Barbette's Skeleton [XII]: Cirque de Distressing Deadlines (Patreon)

After Troy James and I competed at the 40eme Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain with our duo contortion act, The Producer (he was  one of many, of course, but I'm sticking with this amusing pseudonym for our storytelling purposes) loosely stayed in touch with us over the years. He would occasionally check in on me with a Messenger or IG DM, just generally keeping up with the direction our separate careers were taking us in.

The Producer saw the Barbette proof-of-concept trailer that I put out on YouTube (I currently have it set as 'unlisted') and on September 8th 2021 a DM popped up in my Instagram inbox from him:

My heart stopped for a moment, and then I gathered my wits and fumbled through my replies. 

Yes, a new act. 

This is just the trailer. 

No, I wasn't thinking about submitting this to the Festival.  

"Waow i would like to see the whole thing !!! Is this trapeze as Barbette ?" came the reply.

No, I explained, Just contortion. 

After a few more short exchanges, the conversation finished with: 

"You can apply online. It will be better with another discipline than the one you performed the first one".

Apply?

*blink blink*

I could go to the Festival a second time...?

But it would need to be another discipline. Good god.

No, I'm too late to switch like that. Not now–

Wait– fuck that– I'm not too old for anything–

This would be impossible, though. There's no way.

It's nice to think about, though.

These thoughts rattled around my brain for months. They would be there waiting for me, over and over again, when I'd close my eyes. 

They wouldn't let me rest until I'd finally written up the grant application that has brought me to the place you now read these words from: from having relocated to Montréal for the better part of the last six months; from training my ass off trying to switch my main discipline from contortion to aerial straps; from working with any relevant artistic professional here I can rope into collaborating with me on this project to make it the best it can be; from the slowly and rapidly cycling rotations of cheerful determination that I've got what it takes to drag this into reality, to weepy, crushed, deflated moments of deep doubt.

I sent that grant application off in October of 2021. 

February 2022 rolled around: I received funding. 

I got to work. 

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Wouldn't it be nice if when, in pursuit of artistic goals, the only details that needed attending to were purely the creative ones? 

Ahhh, yes. 

This, however, is a circus fever dream. 

Well...a life fever dream. There's always other things to do; other factors that are outside our total control; other things threatening to get in the way and disrupt our best-laid plans.

It wouldn't be enough to just make the work if I wanted to stand a chance of getting into the Paris Festival with this work. I had to try to make an accurate appraisal of the current landscape and trends in my industry, cross-referenced with what I knew about how the Festival functioned in terms of timelines and selections:

By August 2022, the final massive upheavals and cancellations from the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to be subsiding. The world was starting to make plans again. Cirque de Demain was included in that mix: the 42nd Festival would be happening in January 2023, postponed from January 2020.

To be considered for the Paris Festival, artists submit their work through an online portal before October 15th the year prior to any given edition of the Festival. The roster for the 2023 Festival was full: all artists presenting their work at the Cirque Phénix for this first in-person Festival in 3 years had been selected way back in October 2019 for what should've been the 42nd Festival in January 2020.

This worked well in my favour – there's no world where I could physically, technically, or artistically create a solo work on aerial straps at a high enough calibre over only 8 months.

I'd set my sights set on the January 2024 Festival. That would be nearly 2 years of creation and rehearsal, if all the stars aligned perfectly.

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In mid-August I wandered over to the Cirque de Demain website. I was greeted with this message on the front page of the site:

"Applications submitted now MAY be considered for 2023, but largely will be considered for 2024".

What does that mean? Does that mean that they're accepting submissions this year and they count towards the 2024 Festival? Does that mean there'll be double the submissions for the edition of the Festival I want to submit for...?!

I freaked out a little bit. 

I didn't have video ready. 

There was no way I'd have video ready for submission prior to the end of this calendar year.

Shit.

There were other problems beyond submission volume. Submission discipline demographics had emerged as a new anxiety of mine. It's why I had visited the Demain website in the first place that day: I had  wanted to access their archives there to see what trends existed in aerial straps acts over the years. 

I'd had multiple conversations that August with fellow circus artists as well as some of my longest-standing mentors like Sarah Poole (who is now the Director of Higher Education at the Québec Circus School / ECQ) to the tune of: Everybody wants to do straps now; do something other than straps.

To which I had to grit my teeth into a smile and reply that that was useful information to have, thank you very much, but changing disciplines at this point simply was an option for me. I was committed. 

Double shit.

I double checked the roster of artists that had been announced for the 42nd Festival: there were three straps acts. Unusual. The last decade of Demain festivals generally had one straps act each year, sometimes two. But never three. If things swung too hard in that direction that might swing back the other way for the 2024 year. 

Triple shit.

If I ignore what seem like changes in industry trends then I might be shooting myself in the foot.

I had strong faith in my ability to produce an act that was at a competitive calibre, but that wouldn't change things if there were, say, 100 artists submitting straps acts in 2023 rather than 25 or 30 or 40 like in previous years. 

What do I do? 

Do I need to submit something this October (2022) to make sure I'm front-of-mind for 2024? Or do I wait until October 2023 to submit it? 

I decided to flex whatever proactive muscles I could and worked up the guts to write The Producer. I hadn't spoken to him in 8 months. He had no idea what I'd been up to. I went all-in. 

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What follows is the message I wrote to The Producer on August 30th, 2022. I'm cringing pretty hard to read this back now, but, hey, it's what I wrote, soooo ... 

(In my defence, this was three months before I had a session with my autism counsellor where she explained to me why shorter is often better when it comes to professional e-communications; that even though *I* would prefer to have as much detail as possible it doesn't mean other people *want* that level of detail, and in fact I run the risk of whoever I'm writing to being overwhelmed or not understanding what I'm asking if it's muddled up in a long, long, message. Live and learn, right? *nervous laughter*).

"Bonjour [redacted]! J'espère que vous êtes heureux et en bonne santé! [I hope you're happy and in good health!]. I hope it's okay to trouble you with a few questions about the coming years of the Festival.

You wrote to me last September about the small work I shared about Barbette. It was a contortion act at the time, and you had said to me that if I had any desire to apply to the Festival it would be better with a different discipline than the one I performed with the first time around (contortion, with Troy). 

I took your words to heart. I applied to the Canada Council for the Arts for assistance and I've undertaken the project of changing disciplines to aerial straps. I've been working hard all year in Montréal l to begin creating the aerial version of a Barbette act ... But – 

I saw on the website that because of all the delays due to the pandemic, the application deadline this year is mainly for the NEXT festival, in 2024. 

While I'll have a rough draft of the act completed by end of September* and construction on my costumes will start by this Fall**, I don't think I will have video of the work representative of what the finished act will by by the Festival submission deadline this October. I know you have to plan FAR in advance for the Festival and I'm worried if I wait until October 2023 to submit my work that the 2024 roster of artists will already be full/selected.

[*EDITOR'S NOTE: *maniacal laughter*]
[**EDITOR'S NOTE: *more sobbing/cackling*]

I remember when you contacted Troy and I to participate in the Festival in 2018/2019, we did not have a video at this time to show our work. I understand this was an exception to normal procedure, but...should I pitch/submit what I have at the moment for the October deadline THIS year (2022) for the 2024 Festival, through the online portal, even though I won't have video to accompany it yet? 

My apologies and thanks for reading this long message."

✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵

I waited 72 long hours before a small response popped up in my Instagram inbox from The Producer:

"We will wait impatiently any piece of videos you could sent. The Barbette project is still full of interest together with your personality! Hugs! -The Producer"

I read it. Read it again. Read it a third time. 

And then tapped out a brief reply:

"Merci pour votre reponse! I'm working hard to have some video pieces ready to show you as soon as possible, I promise! Soon! 😤💪🏻✨❤️🙏🏻"

I put my phone down, steepling my fingers against my lips as I tried to parse all the possible meanings this French-speaker-typing-in-English message might contain. 

My phone pinged one more time: 

"And for the French part you can say <<tu>> instead of <<vous>> ... obviously 😘"

My brain sorted through and filed the available information: 

(a) Barbette was a subject of interest [to him? to others? who knows];

(b) 'Personality': could mean they are just open to me working with them/attending again; or, 'personality' could be a mistranslation of 'identity', meaning that the concept of Barbette is of interest in relation to me, as a trans performer; 

(c) Messages sent through Instagram + 'Hugs!': context is casual, friendly, approachable. Didn't fuck up by sending that giant mess of a clarification attempt. Great. Thank god. 

(d) Invitation to <<tu>> instead of <<vous>> ... translation: don't be so formal with me, relax, chill out ... "obviously".  

(Obviously, it wasn't obvious to me, but, okay fine, I'll take it!)

I resolved to push as hard as I could through September, October, November, and December:

I'll get some videos to The Producer before the calendar year is over;

I'll get some footage in front of their eyes before the 42nd Festival even happens, to consider for 2024. 

I'll have costumes from Michael Slack starting November 1st.

I'll have a month and a half to do costume runs. 

I'll be able to film it in the ENC Studio Création at the end of my Autumn TOHU residency.

December is the deadline. 

I can do it.

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Of course, dear patrons, that's not at all what happened, is it?

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(To be continued: your next instalment arrives Wednesday, December 27th at 7pm! Until then, stay strange, wonderful, safe, happy, and healthy -- XO , Ess)