Acrobats and Mountebanks

Acrobats and Mountebanks
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 378
Release :
ISBN-10 : UOM:39015013109510
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (10 Downloads)

Synopsis Acrobats and Mountebanks by : Hugues Le Roux

The Ordinary Acrobat

The Ordinary Acrobat
Author :
Publisher : Vintage
Total Pages : 345
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780307962294
ISBN-13 : 0307962296
Rating : 4/5 (94 Downloads)

Synopsis The Ordinary Acrobat by : Duncan Wall

The extraordinary story of a young man’s plunge into the unique and wonderful world of the circus—taking readers deep into circus history and its renaissance as a contemporary art form, and behind the (tented) walls of France’s most prestigious circus school. When Duncan Wall visited his first nouveau cirque as a college student in Paris, everything about it—the monochromatic costumes, the acrobat singing Simon and Garfunkel, the juggler reciting Proust—was captivating. Soon he was waiting outside stage doors, eagerly chatting with the stars, and attending circuses two or three nights a week. So great was his enthusiasm that a year later he applied on a whim to the training program at the École Nationale des Arts du Cirque—and was, to his surprise, accepted. Sometimes scary and often funny, The Ordinary Acrobat follows the (occasionally literal) collision of one American novice and a host of gifted international students in a rigorous regimen of tumbling, trapeze, juggling, and clowning. Along the way, Wall introduces readers to all the ambition, beauty, and thrills of the circus’s long history: from hardscrabble beginnings to Gilded Age treasures, and from twentieth-century artistic and economic struggles to its brilliant reemergence in the form of contemporary circus (most prominently through Cirque du Soleil). Readers meet figures past—the father of the circus, Philip Astley; the larger-than-life P. T. Barnum—and present, as Wall seeks lessons from innovative masters including juggler Jérôme Thomas and clown André Riot-Sarcey. As Wall learns, not everyone is destined to run away with the circus—but the institution fascinates just the same. Brimming with surprises, outsized personalities, and plenty of charm, The Ordinary Acrobat delivers all the excitement and pleasure of the circus ring itself.

The New International Encyclopaedia

The New International Encyclopaedia
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 960
Release :
ISBN-10 : UOM:39015055063021
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (21 Downloads)

Synopsis The New International Encyclopaedia by : Daniel Coit Gilman

The Greatest Shows on Earth

The Greatest Shows on Earth
Author :
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Total Pages : 298
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781780233987
ISBN-13 : 1780233981
Rating : 4/5 (87 Downloads)

Synopsis The Greatest Shows on Earth by : Linda Simon

Beautifully illustrated and filled with rich historical detail and colorful anecdotes, this is a vibrant history for all those who have ever dreamed of running away to the circus, now in paperback. “Step right up!” and buy a ticket to the Greatest Show on Earth—the Big Top, containing death-defying stunts, dancing bears, roaring tigers, and trumpeting elephants. The circus has always been home to the dazzling and the exotic, the improbable and the impossible—a place of myth and romance, of reinvention, rebirth, second acts, and new identities. Asking why we long to soar on flying trapezes, ride bareback on spangled horses, and parade through the streets in costumes of glitter and gold, this captivating book illuminates the history of the circus and the claim it has on the imaginations of artists, writers, and people around the world. Traveling back to the circus’s early days, Linda Simon takes us to eighteenth-century hippodromes in Great Britain and intimate one-ring circuses in nineteenth-century Paris, where Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso became enchanted with aerialists and clowns. She introduces us to P. T. Barnum, James Bailey, and the enterprising Ringling Brothers and reveals how they created the golden age of American circuses. Moving forward to the whimsical Circus Oz in Australia and to New York City’s Big Apple Circus and the grand spectacle of Cirque du Soleil, she shows how the circus has transformed in recent years. At the center of the story are the people—trick riders and tightrope walkers, sword swallowers and animal trainers, contortionists and clowns—that created the sensational, raucous, and sometimes titillating world of the circus.

Rings of Desire

Rings of Desire
Author :
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Total Pages : 226
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0719052343
ISBN-13 : 9780719052347
Rating : 4/5 (43 Downloads)

Synopsis Rings of Desire by : Helen Stoddart

The circus has been both one of the most influential forms of international popular entertainment and yet at the same time remains almost entirely absent from academic studies of popular theatrical forms. This book offers readers an introduction to the cultural history of the circus and gives an account of the dominant characteristics of the circus's aesthetic practices and relates these to the sometimes precarious developments, changes and variations in its economic organization, architecture and social status. The book goes on to outline the particular challenges that this essentially live, dangerous and body-centred form presents to literary and film representation and does so through the particular examples of works by Charles Dickens, Federico Fellini and Wim Wenders. This wide-ranging and accessible book offers ways of thinking about the meaning and significance of the circus as a specifically modern form of art and entertainment.

Oscar Wilde's Elegant Republic

Oscar Wilde's Elegant Republic
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages : 610
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781443887632
ISBN-13 : 1443887633
Rating : 4/5 (32 Downloads)

Synopsis Oscar Wilde's Elegant Republic by : David Charles Rose

Why was Paris so popular as a place of both innovation and exile in the late nineteenth century? Using French, English and American sources, this first volume of a trilogy provides a possible answer with a detailed exploration of both the city and its communities, who, forming a varied cast of colourful characters from duchesses to telephonists, artists to beggars, and dancers to diplomats, crowd the stage. Through the throng moves Oscar Wilde as the connecting thread: Wilde exploratory, Wilde triumphant, Wilde ruined. This use of Wilde as a central figure provides both a cultural history of Paris and a view of how he assimilated himself there. By interweaving fictional representations of Paris and Parisians with historical narrative, Paris of the imagination is blended with the topography of the city described by Victor Hugo as ‘this great phantom composed of darkness and light’. This original treatment of the belle époque is couched in language accessible to all who wish to explore Paris on foot or from an armchair.

Ventriloquism, Performance, and Contemporary Art

Ventriloquism, Performance, and Contemporary Art
Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Total Pages : 365
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781000817324
ISBN-13 : 1000817326
Rating : 4/5 (24 Downloads)

Synopsis Ventriloquism, Performance, and Contemporary Art by : Jennie Hirsh

Ventriloquism, Performance, and Contemporary Art volume calls attention to the unexpected prevalence of ventriloqual motifs and strategies within contemporary art. Engaging with issues of voice, embodiment, power, and projection, the case studies assembled in this volume span a range of media from painting, sculpture, and photography to installation, performance, architecture, and video. Importantly, they both examine and enact ventriloqual practices, and do so as a means of interrogating and performatively bearing out contemporary conceptions of authorship, subjectivity, and performance. Put otherwise, the chapters in this book oscillate seamlessly between art history, theory, and criticism through both analytical and performative means. Across twelve essays on ventriloquism in contemporary art, the authors, who are curators, historians, and artists, shine light on this outdated practice, repositioning it as a conspicuous and meaningful trend within a range of artistic practices today. This book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, media studies, performance, museum/curatorial studies, and theater.

Dickens and Popular Entertainment

Dickens and Popular Entertainment
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 305
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781317233367
ISBN-13 : 1317233360
Rating : 4/5 (67 Downloads)

Synopsis Dickens and Popular Entertainment by : Paul Schlicke

First published in 1985. Dickens was a vigorous champion of the right of all men and women to carefree amusements and dedicated himself to the creation of imaginative pleasure. This book represents the first extended study of this vital aspect of Dickens’ life and work, exploring how he channelled his love of entertainment into his artistry. This study offers a challenging reassessment of Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop and Hard Times. It shows the importance of entertainment to Dickens’ journalism and presents an illuminating perspective on the public readings which dominated the last twelve years of his life. This book will be of interest to students of literature.

Strange Dislocations

Strange Dislocations
Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Total Pages : 274
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0674839781
ISBN-13 : 9780674839786
Rating : 4/5 (81 Downloads)

Synopsis Strange Dislocations by : Carolyn Steedman

Using the perspectives of social and cultural history, and the history of psychology and physiology, Strange Dislocations traces a search for the self, for a past that is lost and gone, and the ways in which, over the last hundred years, the lost vision has come to assume the form of a child.