Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance

by Tait; Peta

• ISBN13: 9780415329385
• ISBN10: 0415329388
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2005-10-19
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

i Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance /i is an extraordinary survey of 140 years of high-wire acrobatics. Trapeze acts transformed performance after 1859 with muscular male and female performers presenting artistically graceful but athletically strenuous flying action. In this pioneering study, Peta Tait investigates socially changing ideas of muscular action in relation to our understanding of gender and sexuality. How do spectators see and enjoy aerial action? What cultural identities are presented by bodies in fast, physical aerial movement? br br This is an untold cultural history of bodies, explored in a range of films, such as Trapeze (1956) and Wings of Desire (1987), and live performances including: br the first trapeze performers, Leotard and the Hanlon Brothers; br female celebrities, Azella, Sanyeah, black French aerialist LaLa, the infamous Leona Dare, and the female human cannonballs; br twentieth century gender benders, Barbetteand Luisita Leers; br the extraordinary, record-breaking, high flying Codonas, Concellos, Gaonas, Vazquez and Pages troupes; br imaginative aerial acts in Cirque du Soleil and Circus Oz productions.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	vii
Acknowledgements	viii
Archive collections and abbreviations	ix
Introduction: aerial bodies	1	(3)
Discursive apparatus	4	(5)
Graceful manliness, unfeminine maidens and erotic gods	9	(28)
Muscular flying action	9	(7)
Dangerous women	16	(9)
A gothic science	25	(3)
Ambidextrous sexing	28	(3)
Cultural paradox	31	(6)
Unnatural acts, female strongmen	37	(29)
Arrogant Amazons?	37	(3)
Perfected womanhood and iron jaws	40	(8)
Deadly damsels	48	(7)
Balancing butterflies	55	(2)
Triple somersaults backwards	57	(3)
Enjoying kinetic freedom	60	(6)
Cross-dressing and female muscular drag	66	(24)
Gender tricksters	66	(4)
Man-woman and spaces in between	70	(5)
Open secrets and silences	75	(2)
Unavoidable identity risks	77	(7)
Slippery work and nationality slippage	84	(6)
Gender competition, camp spectacles and impossible machismo	90	(30)
Pretty tough competition	91	(4)
Action hero scandals	95	(5)
Double fashions in triples	100	(7)
Catching pains in cinema	107	(5)
Girls with muscles of steel	112	(2)
Quadruple macho acts	114	(6)
Androgyny to queer violence: Cirque du Soleil, Archaos and Circus Oz	120	(21)
Banned	121	(5)
Androgynous charm	126	(5)
Aggro femmes	131	(6)
Chimeric circus	137	(4)
Ecstasy and visceral flesh in motion	141	(12)
Delight or anxiety?	142	(1)
Cinema's aerial action	143	(4)
Catching body phenomenologies	147	(3)
Pleasurable flesh, ecstatic motion	150	(3)
Glossary	153	(3)
Aerial apparatus	153	(1)
Movements	154	(2)
Notes	156	(10)
References	166	(13)
Index	179