Briefs and Hot Brown Honey: Alternative Bodies in Contemporary Circus | Lavers | M/C Journal. Briefs and Hot Brown Honey are two Brisbane based companies producing genre-bending work combining different mixes of circus, burlesque, hiphop, dance, boylesque, performance art, rap and drag. The two companies produce provocative performance that is entertaining and draws critical acclaim.
However, what is particularly distinctive about these two companies is that they are both founded and directed by performers from Samoan cultural backgrounds who have leap-frogged over the normative whiteness of much contemporary Australian performance. Both companies have a radical political agenda. This essay argues that through the presentation of diverse alternative bodies, not only through the performing bodies presented on stage but also in the corporate bodies of the companies they have set up, they profoundly challenge the structure of the Australian performance industry and contribute a radical re-envisaging of the potential of circus to act as a vital political force.
Althusser, L. Passion for Circus. This Archive Is Digitizing the History of the Circus. For years, Illinois State University’s Milner Library has made it its mission to preserve the history of the circus. Its massive Circus and Allied Arts Collection includes trapeze fly bars, leotards, thousands of promotional posters and over 10,000 brightly colored Kodachrome slides of performers. The oldest book in its archive dates back to the early 16th century—a 1521 book on how to train your horse to please the court. Now, the library has received $268,000 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources to digitize more than 300 circus route books dating from 1842 to 1969. The three-year project will ensure that circus history is preserved for future generations, the university announced in a press release. Circus route books contain a treasure trove of historical data. They were typically produced after a season ended, Maureen Brunsdale, Milner Library’s head of special collections and rare books, tells Smithsonian.com.
Thayer's American Circus Anthology. Preface When the publisher of this book approached me with the idea that an anthology of my articles from Bandwagon might find favor with those interested in circus history, I was skeptical. There has been very little feed-back from readers in the thirty-five years since I began to publish the results of my research. Sometimes, I had doubted that anyone other than Fred Pfening, Jr., the editor and I had even read them. I was surprised that no one had questioned my conclusions, even with the passage of time. Granted that some of this material eventually graced books that I wrote, most of what is printed here has seen the light but once.
To paraphrase Plutarch, it is difficult to trace anything by history, because the view is interrupted by time, on the one hand, and by distortion, on the other. We should also admit that, too often, the initial solution found to a question was accepted as the ultimate. The history of the cookhouse was offered by the New York Clipper in James B. Read: Mr. Ladies of the Ring - Circus Now. The Strobridge Lithographing Company Barnum & Bailey: Evetta the Only Lady Clown, 1895 Dr. Janet Davis, circus society expert and associate professor in the Department of American Studies at University of Texas Austin, chronicles the historical significance of the female big top performer as a durable champion of women’s rights by bringing to life the posters featured in the 'Ladies of the Ring' exhibit, running through Feb. 2nd at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL.
This article was created as a reflection of the current exhibit, with help from the Ringling Museum of Art and the 'Tibbals' collection. On Sunday, March 31, 1912, a group of female Barnum & Bailey circus performers gathered around a baby giraffe at Madison Square Garden and ceremoniously named her “Miss Suffrage.”
The christening heralded the creation of a new women’s suffrage group, the Barnum & Bailey’s Circus Women’s Equal Rights Society. HA Thomas PT Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth: Miss Katie Stokes, circa 1878. Home Page - Circopedia. Sideshow Circus Magazine.