Link: https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/file_sets/db78tg59n
Introduction
Circus is an art form that is largely learned and taught through practical experience. However, as pointed out by Scialom and Fernandes, practical knowledge is often undervalued in formal education:
This is changing as some authors, such as Leda Maria Martins, Ailton Krenak and Orlando Fals Borda, have recognized the importance of knowledge that comes from practice. In Brazil, traditional cultures and their oral tradition are spread throughout the country, practiced by groups such as the quilombola peoples and through popular culture and dances such as cavalo-marinho, coco and capoeira. From this recognition of oral tradition, the concept of practice as research (PaR) emerged in academia, which in Brazil has been translated as prática como pesquisa:The separation between thinking and doing was brought about by European colonization and the institutionalization of knowledge, through the introduction of so-called high art in conservatories. In academic colonialism, knowledge is directly associated with literary forms and external analytical and anthropological observation. Consequently, local, oral, and embodied knowledge was marginalized and reduced to the status of research objects (3).
Thus, we understand the concept of practice as research as an approach in which practice (as in artistic activities) is a form of investigation. This means that the process of creation, experimentation and reflection during practice becomes a way to generate knowledge, make discoveries and develop theoretical understanding. Practice then becomes a field of inquiry where practitioners reflect on their actions, their choices and the challenges they face, leading to critical analysis that can contribute to the development of new theories and concepts.Albeit not explicitly named, practice as research has existed in Brazil since the 1990s in graduate courses, research groups, and in the work of local artists-researchers. Although it has existed as a research epistemology since the last decade of the last century, the landscape remains unclear, as the term practice as research has been imported from English. It only arrived in Brazil and began to appear in the national academic production in the second decade of the twenty-first century (Scialom and Fernandes 1).
The distinguishing feature of practice as research is that it brings about discoveries that would otherwise not be made. Thus, based on this concept, we, the members of the Decá Collective, decided to revisit the creative processes used at the Luiz Olimecha National Circus School (ENCLO) program to understand them and trace the methodological tools used.
In this article, we discuss our artistic process as a research concept. We will share our processes of individual creation using references from our territories and the theoretical intersections that already surrounded us—even before we were to elaborate them in theoretical detail.
Journaling during the creative process
Below are the journals written while creating the acts “Pulse” by Nat Menosum and “Interface” by Paô Ollitsak, presented at the graduation performance of the class of 2022 at the Luiz Olimecha National Circus School in Brazil.
Nat Menosum
The creative process for this act began during my training at the National Circus School, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic when we had online classes and the music, dance and theater instructors assigned us creative exercises. During this process, I longed for moments that could not be experienced during social isolation and began to apply this feeling to my creations. I wanted to relive that communion between people, the connection, the feeling of everyone being in tune and the moment of collective ecstasy. Personally, this was something that I often felt in the coco dance circle. My memories of those moments made me want to re-live them; it was the longing for the celebration, the ritual, that moved me. I started practicing capoeira again and researched the history of coco, and I knew it was this coco/capoeira rhythm that I wanted to feel on stage and, perhaps, experience this moment of celebration and communion. Then, in music class, I chose the song “Coco Dub” which is strongly influenced by the coco genre.
In dance class, we were assigned a creative activity, and I made a video art piece entitled “Pés pelas mãos”2. During this process, I understood why I was so drawn to juggling, especially with balls. I realized it was because of my connection with the soccer ball, a sport I was obsessed with as a child but had not continued to play due to gender-based violence.
Another important moment was theater class when Pâo brought a text that made me reflect deeply: “The Myth Called Circus”, an open letter to the circus by playwright Bauke Lievens. We discussed the text at length, where the author questions the virtuoso’s place in the circus. From that day on, I began to think about how I could create circus beyond virtuosity. How could I bring my subjectivity to the stage? How could I manage to bring it to the stage if I had to demonstrate proper circus technique? The question of how to create circus beyond virtuosity arose and I began researching how technique could be a means, not an end.
In-person classes resumed and we soon began to plan our graduation show based on the theme “The 100th Anniversary of the Modern Art Week”, which took place in Brazil in 1922. It was during an acrobatics class with my instructor, Garcez, that the act took shape. Each one of us was randomly assigned a classmate’s name and we were to choose a work of art from Modern Art Week for the person we had drawn. In my case, my colleague Pedro Vinicius drew my name and chose the poem “The Animal” by Manoel Bandeira. That day, we had about thirty minutes for improvisation. I already knew the text and felt I wanted to incorporate everything I was researching at the time; the processes we went through during the pandemic as well as the creative processes we had developed. I first felt anguish, anger at inequality and gender issues. I feel like it was the first time I was able to create beyond virtuosity in circus. I tried to repurpose the juggling ball, making it a stage element and not just a circus technique. I began the act by pulling the juggling balls out of a bag and biting one of them while an audio of the poem talking about hunger played.
Ironically, an audio engineering error helped me a lot. During the penultimate semester performance in 2021, when we performed for the entire school—including before Renato Rocha, the director of our graduation show, URUTU—the music stopped mid-performance. I was still using the song “Coco Dub” by Nação Zumbi. When the music stopped, I started clapping to the rhythm of the coco dance which allowed me to continue the performance. The audience joined in with the clapping, a crucial element in the coco dance circle and in capoeira. Clapping became a key element of my act. Interestingly, applause from the audience during acts is expected in traditional circus while it is frowned upon in contemporary circus, as the director himself pointed out in a meeting. I intentionally incorporated this as scenic provocation.
During the graduation process, I realized that the director was also striving for circus beyond virtuosity. I began asking him questions until I arrived at the concept for my performance. Two people contributed significantly to this reflection: Renato Rocha, the aforementioned director of URUTU, and the movement director, Rômulo Vlad. Renato proposed a dramaturgical creation based on the artist’s human material, their creative tools and how they relate to the world, using their biography as emotional raw material. Rômulo, also a performer, brought the characteristics of performance to my work. I talked to him extensively and he was the one who answered most of the questions that arose during my creative process. He recommended Renato Cohen’s book, Performance como Linguagem – Criação de um Tempo-Espaço de Experimentação, an essential work for my reflections, but I only read the book after the season ended.
After much reflection, I realized that, on several occasions, I had participated in training and creative processes that used performance tools, working with the artists’ subjective material as a starting point for the scene. The first time I was able to highlight this was with the Circus LAB project during a week-long workshop at the Garanhuns Winter Festival in 2017. Subsequently, during the 2018 Brazilian Circus Festival, two workshops took place through a partnership between the Pernambuco State Government and the French group, La Granière. It was a cultural exchange with the participation of students from France, a French director and several artists from Pernambuco. In both festivals, we participated in creative labs and created a show that we presented at the end of the project.
Performance tools relate to these processes because they prioritize subjectivity, presence, listening and the artist’s experience as the raw material for creation. These processes are distinguished precisely by an openness to risk, improvisation and vulnerability. They are marked by active listening to body, space and context. It was through these concerns, combined with my experiences and exchanges with other circus artists, that I recognized the possibility of investigating and experimenting with connections between circus and performance as a language.
Furthermore, during the creative classes, instructor Bruno Carneiro introduced us to a creative process model based on guiding questions. I continued to use these questions throughout the creation process, and they helped me more clearly perceive the paths I wanted to take.
Paô Ollitsak
“Interface” is a personal project that began during the COVID-19 pandemic through an online creative laboratory facilitated by the Municipal School of Urban Arts in Rosario, Argentina. During the three-month program, I was mentored by three instructors in the complementary fields of theater, dance and performance preparation. I drew references from works such as Jorge Amado’s book Captains of the Sands, as well as other visual and political resources. Each session involved different creative techniques and tools such as creating a drawing based on a song, exploring the object of the technique (in my case, the Cyr wheel) as a scenic object and giving it new meanings.
Later, in 2021, through public funding provided under the Aldir Blanc Law, I secured funding to create a video-circus (a hybrid art form that explores circus and audiovisual media, very common in dance projects) directed by actress and theater director, Guadalupe Casal. With Guadalupe, we incorporated political references into the project such as Lorena Cabnal, an indigenous woman from Guatemala who speaks about the body as a territory of defense and struggle within the territorial community of the feminism movement. The visual and musical identity of the piece is full of South American cultural references, from the warm colors used in the video editing to the costumes that reference Vinicunca, a rainbow mountain in Cusco, Peru.
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Ponto de vista Pode ser em roda, todos de frente para mim ou em duas fileiras. Movimentação/movimento Corpo acrobatico + Capoeira + Coco Musicalidade/Musica/Som Poema “O bicho” + “Cocodub” Dramaturgia (conflito; drama) O numero é sobre uma incognita, quem a ve, tenta decifrar, descobrir que bicho e esse. Não da pra saber se e um homem, uma mulher, rato ou cachorra. E sobre uma pessoa a margem da sociedade. Ao comer a tecnica de malabares, e reconhecida e se reconhece como ser humano. E sobre se apropriar, devorar a tecnica circense como um meio para ser reconhecida e aceita como ser humano. Mas no decorrer, entende que a tecnica pela técnica é monótona, racional, o que nos distancia do bicho. Assim, no fim, retorna ao estado animalesco. O numero e sobre reconhecimento. E sobre se reconhecer ser humano, reconhecer outros seres humanos, se reconhecer racional, mas também animal. A performance e uma provocacao do que e ser ser humano. |
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Título “Pulse” Assunto “Pulse” e um numero de malabares com um corpo acrobatico, que mistura poema e circo, com movimentos da cultura popular como o coco e a capoeira. E uma performance que tem improvisações, onde a malabarista se deixa ser atravessada pelo público, e pelo que acontece no momento presente. Aqui, o público também participa. A partir da entrega de quem assiste e participa, no decorrer da apresentacao e experienciado varios Estados. A performance é uma provocação do que é ser ser humano. Descrição (sinopse) Ao avistar um ser vivo, quem ve, tenta desvendar que bicho e esse. Nao da pra saber se e um homem, uma mulher, rato ou cachorra. E a partir dessa duvida que a performance circense se desenrola. “Pulse” e um numero de malabares com um corpo acrobatico que mistura poema, circo e cultura popular. Com uma pitada de improviso, a malabarista se deixa ser atravessada pelo publico e pelo que acontece no momento presente, passando por vários Estados. A performance e uma provocaçao do que e ser ser humano. Modalidade circense Malabares Imagem Bola na boca |
During my training at the National Circus School, we experienced a year and a half hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When I joined ENCLO in 2019, “Interface” did not yet exist. It was during the pandemic that “Interface” began to take shape. However, since I did not have the physical space to work on technical aspects of my act, I developed the stage design which allowed me to find other ways to manipulate the Cyr wheel. A few months before returning to in-person classes at ENCLO in 2021, we had online classes that helped me better understand the scenic path I wanted to take. The two most important events for the development of “Interface” were two music lessons with Felipe Reznik, especially in an exercise where we had to choose a song and discuss the instruments used, the rhythm, its origins and history. In this exercise, I realized how Brazilian rhythms connected with other South American rhythms such as in the interplay between Brazilian funk and Colombian reggaeton. These associations helped me demonstrate how closely our South American cultural heritages are connected.
Another class helped me organize and visualize how my act could emerge from video-circus where we use audiovisual tools such as framing, scene cuts and editing to generate a piece for presentation in tents and theaters. It was the creative class taught by Bruno Carneiro that gave me a recipe for creation (Figures 3 and 4).
Document of the creative process. Source: Author’s personal archive.
Document of the creative process. Source: Author’s personal archive.
Upon returning to ENCLO in person, “Interface” was practically finished. I received technical assistance from Rodolfo Rangel who helped me with the challenging part of testing new and risky movements with the Cyr wheel. Preparation for the graduation performance was a separate process where a duo act on the Cyr wheel was created specifically for the graduation show URUTU. As it is separate from “Interface”, I will not discuss this duo act.
Practice as research
Our goal for this investigation was to theorize and bring structure to our creative process. Previously, we used the term practical-theoretical research, as have other artists:
Orlando Fals Borda is a Colombian sociologist who introduced the concept of participatory action-research, highlighting the importance of practice as a generator of theoretical knowledge:Theater director, actor, and researcher Luís Otávio Burnier (1956–1995) founded the LUME Laboratory Theater group in 1985, together with Denise Garcia and Carlos Simionie. Since 1994, it has been based at UNICAMP (LUME). From his research, Burnier completed his doctorate and published a book detailing its practices and training (Burnier 2013). Little by little, members of the group also began to conduct their own research, earning doctorates, and taking positions at universities, thus expanding this knowledge (Ferracinietal 2020). Although they do not mention PaR in their publications, the members refer to the group’s work as practical-theoretical research (Colla 2021), where practice stimulates the theoretical/reflective process and vice-versa in a constant exchange (Scialom and Fernandes 15).
While writing this article, we preferred to use practice as research (PaR) because it is an artistic methodology. Although PaR is a concept that comes from English, we understand that this does not prevent us from using it. We can adapt it and use it according to our own context. Furthermore, we understand practice as research as a way to decolonize Western performance studies.Praxis with reflection-action leads to the validation of local knowledge and the formation of an alternative paradigm (Fals Borda, 2015 [1979]). Thus, the author emphasizes the need to produce knowledge relevant to society, formative in nature, based on local/regional experiences, important for the practical and political development of possibilities for changes in the social order, considering the subjects as beings who think and feel the place, and valuing popular knowledge, especially that of country folk (Alves and Cichoski 78).
Conclusion
Upon revisiting our artistic training process at ENCLO, we identified the methodological paths and tools used for creation. One of the discoveries stemming from practice as research was the concept of performance as a means. Performance as a means became a tool for creative process and circus stage research, where the virtuoso body was not necessarily the focus. However, realizing that the concept of performance was more commonly used by European authors and artists or those residing in Europe, we sought references and tools from our own territory, thus arriving at the concept of decoloniality.
The concept of decoloniality, according to Castro-Gómez and Grosfoguel, emerges as a trenchant critique of the persistent legacy of colonialism which continues to influence social, economic, political and epistemic dynamics even after many nations have achieved political independence. Far from being a mere historical event limited to the past, colonialism established a complex matrix of power that incessantly shapes the interactions and structures of the contemporary world. In this context, decoloniality presents itself as an intellectual and practical project that seeks to denaturalize Eurocentric categories of thought, opening space for—and legitimizing—other forms of knowledge and existence rooted in the experiences and wisdom of peoples historically subjugated by colonial logic.
The first decolonialization (begun in the nineteenth century by the Spanish colonies and followed in the twentieth century by the English and French colonies) was incomplete, since it was limited to the legal-political independence of the peripheries. By contrast, the second decolonialization - which we refer to as decoloniality - will have to address the heterarchy of multiple racial, ethnic, sexual, epistemic, economic and gender relations that the first decolonialization left intact. As a result, the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century needs decolonialism to complement the decolonization that took place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Contrary to this decolonialization, decoloniality is a long-term process of resignification, which cannot be reduced to a juridical-political event (Castro-Goméz and Grosfoguel 17).
However, we now realize that the concept of decoloniality is moving away from a popular understanding and that the word “territory” becomes vital to our research. Therefore, we seek to speak of our territory through circus, understanding the scene as part of our lives. We are artists engaged in our territory which directly influences our artistic production by bringing concrete elements of everyday life, social struggles, memories and local cultural practices to the stage. This relationship transforms circus into a tool for critical and affective expression, connecting artistic language to lived reality. By engaging with our social, political and cultural contexts, we create works that break with universalizing and homogeneous aesthetics, proposing a situated circus language that reinvents itself based on new narratives, bodies and ways of existing. With this, circus ceases to be merely a spectacle but also becomes political action. These reflections broaden the very conception of circus language, not only as a technical or stylistic domain but also as a field in dispute, in constant transformation.
—Translation from Portuguese by Mariel Azoubel
Notes
- The Luiz Olimecha National Circus School (ENCLO), located in Rio de Janeiro, is one of the main formal circus education institutions in Brazil, focusing on technical, artistic and pedagogical practices related to the circus arts. ⮭
- The title “Pés pelas mãos” literally translates to “Feet for Hands,” and plays off the Portuguese idiom “trocar os pés pelas mãos,” which refers to confusion or doing things the wrong way around. In this creative dance activity, the expression takes on a more literal and poetic meaning—inviting participants to explore movement through inversion, substitution or improvisation, using the body in unfamiliar ways to challenge habitual coordination. ⮭
References
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