Between bodies and objects

"The circus is the resilient art par excellence that can reinvent itself. From Philip Astley to Phia Ménard, from Barnum to Finzi Pasca, from Casartelli to Mathurin Bolze, the circus contains a self-healing and centrifugal drive that can question itself and other languages, including design. As Ariane Martinez states, the circus more than any other art “réfléchit sur lui même, soi en citant ses origines, soit en opérant une transformation et une réévaluation de ses éléments fondateurs.“

The multifarious dramaturgy of the circus teaches the art of resilience in many ways: by considering corporeality as a singular, never universal phenomenological category; through the urgency of staging a unique, non-replicable authorial stance; by using circus tricks as a means and not an end of the performance, and by entering into a pact of truth between author and viewer, with dialogical and horizontal modes of creation. In this way, the circus tries to regain possession of reality by deconstructing itself; it establishes new relationships and subverts perspectives to the point of questioning its founding elements and of dilating times and ways of representation, so as to regain possession of the body in an increasingly mediated reality. In resilient ways, the circus creates a space of resistance that transforms the scenic act of the performance into a laboratory for the observation of the human through “surprise in the face of otherness”.

Quattrox4 rethinks and designs the circus every day. It acts in three ways: it questions the circus’ dramatic limits and contemporary perspectives, it is inspired by foreign models, and it establishes relationships with other productive subjects in order to encourage language hybridisation.