Don’t Send in the Clowns

The circus is coming to town — actually, make that four circuses. But don’t expect a spectacle. Or sprawling tents, or dangling tightropes, or dancing bears. New Circus, the genre, born in France, to which the four belong, may be designed to entertain, but it is not intended to be a substitute for Barnum & Bailey.Beginning tonight, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, along with the French Institute Alliance Française and Culturesfrance, will present four ambassador companies representing today’s practitioners of New Circus in the country: Compagnie Chant de Balles, Compagnie Bal, Compagnie XY, and Association W/ Jean-Baptiste André.“What we call the New Circus is something between tradition and modernity,” a circus historian, Pascal Jacob, explained. New Circus is a precise art form with specific identifying characteristics. Acts usually create a story from beginning to end and often contain a political message or deeper emotional subtext.The genre shuns the use of animals, except for the occasional use of horses, “though it’s not like dressage,” Mr. Jacob said. “It’s more a theatrical proposition.” And though humor is important, clowning is never as garish as a man wearing a red nose and frizzy wig.New Circus, of course, draws comparisons to another prominent French-speaking circus act — Quebec’s Cirque du Soleil. But any New Circus proponent will quickly dispel any notions of direct similarities. “They create big shows, beautiful shows,” Mr. Jacob said. But New Circus “speaks about ecology, politics. It’s more involved, maybe, in the human process.”“New Circus is a distinctly French creation,” an associate with Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Heloise Darcq, said.In “Intérieur Nuit,” Jean-Baptiste André’s act with Association W, Mr. André moves with the agility of an acrobat and the grace of a trained dancer, navigating an enclosed room as a live video feed projects his image on the wall behind him. Mr. André’s flexibility and expression indicate his early training, like that of most New Circus artists, as a gymnast. But his talent is not meant to be the focus of the piece. “It’s about considering the space around you, the time you spend in a room,” Mr. André explained. “The audience is looking at this man who is alone and in a way trying to escape from this place but searching within as well.”Eric Bellocq of Compagnie Chant de Balles approached New Circus from a different world — that of classical music. Mr. Bellocq, who plays lute and other period instruments alongside juggler Vincent de Lavenère, draws attention in his act to the past. The idea for the act, in fact, came from an old book in which Mr. Bellocq saw an illustration of a 14th-century juggler with a lutenist. His act, “Le chant de balles,” explores “how the body reacts to music,” he explained.New Circus receives a substantial amount of government support in France. The genre began in 1974 with only two schools in Paris, but by 1981, the French government had started giving grants to performers, eventually supporting an international center for circus arts near the capital city. Today, according to Mr. Jacob, the government subsidizes artists in the country’s approximately 400 companies and close to as many schools, where about 10,000 children study. “It’s quite a big business,” he said. New Circus companies enjoy around 50 million patrons each year.But even at its current level of success, New Circus has the excitement of a nascent movement. When it began, “it was like a magic box opened,” Mr. Jacob said. “At the time, many were dreaming of how to build a new kind of show,” he recalled. “New Circus was born from this desire to create something different.”

Don’t Send in the Clowns

Don’t Send in the Clowns

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