We just… I mean, we look like normal people, I think, and then we get up there and do all this stuff. You know, we do extraordinary things and we make people… We let people know that extraordinary things are possible. And if, for people, ordinary is, you know, living in fear or being beaten up by their husband or being disabled or… You know, if ordinary is repression, then we hope that they will believe that they can be extraordinary too.

delivered by Mike Finch (Artistic Director, Circus Oz)
at the Gasser tent on the St Kilda Foreshore, Melbourne, Australia
Friday 3rd December 2004
(taken from his Facebook page)

Apology for a hangover which I blame entirely on the Spiegeltent.
Thanks to
Jeremy Gaden
Pam Creed
Swinburne
The Faculty of trainers
Families
Students
Graduating Students
The riggers and production crew who put this all up. It’s because of them we can all sit here safely. 

Firstly Congratulations, well done! You made it.

See how far we’ve come!

During the 90’s an ex-Circus Oz, ex- Fruit Flies person called Jane Mullett inspired the circus community in Australia to set up a School to train circus performers.

On my birthday in 1998 I helped stage a slightly bodgy media stunt in front of Parliament House in Canberra. The smoky old Circus Monoxide Double Decker Bus, Matt Hughes and his diving board trampoline, some Warehouse Circus Jugglers from Belconnen and Trent ‘Birdmann’ Baumann in an all-over leotard and swimming goggles. We wanted to get the government to fund Jane’s project.

It’s truly amazing only six years later to be standing here in this tent, with that huge building up the road in Prahan, knowing that you guys, your trainers, the crew, the office staff, and Pam have made NICA a reality.

Firstly, lets get this straight. You don’t need a degree in Circus to work in a Circus

What you do need is Passion. Because circus hurts. You know that.

It’s inconceivable that after 3 years of training you could still imagine a circus to be solely a place of beauty and gracefulness; of whimsical music and funny clowns; of sleek, graceful acrobats; of swirling, fairy like aerialists, and shimmering beauty. You guys know that’s only what the punters, the corporates and the critics think they see. You know differently now.

This a quote from someone called Courtney Riley Cooper:

“A circus is a fighting machine of gruelling work, of long, hard hours….a thing which fights constantly for its very life against the demons of adversity… a great, primitive determined organisation that meets defeat everyday, yet will not recognise it… a driving , dogged, almost desperate thing that forces its way forward, through the sheer grit and determination, of the men and women who can laugh in the face of fatigue, bodily discomfit, and sometimes in the leering face of death itself. That’s a circus.”

Welcome to circus.

Circus exists on the edge of society. Edges are the most interesting and chaotic places to be. The heart of any system is not necessarily as dynamic as the places where one system meets the next. Like a mangrove swamp, neither ocean nor forest, the edge is where the really interesting action is. You’re about to take a step into that swamp. Circus is a mongrel form which steals from many different traditions. We are a living edge to a number of systems. The edge between High art and Low culture. Theatre and Sport. Rock’n’Roll and Classical music.  Architecture and camping. Often Circuses are literally situated on the edges of communities and circus people at least until recently, used to live and travel on the fringe of society.

It’s not for everyone.

Real Circus is for outsiders, Freaks on the fringe, Unusual people, Cooperating outsiders, Misfits

Up until only a few years ago Circus was probably the last bastion of live performance still owned by the performer.

Up until about 10 years ago the performer and their act were still the big thing. Even Ringling Brothers billed their artists as individuals, real people, people with names, personalities, cultures,.. places they come from. This has started to change only recently. The big money, the mean spirited advertising agents, the real estate sharks, the fast buck, the money,… Sony, Disney, Australian Idol, they’ve already stolen the art of Acting, Music, Film, Ballet, Opera, even rap and hip-hop from the artists who actually make it.. 

If you want to be a professional actor or a singer in our culture,.. you queue up, in a queue of hundreds, or thousands.… You wait for the market to tell you if you have the right cheekbones, the right body shape, the right skin colour, the right sized tits,.. then you get in a queue with a hundred other people who all look EXACTLY like you and you wait for a casting director to make a decision.

Up until 10 years ago Circus wasn’t at all like that. It wasn’t an artform to be classified like ballet, to be owned like Disney, to be marketed like commodities, to be churned out for the big money, the conglomerates, the multi-nationals. I want to fight to keep circus as a celebration of cultural difference.

It used to be owned by the performers themselves and it still is.

Circus Artists used to be announced as “all the way from China,.. all the way from from Argentina,.. from Russia,… from Ethiopia,…” Even if they made it up, a stage name. Con Colleano was billed as a Spaniard even though he was an Australian Aboriginal. At least his persona came from somewhere. It used to be like that. Now, just like Shopping Malls and CNN it’s becoming the home of cultural similarity,.. where it’s all blended together, masked, covered, designed, lit,… If the voices aren’t in an American accent they’re in some kind of global gibberish masquerading as opera.

In some ways a school for CIRCUS is like a school for Rock’n’Roll. Doesn’t make sense. Would they teach trashing hotel rooms? Heroin addiction? Pelvic thrusting? No, if you want to be a Rock musician you learn an instrument, maybe you learn it at a school of music, or a conservatorium, but the Rock and Roll part of it is something you have to learn on the road.

A school for Gypsys, Freaks, Clowns, Misfits, Jokers, Tumblers, Jesters, Acrobats, Angels, is to some degree a contradiction in terms.

A School for Acrobatics maybe makes a little more sense. A school for tumblers. A school for aerialists. A school for riggers. Even a school for clowns,.. though heaven help you if you try to define what a clown is….

Just like those conservatorium trained musicians you’ve just finished a world-class degree. You’ve chosen to make an incredible commitment to learn the skills, to put in the hours to learn those tricks you now have. Now your next challenge is to make those skills come alive.

Circus is live. It shouldn’t be mass produced. It connects with the audience in a visceral way. When you watch good circus you can feel it.

Sitting in the round.

Just as humans have always circled round the camp-fire

In some ways it’s a very political choice. The performer is the story teller in the centre, but only because the audience have given them permission to be there. It’s democratic, if the performer is boring, we can watch the audience on the other side. The performer is surrounded, there’s no curtain to drop, nothing to hide.

Circus makes us laugh at our humanity, Laugh at death

You’re living in probably the most viciously contradictory moment in history. War is Peace. Terror is Complacency. Liberation is Occupation. Women’s bodies are being controlled by men again.

It’s like 1984 by George Orwell is being used as a handbook instead of a warning. Bibles and fear are deciding elections. Fundamentalists of every kind are springing up everywhere. I believe that it’s our job as artists to show how complex the world is. To unify people in a shared experience. To reveal the truth. To show audiences a moment close to death and leap back from the edge. Snatching life from the jaws of death.

If you accept that the world is neither completely good nor completely evil, you have no other choice but to burst out laughing. Which is in many ways the philosophy behind circus.

Consider that today you might get hit by a bus, get run over by a friend, miss a crashmat by a few inches, faint at a crucial moment, or clip that Carabiner onto the wrong rope. If you can picture that, you can get on with making circus.

But don’t re-invent the wheel. Try listening to the people who’ve done it before.

Firstly listen and respect your trainers. This is probably the most incredible bunch of skilled circus trainers to ever be assembled in Australia. I sincerely hope you’ve learnt from them, not only skills, but something about culture in Russia, Argentina, Poland, Bulgaria, China, London, France, and Albury,..

Secondly remember that Australian circus companies have been making unique work for 150 years, with the latest batch of innovation covering almost 30 years. Be proud of being part of a tradition.

And that tradition definitely goes back into the family tent circuses. A bunch of the early crew of Circus Oz toured with Circus Royale, Sole Brothers, Ashtons, Silvers and learnt a lot about tents.

Here in Australia it’s not an ‘INDUSTRY’. Industries are collections of factories and they make things like plastic bags, and cars,.. and sausages. This is a community. Communities sustain people, and families and friendships and art.

I’m going to name some companies and individuals that inspired me here in Australia. These are people that are living and working around you. Some of them you probably know, but you might not know what a pivotal role in Australian circus history they’ve got.

People like All those Fruit Flies from Albury and all their parents and trainers, Derek Ives and Antonella Casella who were there right at the start of Rock’n’Roll Circus, Katherine Neishe, Anni Davey, Simone O’Brien and Celia White who made Club Swing, Matt Wilson and Dan Mitchell, who were in the early days of Bizirkus, Simon Yates and Jo Lancaster who started Acrobat, Dan Whitton and Theresa Blake who are desoxy, Geoff Dunstan and Kate Fryer who made Dislocate, Hall Murray and Alicia Battestini at Circus Monoxide, Matt and Zanette at Lunar Circus, Frodo, Shep, Cheyne and Lil at The Happy Sideshow, and more recently Derek and Azaria with DJ & Jess in The Candy Butchers.

These are just some of the companies and people that are known around the world as having something that is distinctively Australian. Something that is raw, unafraid, human scale, connected to the audience, unpretentious and collaborative.

There are the tribal elders, people that inspired me and help to make this community strong, people like Reg Bolton, Jim & Pixie, I don’t know if you know this but Jimbo helped build the very first Circus Oz tent, and he’s your tent boss here, Sue Broadway, Rudi Mineur, Mr Lu, Stephen Burton, Derek Ives, Jane Mullett, Tim Coldwell, Kim Kaos, Tony Rooke. Most of these people are performing still, but they’re also moonlighting all around you, I almost think of them as like ghosts, designing the rigging, tent bossing, directing, training you, even selling you a beer. I encourage you,.. no, I dare you to ask them for advice.

They’ve seen people fall out of the air, they’ve seen people exhausted, tents fall over, and bones broken, bump-ins that have gone on for days on end, but they’ve also seen true genius, brilliant performances from all over the world and watched Australian kids grow up to be world-famous acrobats and brilliant performers.

All these people and companies I’ve named won’t just tell you their secrets straight away. In fact some of them might not ever tell you.

They got serious bruises, callouses and broken bones learning what they know, so they won’t want to give it away to just any mug punter.

You’ll have to earn it. But you’ve already proved that you can work pretty hard,.. three years is a reasonably good trial period. But from here on, don’t expect it to be handed to you. Ask questions and Listen.

Go to Tony’s Festival in Tasmania next year.

It’ll save you from making the same stupid mistakes they made. The same stupid mistakes I’ve made (and there’ve been plenty). The same mistakes we’ve all made

Balance the old and the new. Have some love for the people whose shoulders you’re standing on, your trainers,.. and some respect for those standing on your shoulders, the people you’ll eventually teach. Be humble and generous.

Learn about the past. Circus works because of the past, a constant climb onto the shoulders of your trainers, and helping your students climb onto your shoulders. A five high, six high, seven high,.. how many generations do you want to go back? A co-operating succession of learners and teachers making new acts, new tricks. Making a living.

I would love Australia to have a healthy and diverse collection of circus companies making diverse work. The more the better, and the more difference the better. I don’t want to see more generic Soleil-style shows any more than I want to see a dozen clones of Acrobat.

I just want to see a lot of different artists and troupes expressing themselves and making a good living in a range of different ways in front of a large and growing audience, way into the future.

NICA can be a part of that vision, so therefore I’m interested in NICA going on and having a good relationship among the circus community.

Likewise the only way for the circus community to be big and vibrant is for small and medium sized companies to continue on and survive (or at least for more companies to appear than disappear). So audiences have to grow. Insurance has to get easier. Training and rehearsal spaces have to be sustainable. Funding bodies, Festivals and Promoters all need to be educated about what this ‘circus’ thing actually is, they still don’t really know, and NICA has to develop a strong and useful relationship with the existing circus community.

I want us all to co-operate on the bits that we have in common (the circus stuff) and have constructive arguments about the bits we don’t have in common (the ideas and the art). I want more and more well-paid jobs to be created for performers and other creative people. I want to see community circuses all over the country teaching all kinds of wacky, non-competitive circus skills to kids who want to co-operate and show off at the same time. I want all those kids, and their parents and grandparents to become fanatical circus audiences. I want to have a roaring time at Tony Rooke’s Circus Festival every year with hundreds of well-paid, innovative, Australian circus artists getting a buzz out of seeing each other work and play.

Start your own company. Travel the world and see all the things out there called circus. Sequins, Elephants, Chainsaws, tents and theatres. Sure, go to France, check out Montreal, but also see the amazing stuff going on in Mexico, Brazil, India. There’s a whole world of Circus going on out there and it can’t be learnt from a book or a university. It’s NOT an artform called acrobatics and clowning. In the real world Circus is a combination of every part of life, from Fairy Floss, to rigging, balancing the books, paying the wages, putting up posters, maintaining vehicles, putting up tents, to animal care to teaching kids on the road.

Understanding this mix is how Circus Oz has stayed on the road for 30 years. The trad. families almost instinctively understand this mix. Talk to Golda Ashton and her brother Pepe.

Find something that really blows your hair back. Make something NEW. Don’t queue up for a job. Only 10 percent of you guys are going to get a job that already exists. Don’t worry. Go for it! Form a gang. A guild. A posse. A troupe. Call it a squad if you have to. Don’t wait for funding. Own it yourselves. Take it into your own hands. Copy the skills, but invent it again. Do stuff that makes YOU laugh. Do things that you like to watch. Don’t become a McDonalds acrobat.

If you want to know what the opposite of a McDonalds acrobat is, you need to meet Jolly Goodfellow, otherwise known as Rumpel, who has just been offered a spot at NICA next year. It would be a great thing for NICA if he were to accept the spot, whether it would be good to institutionalise one of the world’s most eccentric performers remains to be seen.

But as Rumpel says: “These days you’ve just got to go for it!”

So start a company- Circus Monoxide was eight friends who met at uni. We had about 5 percent of the circus skills you guys have. But we really believed in what we wanted to do, so we did it. We made HEAPS of mistakes. But so far it was probably the best thing I’ve done in my entire life.

And this is what I want to finish by saying:

Don’t stand in a queue! If Circus Oz wants you we’ll find you. Hopefully we’ll find you on a stage or in a ring performing your own shtick with your mates in front of a thousand gob-smacked people. Doing your thing. The thing that makes you passionate. The stuff that keeps you awake at night having ideas. And if that stuff doesn’t happen to be the same as the stuff that keeps us passionate, IT DOESN’T MATTER! At one level there’s nothing I like more than offering someone a job at Circus Oz and that offer being turned down because the person likes what they’re doing so much, they’d prefer to keep doing it.

Find something you love and go for it!

(Acknowledgements go to Jono Hawkes who proposed some of the above ideas at the Circus Conference in the Sydney Opera House in the late 90’s. Also thanks to Linda Mickleborough, Anni Davey, DJ Garner, Tim Coldwell, Daryll John and a few others who told me what they thought they’d like the graduating class to hear.  And of course the Australian Circus community who are a lovely bunch of freaks.)

Mallika Sherawat (via 50 Most Beautiful Asian Women in the World | Indian Pakistani Men Magazine)

I was browsing through this list and when I stumbled onto this picture I thought “OMG IT’S HERMIONE GRANGER!!!” If Hermione’s ever cast as South Asian here’s a good candidate!

crystiancastros:

(via queersecrets)

Me too. And they were like “FUCK, YEAH!”

BAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA

bridgettelizabeth:

thatdancergirl:

I still can’t help crying when I think of Marie. The way she glided across the floor as if she had wings. But she crashed. And now she’s gone. The beautiful soul lay to rest. She had a scholarship to dance with Juilliard. Fucking Juilliard! 

But she did not die so that we could follow in her footsteps. When she died she sent a powerful message. So that the younger girls in studio wouldn’t fret about a pound or an inch gained. So that they wouldn’t have to think of clever ways to carry laxatives and measuring tapes everywhere. So they wouldn’t have to cry when they looked in the mirror. So they wouldn’t lead the life that Jeanette and I lead. Both of us, so close to the same fate, now have to live with that death. Now have to push to overcome ourselves more than ever. Now wishing that it could have been us instead of her, instead of the girl with so much potential and promise. This death was suicide. A slow, painful, suicide that we all had to watch, but that no one could stop. 
The sickest feeling of all? I still crave to lose weight. 

To the beautiful soul who took more than her own life when she left. 

I hope you don’t mind me sharing this, but it breaks my heart, and I’d like to think that her story may encourage others to seek help.

<3

effyeahtrapeze asked: Your blog is one of my favourites, thought I'd just drop by to tell you that. You help provoke so much thought, for me! So thank you.

awwwwwwwww thank you :D

Can we really not have a conversation about clothing and gender performance without dragging people in as examples for mockery and derision? Could we talk, for example, about the history of the high heel, its loaded role in social and cultural history, without specifically identifying individual heel wearers and claiming that they are what’s wrong with feminism? Because that’s a conversation I would really like to have, one where we talk about the complex history of clothing and gender performance, but don’t use it as a screen for attacking women for what they do and do not wear.

The Creative Empire | Home

The Creative Empire is a community of like-minded creative business owners. We are entrepreneurs who are looking to get ahead of the game, learn from each other, try new strategies. This is a place for serious action and frank discussion.

We are not all crafters or artists. Inside, you’ll find writers, designers, coders, numbers people, and more. We are all looking to find out of the box solutions for running our businesses.

At $25/month, it’s about the same as an ArtsHub membership - seems pretty useful!

faketrain:

Fierce Flesh is a voluptous celebration of body diversity in all its radical representations. An extravagant dance party with performers and artists, that envision revolutionary possibilities for fighting body fascism.
Come Embrace fierce beautiful bodies at every size and of every politic!
Plus the world premiere of the trailer for upcoming documentary Fierce Fat Femmes!

Watch diverse performers give there take on the body politic, plus “Least/tightess Dressed” door prizes, Fatty Fatshion show, amazing fat tunes from hot DJ’s and massive visuals from our sexy VJ’s, a BIG smooch kissing booth, art installations and so much more!
We are still looking for performers and artists, if you are interested in contributing to the night please send an email to thefatempire@gmail.com

This event was created to start a much need dialogue and critique of size/body politics in Sydney. We want to create a space to encourage performers of size and diverse bodies to embrace the stage to create higher visibility and encourage body positivity in our community.
Funds raised by this and hopefully future events like this, will go to community groups, artists collectives, and projects that are aiming to create a body positive community in Sydney.

Currently we are trying to help raise funds for the following groups/projects;
Fierce Fat Femmes- a feature documentary on the politics and celebration of people of size.
Fat Femme Front- a Radical collective for Fat Femmes and S.O.F.A.S (significant others, friends & allies)
Aquaporko – an Anti Fat Phobic and Aqua Aerobic Synchronized Swim Team, performance troupe.
Luscious- A magazine

15 October from 7.30pm onwards

!!!!! I wanted to organise something like this last year in Brisbane around the time the Body Image report was out, but couldn’t work out how. Too bad I’m not going to be in the country when this is on, but YAY for someone taking the initiative!

tropigalia:

pierduta:

bunniblog:

lecourtier:

handwritinggonthewall:

itsallhapening:

So true, I’m still waiting for someone to write me a love letter with a quill and seal it with a signet ring.  Texts just aren’t the same…

*sigh* 

i wish i had a secret admirer who sent me roses. then when we meet we’d go ballroom dancing and have a picnic under the stars.

“i really wish romance happened in the old fashion way, where people married their cousins to form political alliances”

these days marrying your cousin only gets you genetic mutations and no ties to saxony >:-O

ARGH CAN PEOPLE STOP IT WITH THE COUSIN MARRIAGE MYTHS PLEASE?!

The likelihood of genetic mutations via cousin marriage is about the same as that by being born to a woman over 40 - not a great deal. Also it only seems to be the US and American-influenced that has this weird taboo over cousin marriage - a lot of the rest of the world seems to be OK with it. The hoo-haa over cousin marriage seems to be rooted in very racist and classist sentiments (look at all the redneck jokes or the “Muslim royalty” jokes).

My parents are first cousins; 2 of my grandparents are siblings. I’m pretty sure neither my sister nor I are “mutant” in any way. There are other cousin marriages in my family tree - more a bush, because there’s some funky 2nd-cousin/uncle-by-marriage and cousin-by-other-marriage/etc things happening, it’s a little too complicated to explain. So far my immense family hasn’t had any out-of-the-ordinary health issues; anything that has afflicted one of us is something that would afflict anyone regardless of their birth circumstance.

So please, stop the damn prejudicial myths already.

(sad thing is, I am something of a romantic and can appreciate the sentiment behind the picture. But the comment about cousin marriages just made me SNARL. you want to rail against old-style romance? At least pick something not so stupid.)