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UOW Home > Faculty of Arts > Research > CCAS > Fabulous Risk > Keynote Presenters |
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Fabulous Risk:
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Paul Bouissac, University of Toronto |
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Photo by Tim Morrison, 2000 |
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Richard Broome, La Trobe University |
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Paper Title: People having or displaying physical and mental attributes considered outside the normal range have been gazed upon for millennia, at times in serious contemplation, sometimes in fear or mockery. Discourses about those termed ‘freaks’ have ranged from wondrous manifestations of Divine signs to humanity, through ideas of educational and rational amusement, to medical discourses: from ‘wonder to error’ as one scholar has summed it. Robert Bogdan’s book, Freak Show (1988), put forward a social constructionist view of freak shows in America, and detected agency and valorization in their lives. This view was criticized strongly by David Gerber in 1990 who argued Bogdan’s approach neutralized the social oppression of freaks. This debate will be reviewed and another view proposed – at least for the Australian case- that the agency and oppression of freaks co-existed in the paternal relations between impresario and freak, and that the oppression of freaks was mitigated by their being part of the showground community. Biographical note: Richard Broome is associate professor in History at La Trobe University where he teaches Australian and Aboriginal history, the latter being his major research area. He is author of seven books, notably Aboriginal Australians (1982, 1994, 2001), and Aboriginal Victorians (2005), which was thrice short listed for major prizes and recently won the NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize. He wrote Sideshow Alley (1998) with Alick Jackomos, who wrestled part time in Jimmy Sharman’s boxing tent for twenty years. His latest book, A Man of All Tribes. The Life of Alick Jackomos (2006), was co-authored with Corinne Manning. |
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Anni Davey, Circus Oz |
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Contemporary Circus exploded into being with an enormous energy, a sense that anything could (and would) happen. Human beings were capable of anything. Of choosing the way they lived, how they worked, who they slept with! And all of these possibilities were there in this new circus…. We watched, gobsmacked, shaken, joyously idolising, aspiring! Tumbling was analogous to overturning the old world order. Strong women supported graceful men. They took risks with their bodies and with our expectations. These were new and exciting times! And things did happen! A war was ended, a moratorium on uranium mining was imposed, abortion became available, gay people put on a parade that became the largest public celebration any of us had ever seen. Reconciliation with aboriginal people was on the agenda., as were workers rights, health care, social security, and then the environment, conservation, the closing down of the whaling industry. Lot's of things happened! We flocked to join this new circus because we too wanted to change the world. And it was changing! Did we do that? But now it's changing back! Abortion, Uranium Mining, workers rights, gay rights, even whaling! What happened? Did we who joined the circus just take off in a rocket and by travelling faster than the speed of light for almost 30 years, have we returned to find that actually, no time has elapsed at all? Can contemporary circus contribute to real and lasting change? Is there a place for politics in circus any more? Are we brave enough to take on issues anymore? Are we effective enough to make a difference? Has the contemporary circus rocket crashed back to earth? Or is it floating aimlessly in space somewhere? Let's discuss! Biographical note: Anni Davey has worked in circus and theatre for the last twenty years or so. In the mid-eighties she was a collective performing member of Death Defying Theatre, an outdoor theatre company based in Sydney and touring all over Australia at fairgrounds and shows, in workplaces and housing commissions, in coal mines and at festivals. In the nineties Anni was a founding member of Club Swing (1994), an aerial performance company, and of Crying In Public Places (1989), a four women acapella group and theatre company. Both companies have toured extensively nationally and internationally. Anni has a long association with Circus Oz that she first joined as performer in 1987 and where she has acted over the years as performer, aerialist, tour manager, administrator, trainer and as Acting General Manager in 1998. She has been a regular aerial trainer at the Women's Circus. She has also performed with Rock 'n' Roll Circus, Salamanca Theatre, Melbourne Workers Theatre, Back to Back Theatre, Zootango Theatre, and with Spellbound, a circus company based in Glasgow. Film and TV includes MERCURY and MARGARET STAR. At Christmas 2000 Anni joined Circus Oz again to perform on Broadway in New York. In 2001 Crying In Public Places toured their third show, SKIN, all over the country. Anni rejoined Circus Oz mid-2001 as full time performer and has toured all over the world, including Vienna, Barcelona, Berlin, and all over Australia since. She is currently on Maternity leave. Anni has been a Board member of Melbourne Fringe since 1995 and is currently Chair of that organisation. |
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Jamie Skidmore, Memorial University of Newfoundland |
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Peta Tait, La Trobe University
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Paper Title: From Frederich Nietzsche's rope-walking superman to the seductive trapeze lover in Wim Wender's Wings of Desire, circus is used as a metaphor for freedom and for yearning. In philosophy, literature and cinema, circus performance is celebrated for its transgression of social and physical constraints, its defiance of ‘natural' laws. At the same time circus is synonymous with danger. The example of circus suggests that the pursuit of freedom is inseparable from physical risk and danger in ways that run parallel to Judith Butler's (2004) claim that life is “precarious” because we are dependent on others. It remains crucial that the dangerous freedoms of circus continue to inspire audiences as an antidote to a twenty-first century society and its all-pervasive risk management economy, one that is increasingly concerned with the politics of national security and acquiescent to the technological erosion of personal freedoms. There is a longstanding suspicion that circus arts shamelessly exploit a capacity to arouse both fascinated excitement and extreme anxiety through an illusion of risk. Yet how do circus acts evoke such seemingly contradictory impressions? Social anxiety is implicated because a performance of physical risk and danger in circus acts is inseparable from performing social identity. In paradoxical oppositions, perceptions of risk are contingent on prevailing beliefs about bodily norms and safe limits whether a performer is executing heightened physical action or gendering his or her actions at will or subverting categories of racial ethnicity. |
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Noel Tovey
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His talk, entitled Life is a Risk, will discuss his long association with circus and explain his reasons for founding The Noel Tovey Scholarship Fund to teach circus arts for socially and financially disadvantaged children - one black and one white. Useful Links: http://www.abc.net.au/message/radio/speaking/stories/s1334563.htm |
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In the early days of New Circus, one of the companies that combined to form Circus Oz back in 1978, one of the most obviously radical things about them apposite to traditional circus was the lack of animals. Traditional circus said to them " A circus without animals is like an aeroplane without wings!". New Circus responded "An aeroplane without wings is a rocket!".
Peta Tait is Professor of Theatre and Drama at La Trobe University, Australia and publishes on bodies in circus performance, and on cultural languages of emotion. She has written books on gender and Australian performance, and she is a playwright. Her most recent books are: Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance (Routledge 2005); Performing Emotions: Gender, Bodies, Spaces (Ashgate 2002); and the edited volume, Body Show/s: Australian Viewings of Live Performance (Rodopi 2002). In 2005-6 she undertook the report Examination of Resources for Writing for Performance for the Australia Council.
Noel Tovey was born in Melbourne on the 25th of December 1934. Born in the slums of Carlton, he rose to become one of Australia's, and the world's, most beloved performers. An actor, writer, choreographer and dancer, he has graced the stage from Sydney to London. His one-man show, Little Black Bastard, based on his autobiography of the same name, and shortlisted for the Human Rights Award and the Victorina Premier's Literary Award, tells the harrowing story of the years of sexual and physical abuse he suffered as a child, his incarceration in Pentridge at the age of 17, and the racial abuse he experienced as an Indigenous Australian in the Melbourne of the 1940s and '50s. But Noel Tovey's story is one of strength and hope which maps out his journey through theatre and dance - he was principal dancer with Sadler's Well - to writing and directing - most recently the Indigenous welcoming ceremony at the Sydney Olympics. Noel's love of circus is long-standing, and he has joined forces with the Flying Fruit Fly Circus to sponsor a program for disadvantaged youth. He has also played Con Colleano in Skipping on Stars.
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