How do the staging strategies of Dresse-toi differ from those used in animal acts in traditional circus performances? Put straightforwardly, they differ only slightly. Dresse-toi repeats traditional staging strategies while presenting a diversity of equestrian acts, e.g., the high school act, the liberty act, Roman riding, or vaulting; however, skills and equestrian techniques occur in a narrative context, so that the performance actually questions human superiority, ability, and dominance in opposition to underlining it. The hierarchical, anthropocentric relationship between human and non-human animals is revived to create a critical commentary: by anthropomorphizing the non-human animal and animalizing the human animal and objectifying both human and non-human animals, the performance makes evident the urgent issues regarding human–non-human animal relations in our society.
If we assume that the non-human turn is reciprocal, which means, on the one hand, that the performances, their dramaturgy, topics, and narrative context should change in order to be less focused on human needs, and that, on the other hand, the audience’s perspective has to be disrupted as well, Dresse-toi contributes a less anthropocentric perspective. Furthermore, it illustrates the paradox ✿ that if animal handling is to be problematized, and eventually subverted, then it should also be mastered onstage. In its application of common western animal practices to human–human relations, it also visualizes that ‘in looking at our relations with animals, we might understand how we remake the world around us through our subjective experience of emotions’ (Tait 2012: 7).
It should be noted, though, that the performance does not present alternative modes of (re)valorizing the animal onstage, a direction that it has in common with the other contemporary circus performance mentioned in the introduction.
In Falaise by Cie Baro d’Evel, for example, the horses and pigeons are a means to reinforce the fictional world:
Dans l’obscurité des cavernes, le son était pour les hommes une boussole, la lumière qui les guidait dans l’aveugle, le chant qui éclairait contre les parois. Il fallait crier pour se repérer. Il fallait chanter pour éclairer le noir. Ici aussi, ça crie, ça cherche, ça tâtonne. Ça avance du mieux que ça peut dans le tunnel de l’époque. Difficile de savoir si c’est le pied du mur ou le sommet du monde, si la vie y meurt ou si elle renait. Mais ça chute et ça se relève avec la même évidence, avec la même innocence, avec la même insistance. Ça veut s’en sortir. Coûte que coûte. C’est nombreux. C’est un troupeau. C’est une foule. Presque une famille. Et dans les interstices d’un monde en ruine, ça invente du nouveau. Une autre fin du monde est possible – elle a même commencé. Voilà ce que disent ces corps. Ceux de la vie qui luit, ceux de la vie qui cogne. (Baro d’Evel 2022)
The non-human animal performers are integral to the search for alternatives, they are part of the ‘herd’, ‘the crowd’, ‘the family’. Their staging, however, is first and foremost used to provide ‘a context for the social milieu’ (Fischer-Lichte 2008: 102) or ‘to enhance the atmosphere’ (Fischer-Lichte 2008: 102). Regarding this dramaturgical function, Falaise takes up common dramaturgic strategies that have been used by fairground and some theater performances with non-human animal performers since the eighteenth century (cf. Fischer-Lichte 2008: 102).
In VRAI—Objet Vivant Non Identifié by Cie Sacekripa, the audience is literally confronted with its limited worldview: the stage area is walled off, leaving only a viewing slit placed at the bottom of the stage. The cat appears as a symbol of the isolation and solitude experienced by the main character. The main western symbols and images related to cats are picked up: a lonely ‘cat person’, being as stubborn as a cat, etc. Even though the cat appears to be undressed, and even though it could leave the impression of an improvising non-human animal onstage, it functions as a visualization of the inner world of the main character. Thus, here again, the non-human animal onstage is subject to the anthropocentric telos.
The point is that contemporary animal performances can ‘present new narratives while performing acts with a long history’ (Baston 2021: 108). Thus, the equestrian techniques and dramaturgic strategies have not fundamentally changed. Therefore, the potential of the interplay between human and non-human animals onstage and in the ring in the frame of the non-human turn is far from being exhausted.
