Circus. Seize the Moment

What speaks for an institutionalized promotion of the New Circus.

By Thomas Oberender

Circus, both old and new, is for me an art form of success. This is obvious in that it is so closely related to the danger. Much of the energy and intensity of experience emanating from it stems from the risk of failure that surrounds the performers in the eyes of those watching them in their difficult actions, which always seem so easily done, with a smile over the abyss of fear or of the uncertain. Circus makes the impossible possible, it celebrates ease in the face of the very difficult. It gives life to things and treats living bodies as things that free themselves from their function and become something completely different.
There is so much time in every moment of circus art - doing the same again and again until it succeeds. Therefore, the artistic moments also release so much more time than other arts - a pure wonder that creates peace and wonder around it. How does it work? The perhaps most essential question of human life is fundamental in circus: how does it work - in a very practical and technical way, because everything, especially its own integrity, depends on it.