This accessible page is a derivative of https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1702122/2057394 which it is meant to support and not replace.
Page description: On opening the page, above the title, two videos are playing entitled 'Dresse toi 2022'. Keywords on the page are highlighted in blue and, when clicked upon, open up a window featuring a poem, in French, by Sabrina Sow. These windows show the printed poem and also contain a sound file of the author reading the poem.
Videos description: Two videos are shown alongside one another in a square format. They represent the same video sequence, played simultaneously but in a different period. The abstracted moving image of the head and feet of a horse are depicted in white against a blue background. The shapes are constructed by contour lines in constant movement, at times rotated by 180 degrees. They are underscored with a shimmering sonorous soundtrack.
From dressage to cattle trade, house pets, domestication, and eating meat, Dresse-toi presents the most common contemporary western cultural practices involving animals. One main dramaturgic strategy in the performance is to apply these practices to interactions among humans. The strategy is already visible in the title: on the one hand, Dresse-toi obviously alludes to ‘dressage’. At the same time, the title contains the request ‘Dresse-toi’, which results in a reversal of roles. ‘You, human recipient, dresse-toi!’ Literally, ‘stand up’, alluding to evolution and the resulting discourse on human superiority owing to the upright gait as well as an invitation to stand up in protest. This complex sign structure ✿ found in the performance’s title is taken up in every scene.
After greeting the public, the ringmaster selects his assistant from the public, which he does with a rough, cruel tone, creating the impression of a cattle market. Instead of selecting an animal on the market, he is looking for a ‘human’ animal:
Désolé on ne peut pas les enfants, les parents, il y a des dangers et des risques. Pas des enfants. Pas des hommes non plus. Je n’aime pas de soleil. Pas des parapluies. Tu connais des chevaux? C’est trop simple. Vous être de l’autre côté de la barrière. Ce n’est pas possible. Une jolie fille. J’ai dit pas des enfants. Combien de fois? Tu es un peu blonde. Non, désolé. C’est difficile. Je n’aime pas des blondes. Je vais choisir moi-même. Madame, tu veux venir sur scène? J’adore des hauts talons. Viens.
The reversal of roles not only illustrates the cruelty of the norms that we apply when selecting animals (best in show) but also underlines how such selection processes are always also present among human animals. The rough tone calls to mind social Darwinism during the Second World War. The stereotypic selection criteria (‘une jolie fille’; ‘je n’aime pas des blondes’; ‘J’adore des hauts talons’) refer to a normative image of (wo)man that is omnipresent in our contemporary culture with regard to questions of gender and heteronormative bodies. At the same time, the moderator’s strong English accent makes him an exotic figure. The cultural practice of cattle markets is thus led into absurdum when applied to human–human relations, and becomes emblematic of contemporary society.
In the second scene, the intimate relationship between one human animal and one non-human animal is staged in the center of the ring; the focus is the cultural animal practice of pet keeping. An “oedipal vision” ✿ (Wolfe 2003: 169) of the animal, one that ‘results in thinking about nonhuman others in terms of validating them by proving that animals, too, can think or Feel’ (Wolfe 2003: 169), is presented. The parallels between human and non-human animals are underlined, for example, the performer’s black dress and dark hair and skin resembles the horse’s coloring. Human and non-human animal cuddle and share an apple; they are engaged in a meaningful, intimate relationship. The non-human animal is strategically anthropomorphized through human-like postures such as sitting, sticking out the tongue, and yawning. These gestures cause the audience to laugh. As Tait puts it: ‘In searching for ways in which animals are like us—circus animal acts exploit our predilection for mimetic reproduction of familiar physical behavior—we seek to confirm that animals’ perceptual awareness and emotional relations mirror our own’ (Tait 2012: 7). At the very end of the scene, the oedipal vision of the animal is led into absurdum. During intense cuddling, the horse’s penis becomes visibly erect. Through the succession of a focus on anthropomorphization, the erection becomes the key to reading the performance: what began as an entertaining family show has become a critical commentary on socially taboo relations between human and non-human animals.
The third scene addresses our modern western understanding of non-human animals as part of ‘the group of discursively colonized “others” ✿—the insane, children, “savages”—upon whom rationalism imposes its hegemony’ (Chaudhuri 2017: ‘Animal Geographies’). The human performers represent horses: the moderator enters the ring naked, illustrating the savage, impulse-driven, non-human animal. Victoria, the actress/baronne, who has been selected from the audience, clumsily balances on the side of the ring. When falling, she performs elements of contortion. She appears to be a conglomeration of drunk, insane, childish, and animalistic. This scene is commented on by the non-human animal performer who is shaking its head — an anthropomorphized comment — as the following song is sung aloud:
Qui est la plus noble conquête de l’homme ?
Qui a toujours été à ses côtés?
Qui pas à pas l’a accompagné ?
Qui a porté ses guerriers?
Qui a porté ses enfants?
Qui symbolise la liberté?
Qui est acheté et qui on vend?
Qui est harnaché, soumis, dressé?
Qui faut-il sans cesse surveiller?
Qui ne sera jamais l’égal?
Qui n’est qu’un suppôt du mal?
À qui dénie-t-on toute intelligence?
Qui est trop fou? Qui est trop vain?
Qui doit-on protéger de son manque de bon sens?
À qui rabâche-t-on qu’il vaut moins?
Qui est taxé de rebel, d’indocile?
Qui est maladroit et imbécile?
Qui est une proie dans l’ombre de l’histoire ?
Qui va sans rechigner à l’abattoir ?
De qui se sépare-t-on car trop âgé ?
Qui est-ce qui se cache pour pleurer?
Qui juge-t-on sans cesse?
Qui juge-t-on sans cesse?
The interplay and discrepancy between the bodily movements of the human and non-human animal performers with the lyrics impressively illustrate the inconsistencies in the western image of non-human animals, especially of horses.
Using the equestrian discipline ‘liberty' ✿ in which the horse is loose, working without ropes or reins, the topics of bestiality and domestication are taken up once again. The input of the presenter thereby remains mostly invisible. The audience is given the impression that they are witnessing a wild and free animal. To reinforce this idea, the non-human performer rolls in sawdust, which illustrates its (romanticized) behavior in a natural environment. As the human performer, Sow, reenters the stage, equipped with two wigs, the horse starts running in circles, snorts, rises, rolls, and lunges backwards. The specific staging of these tricks is alluding to the bucking horse, the beast, that needs to be tamed.
The topics of domestication and (in its hyperbolic form) dressage are enforced when they are applied to the human beings onstage. Victoria, equipped with a whip and dressed in riding clothes — white jodhpurs and a black jacket — rides on the back of the moderator, who is dressed in a fur waistcoat and hot pants. The moderator imitates the horse’s patterns. Victoria jumps on his back, executing vaulting tricks, and uses the whip to keep her co-performer moving. At the end of the scene, the moderator collapses in the middle of the ring and doesn’t get up. What reminds one of the game children often play with each other is a very successful staging strategy. While applying dressage and vaulting to relations between humans, the absurdity and potential cruelty of these disciplines is set into focus.
Though horses are commonly disciplined with whips and are viewed ‘essentially as a moving platform while the focus is on the equestrian’ (Baston 2021: 108), these practices become brutal when transferred to human–human interactions. The scene therefore brings about a new awareness of the power relations of equestrian art. This applies not only to the disciplines of dressage and vaulting but also to the mere handling of non-human animals. The performance causes us to contemplate the fact that when a female human performer is forced to blindly follow the instructions of the moderator and is nearly overrun by a circling house; we consider the performance to be irrational and dangerous. But why is this not the case in non-human animals? Why do we consider human beings vulnerable yet treat non-human animals like objects without agency?
The fifth scene illustrates the appearance of horses in mythology. In a white dress, Sow conducts Roman riding on two white horses, Cynique and Babouchka, equipped with a metallic chain. The white dress moves in a wind draft that has been created by the circling horses. The ring is fully lit with bright lights that contrast with the dark evening sky. The swirling sawdust causes atmospheric dust, which makes the setting almost mystical. For the first time, the act is accompanied by music: bass guitar sounds and the rhythm of the trotting horses create a ritualistic, spherical soundscape. Owing to the specific staging (i.e., the combination of white fur, flowing dress, mythical music, mist), the scene calls to mind Greek mythology: the horses are reminiscent of Pegasus, and the appearance of the human performer alludes to Athena, mistress of the horses. The divinity of non-human animals and their relation to human beings are emphasized. The moderator counterpoints the superior appearance of the equestrian artists. He follows his non-human animal co-performers, and offers his shoulder to the human Roman rider. In doing so, he limps, falls, and crawls out of the ring.
Another reading is possible. By accentuating the femininity of Sabrina through her costume and movement quality, the act creates a metadiscourse on equestrian circus:
The nineteenth century produced many female equestrians, such as the graceful ballerina dancing on horseback, who dominated the arena. A depiction of Palmyre Annato […], posed delicately en pointe on her horse in the Cirque des Champs-élysées (c. 1850), is representative of what would become an iconic image for the circus. (Baston 2021: 111)
The metadiscourse offers a way to understand the following action: as techno music plays, repeating ‘cheval, cheval’, the moderator and Victoria enter the ring wearing white aprons and carrying saucepans. The two white horses are grazing peacefully. Sabrina, still wearing her white dress, is doused with blood by the moderator. Knifes are sharpened on her skin, horses are smeared with blood. Sabrina takes off her dress and is left wearing a persimmon bra and black hot pants. She takes a skirt made of sausages out of the pot. Doused with blood, she starts a seductive dance.
This scene reminds us of the cruelties connected to our most common western cultural animal practices, namely, slaughtering, butchering, and eating meat.
Especially due to the symbolic value of the color ‘white’ (horses and costumes) and the focus on the divine image of horses, Chaudhuri’s quotation at the very beginning of this section becomes manifest in the performance: our self-identification as innocent animal lovers is just a veneer, underneath which is an animal culture of violence and exploitation.
This reading was, according to Sow, very present in the reception of the performance. Several spectators came to see her afterward to thank her for insisting on the importance of becoming vegetarian or vegan.
But the interpretation of this scene is not at all limited to the critical presentation of the cultural animal practice of eating meat. The sausage skirt was reminiscent of the banana skirt of Josephine Baker, resistance fighter, and counterespionage agent, and first black woman in the Paris Panthéon. The performance illustrates, on the one hand, ‘how aspects of gender and/or race identity converge with aspects of animal identity in live circus’ (Tait 2012: 108). It ‘delivers a conjunction of gender theory and speciesism’ (Tait, 2012: 8, following Singer 1995) and alludes to the fact that the ‘advent of the animal rights movement followed shortly after the women’s liberation’ (Tait 2012: 8).
We must reexamine the relations not only between humans and non-human animals but also among humans themselves. The performance therefore underlines the political potential of artistic work and the possibility to initiate social change through the circus arts — especially while working with non-human entities.