Barbette's Skeleton (Part VII): Putting Flesh on the Bones (Patreon)

Good now, my strange and wonderful patrons!

Monday's writing started taking us down the rabbit hole that I've been exploring since late summer with the ongoing work to create LE NUMÉRO BARBETTE: an aerial straps reimagining of the work of the historical acrobat Barbette, which I'm dreaming of somehow getting onto the stage of Cirque de Demain in 2024*

*(yes, I haven't forgotten that I promised to dedicate a post to what that is, why it's important, and why it's a dream bordering on hubristic for those patrons among us who aren't neck-deep in fabled and fantastical circus festivals! Just a few more Barbette's Skeleton posts to get through, first!)

Today I want to share how those hastily-scribbled lines of sudden inspiration from my journal got fleshed out into a first proposition for the act structure that I've been working on in-studio with my coaches.

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The first Le Numéro Barbette iteration I took a crack at (contortion proof-of-concept I made last year) followed the narrative structure and characterization that the historical Barbette herself did, fairly closely:

There was a female-presenting character that the act opened with, and I removed my wig (and my top) at the end of it to reveal that the audience's first impressions might not have been correct.

The female personas I took on for this early version were modelled off the information I had available to me about Barbette herself (mainly photos, and some written accounts). Looking back, I would say that that contortion proof-of-concept was trying out female characterizations that combined what I'm distilling into separate beings in the ongoing aerial straps LE NUMÉRO BARBETTE work – as if "BALLERINE" and "CABARET" moved seamlessly from one into the other.

If my last iteration of Le Numéro Barbette was about smoothing out all the lines that divide one moment to another, one persona to another, one gender to another, then this current iteration (for aerial straps) is about repeated, stark demarcation. Contrast. Juxtaposition.

By dazzling the audience with a glittering, over-the-top array of overt performances from these different characters, I’m hoping to create such a bright flash of sensations that once someone is left with the final character on stage –the not-a-character,still-a-character persona of me– it will be up to that person to decide what, of any of the previously seen personas, seem like the ‘true’ version of me that they are watching.

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From the initial brain-blast moment I shared in the last Barbette's Skeleton instalment (Part VI), I started thinking of what technical sequences might suit these characters and also play into an affective aerial act structure:

There should be something big to catch people’s attention at the beginning, a small dip in technique or risk presentation, and then building and building and building –– until a big BANG! at the end.

The Man could have some kind of one-arm tempo work to start: something that takes up large amounts of vertical space, that creates large shapes in the air, that requires a significant amount of strength and skill to execute.

For the feminine personas, I’d offer two different versions – red herrings, to make the audience think that the second feminine persona was the ‘final’ look (when in fact it’s the penultimate one).* 

*(Dear Patrons, I know you trust me, but it pains me to write these and share them here without begging you anyways to trust that I've got the research and peer-reviewed articles to pull from to back up these very binary, patriarchally problem-laden tropes with the well-articulated thoughts of feminist and/or circus scholars)

First, “La Ballerine”: not a literal ballerina, but the delicate, flowy, high-flying, graceful archetype. The innocence stereotype. Grande ronde (a big orbit) and flying splits.

Then, “Cabaret”: deliberately sexualized movements directed out at the audience, inviting them to look in the direct, intense way that burlesque performers do.

And then –finally- these looks would be stripped off (literally: as in, wig comes off, shirt comes off, some kind of skin-tight garments on the lower body) in turn to reveal the Finale character. Me. Just me.

I also started to work out with a bit more clarity how each character could behave and perform in the space:

THE MAN's non-trick-based movement was going to be grounded in acting. He'd interact with a couple audience members before going back to the straps to initiate the first gender reveal of the act.  

LA BALLERINE and CABARET would come to life through groundwork that was more dance-based than acting-heavy. 

And CRÉATURE should be a combination of all of it.


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Two or three days after that coffee with Alex, I took a morning to sit with my notebook and write out those ideas long-form. 

I highlighted the 'hard stuff' (technical sequences I thought I could try to pull off) (hadn't tested those theories yet, though) and left room for questions about what transition might work better here, what trick might be swapped out for something else there, and the like. 

It helped me start to be able to see where friction points might happen in relation to the costume change, where the momentum might get a bit bogged down, and what technical work remained to be done to connect certain dots.

It turned out something like this: 

If I do this right –if I can pull this off the way I'm imagining it (the way I'm not sure comes across yet just from journal writings like the above)– my hypothesis is that the result might be something similar to how people reacted to VACUUM: some people will be convinced they watched a man; others will be sure they watched a woman; and still others won’t stop to notice until long after that show, that the spectacle of what they were witnessing rendered gender irrelevant (“What are they doing!”), and that they experienced me as a Performer as a genderless (or constantly shifting) spectacle.

I'll leave things here for now, though!

Your next instalment will be arriving in your inboxes on Thursday October 20th at 11:30am EST. In that one, I'm sharing the next stage of evolution the above writing took, following a few sessions in studio with William.

Until then, stay strange and wonderful!

XO

Ess