’s clothes. Such popular representations most often reference the peak phase of traditional circus at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, when animals, as a result of colonialism, were central to the shows.
Since the emerging animal rights movements in the 1970s, the presence of animals in the ring has been harshly criticized by organized opposition. More and more European countries, cities, and communes are prohibiting shows with animals, which has caused, on the one hand, the sizable disappearance of small family circuses, and, on the other hand, new forms of animal representation in traditional circuses (especially in the last five years), e.g., through holograms in Storyteller by Circus Roncalli or Écocirque by Cirque André Joseph Bouglione. The renouncement of animals in these performances becomes a marketing strategy: Cirque Bouglione, for example, promotes its show while referencing the current ecological discourse, ‘Plus qu’un cirque… L’Écocirque. 100% humain’ (Cirque André Joseph Bouglione 2018). The ethics of Roncalli’s decision to perform with alternatives to non-human animals was lauded in newspapers: ‘Hologramme im Circus Roncalli—Applaus für die neue Tierdarbietung’ (Gensel 2019).
In contemporary circus, the absence of animal performances has become a fundamental aspect of its own definition: ‘Circus—in its contemporary narrative-driven, animal-free form’ (Leroux 2016: 3). One could object, claiming that otherness is still a major part of the circus’s DNA (Fricker and Malouin 2018: 1), but the focus is no longer on the presentation of non-human animals as foreign or other; rather, the emphasis is on extraordinary bodies (including disabled bodies), cultural diversity, and alternative lifestyles.
Given the ubiquity of wildlife documentaries and traveling zoos, wild animals no longer represent what is different, alien, or other. At the same time, increasing urbanization means the cohabiting of human and non-human animals is literally disappearing before our eyes.
A fact that has been overlooked in the declaration of contemporary circus as ‘animal-free’ is that the leading institutions of contemporary circus still work with animals (especially horses) in their pedagogic programs. The Centre National des Arts du Cirque offers a ‘Certification en arts équestres’, and at the Academie Fratellini, in collaboration with Le Moulin de Pierre, one can specialize in equestrian art as a circus discipline. For a few years now, especially in France, animals have been appearing in contemporary circus, e.g., Cie Baro d’Evel performs with dogs, horses, and pigeons; Cie Sacekripa performs with a cat; and Théâtre de Zingaro, Theátre de Centaure, Cavalia (CA), Cie Horsystèmes, and Cie Equinoctis perform with horses onstage and in the ring. The focus on horses and other domestic animals is attributable to the contemporary unease with using wild animals, in particular, to entertain.
What reunites the performances of the contemporary circus companies working with non-human animal performers is that the presentation of the talents of non-human animals, just as much as the demonstration of human power and dominance, is no longer the focus of interest. The objective is to create critical and experimental artworks that comment on society and discuss the relation of humans and non-human animals and technology. This kind of purpose is also recognizable in performances outside the circus, e.g., Joseph Beuys’s Iphigenie and I Like America and America Likes Me, and Marina Abramovic’s Dragon Heads, to name the most famous. However, it is possible that circus artists might be able to work with domesticated animals with more care and knowledge than what happens in these other arts.
Given the increasing appearance of non-human animals in contemporary circus performances and other (performative) artforms, it is the aim of this article to take a critical, contextual perspective on the (re)valorization of non-human animals onstage. Thereby, the article is divided into three parts: an overview of the staging strategies of non-human animals in traditional and contemporary circus; an extended analysis of a contemporary circus performance that sets out to counter the human dominance of animals in performance; and reflections on further ways to decenter the human being and the anthropocentric telos in circus.
