Barbette's Skeleton, Part II: What Do You See? (Patreon)

Hello my strange & wonderful patrons! 

 Our last post started to cover some of the thinking I've been doing this summer on what needs to be different about LE NUMÉRO BARBETTE in order for it to be effective as an aerial straps number in 2022 (versus the contortion proof-of-concept from 2021, and Barbette's original act from the early 1900s). 

Today's post continues looking at the points I raised in the previous one –– the theoretical underpinnings of what I've been physically making, if you will. The way that we think and talk about gender is different in 2022 than it was in 1922; the way that I think about and present a circus act must necessarily be different in 2022 than from 1922 to hold an audience's attention . 

There's one more like this one (that'll be Part III, on Wednesday!) to sum up these thoughts, and then Part IV I'll be sharing some of the iterations of act narrative I've been working with.

Thanks for being here! :)  

* * * * *

Straps is an apparatus that can carry a lot of aesthetic tropes & expectations with it when we see it on stage. These visual themes often revolve around binary gender stereotypes*: super-masculine men; super-feminine women. 

(*I rarely see these kind of visual tropes being recreated in Montréal, as it’s considered SUPER passé by Montréal's über-contemporary standards. BUT! – if you look at acts that are being contracted in spiegeltents, Euro cabarets, etc. … well, it’s there!)

I've spent MANY hours reviewing as many straps acts as I can find through YouTube, and many more digging into the straps act that have appeared at Cirque de Demain over the last decade (I'll be sharing a summary after these Barbette's Skeleton posts are done!).   

The following is not my opinion on what artists 'should' do on straps (I hope that's obvious, haha); rather, these are the broad things I've noticed in terms of visual or persona themes I see coming up over and over again in these videos.   

Whether or not I think this is 'good' or 'bad' in terms of the art form, it is the LANDSCAPE against which MY work will be interpreted by most contemporary circus audiences.

For men, there’s the:

(a) “Russian straps bro” stereotype (a former male gymnast in immaculate white tights executing mind-boggling feats of strength and control in the form of planches, dislocs, roll-ups, and the like); or there's the  

(b) “Rafael-esque young male beauty” stereotype (leaning more into leg flexibility combined with strength tricks, some hairography, and usually some kind of flowy white shirt that they lose halfway through the act). 

For women, there’s two or three tropes that seem to recur frequently: 

(a) The delicate flower: lots of flying sequences, a flowy feminine costume, technical and artistic choices that do not aim to bring attention to the body of the performer (either in terms of sexuality or physicality/muscularity)  

(b) The sexy act: musical accompaniment that would work well in a burlesque context, with  lots of flares, middle splits, bedroom-eyes-eye contact with the audience, rolling around on the floor, etc.  

(c) The ‘primitive’ act: some kind of percussion-based music accompaniment, with teeth baring, loose hair, and ‘animalistic’ movement on the part of the artist – kicking feet, clawed hands, flexed feet, etc.  

* * * * *

A core idea of Barbette's original act concept remains for me in that the ‘gender reveal’ at the end of the act is considered a 'trick' in terms of how it’s presented to the audience as a mechanism of heightening the emotional experience of watching the piece.

In addition to this, other factors I have to consider when thinking about adapting Barbette's original act structure for a contemporary audience include:  

Attention Span:
A modern audience’s attention span is different than that of an audience in the 1920s and 1930s. 

Would it be effective to ‘save’ the “big reveal” for the end of the act, as Barbette did back in the day, and as I did in that proof-of-concept last summer?  

I'm not sure this would be as effective today as it was 100 years ago, by itself.  

What the Audience Expects, Based on What They See:
In a venue like the Cirque Phénix (the massive chapiteau where the Cirque de Demain festival is held every year in Paris), I'm uncertain if the audience will be able to see my top surgery scars / that I’m flat in front like a Ken doll –– AKA, some kind of visual cue that might indicate something trans is going on. (Plenty of people might not 'read' top surgery scars for what they are, on top of that.)

The audience is more likely to unthinkingly categorize my body as that of a woman or man performing on stage.   

This carries consequences in terms of the meanings that can be drawn from the work by a viewer. 

Barbette herself knew this, too.  Many of the articles and chapters I've read on Barbette reference that she was 'careful with her figure': she was thinking about how an audience 'reads' one body as 'woman' vs 'man' in the context of 1920s and 1930s showbiz. 

This also carries consequences in terms of how I have to approach making that work; if I ignore what the audience expects to see, I probably won't be able to be as effective in subverting that expectation.    

So, with this information in mind, I had to consider the following questions when deciding on an act structure for the aerial straps version of LE NUMÉRO BARBETTE.

Firstly: is it even possible to present my body as it is onstage, with no other context, and expect people to know that it is a non-binary body?  

Of course not. 

Non-binary bodies don’t have one look.  

So, it seems clear to me that the only chance I have of creating ambiguity and suspension–of–conclusion in relation to my perceived gender on stage (and therefore subversion of what we expect when we think we're watching a man vs. a woman on straps, on stage) ... is to,

(1) create amplified presentations of BOTH masculinity and femininity on stage, in contrast with one another. And then,

(2)  ––fwip! –– yank the table-cloth away to let the audience draw what final conclusions they will with 'gender cues' (costume, performance style) as minimized as possible. 

In other words . . . there has to be more than one 'gender reveal'.

The order in which I present the hyper-masculine and the hyper-feminine MATTER, both in terms of what kind of story that tells, as well as technical requirements for costume: 

• If I start the act in women’s clothing and perform stereotypically ‘feminine’ movement for part of the act, but they think I'm a man by the end of it, will they conclude that they were watching a drag act?
  
  If so, will the quality of my costume, performance, makeup, be evaluated by the aesthetic and performance standards that we ascribe to drag acts? How might that hinder or amplify the emotional impact of the work?
  
  If an audience watches my act and thinks they've "figured me out" in that they think they’re watching a young man . . . will the work will be evaluated by the aesthetic standards and technical expectations that come attached to men's bodies in circus?
  
• The same tropes do not apply if we invert the binary:
  If I start the act in men's clothing and strip down to an outfit that makes the audience think I am a woman for a portion of the act, then the effect (dramaturgically) is more of a cheeky 'tricked you!' burlesque-vibe.
  
  If an audience watches my act and thinks that they’re watching a young woman performing,  will the work be evaluated by the aesthetic standards and technical expectations that come attached to women’s bodies in circus?

* * * * *  

IN CONCLUSION:   

After months of researching and writing this summer,  I was no longer convinced that the narrative structure I used in my proof-of-concept contortion act would be effective now, in the context of making LE NUMÉRO BARBETTE into an aerial straps act.  A new one was needed!

The next "Barbette's Skeleton" post (Part III) finishes up summarizing all the theorizing, dramaturgy, and philosophizing that I've put my brain through the wringer with this summer as I worked towards making the bare bones of aerial straps LE NUMÉRO BARBETTE!

After that, PART IV will let you feast your eyes on the spin I decided to put on this concept, and a few of the iterations this narrative has gone through so far (with more to come, I'm sure).  

Until the next one –– stay strange & wonderful!  

XO   

Ess