by Duncan Wall
The medals struck me as indicative. Even if the circus was still young, even if it did have a long way to go, it had come even further. Just over thirty years before, the art had been a part of the Ministry of Agriculture. Now the Minister of Culture was awarding medals for its development. I was reminded of a question that had been on my mind for some time. It was obvious, but it also struck me as complex: Why? As in, why had the French government cared enough about the circus to undertake the enormous effort of renovation?
“Bah, c’était nécessaire,” Turin said, when I put the question to him. “For a long time, the circus was the popular art par excellence. Everybody came to the circus. You can see this in old pictures. You had the king in his box, and the aristocrats in their loge, and then the working class up top. It was a mix of every social and economic class.”
Over the twentieth century, the circus declined. A new popular art rose to take its place: television.
“But television is different,” Turin continued. “A popular art should bring people together. It should unify them and pull them upward.” It should engender civic discussion, aid in intellectual and moral development, inspire and enliven. “Unfortunately, television doesn’t do this,” Turin said. “Instead of pulling the people upward, it pulls them downward. Instead of bringing them together, it isolates them.”
And so the state turned to the circus, which, despite its suffering, remained a place where people of all classes, races, and viewpoints could gather.
“I truly understood this for the first time at Le Cri du caméléon,” Turin said. On the surface, the show was a moody avant-garde theater piece. “But when I looked at the audience in the tent, I saw all sorts of people you’d never see at a regular theater show. There were people from every rung of society—intellectuals and children, the bourgeoisie and the working class—all taking pleasure together.”
Listening to Turin talk about the role of art in the world, I fully appreciated, for the first time, how unmitigatedly French the whole thing was. The French hold a belief in the power of art to influence society, in the benefits of creativity and personal refinement. De Gaulle’s and Malraux’s post–World War II offering of “élitisme pour tous,” or elitism for everyone, was an extension of this belief. In the eighties, the idea further flourished as part of Jack Lang’s larger effort to cultivate popular arts, from jazz (with the creation of a National Jazz Orchestra) to the circus.
Today in France art is everywhere. In Paris alone there are 120 festivals every year and 130 theaters. “You have the sense that theater is a part of their culture, and not in a superficial way,” my American friend Tina said during our trip to the Boulevard du Crime. “It’s part of their cultural conversation.” Artists I spoke with took for granted that their society supported them and expected them to participate in the public sphere. “The artist gives to life, as to the world, flavor, sense, and beauty,” former French president Jacques Chirac once said. “Mirror to mankind, he decodes his soul.”
How you feel about the government’s including circus in this effort depends on your feelings about the circus in general and about government intervention. If you’re a purist who appreciated the old circus, then you probably don’t like it at all. If you’re laissez-faire, or given to cynicism, then you might consider it manipulative, a way of seducing the masses into art appreciation the way you con children into eating vegetables by putting them on pizza.
In any case, it will be interesting to see how long the French attitude survives. During my stay, there were indications that the nation might be changing. Economic forces and conservative politicians were threatening the financial support that the state offered to performers between engagements. This “intermittent du spectacle” statute is critical to the work of all performing artists, and circus artists especially, since they often rely on it during periods of training and creation. According to Fred Cardon, a circus producer, shows would immediately grow smaller without that support. Prices would rise. The work would have to be less risky, since artists would need to survive on their performance revenues longer, lest they be forced to take slightly demeaning work (which Jérôme, in his inimitable way, calls “playing Santa at the mall”).
During my time in France, artists and technicians rallied against the measures, signing petitions, writing stinging articles, gathering en masse. One night I joined an immense crowd of artists and supporters of the arts—a million strong, the papers later said—who had gathered at the Bastille to march toward Place de la République. Street protests in Paris are nothing novel—there seems to be one a week—but this one was especially large and had an air of adventure. Many cultural venues had gone on strike in solidarity with the artists. The cinemas canceled their film showings, and enormous banners hung from cultural institutions, such as “Opéra Bastille en grève.” “You will not turn our country into a cultural desert!” someone shouted. A moment later, a woman appeared next to me in a clown wig and a red nose. The next thing I knew, we were moving together down the Boulevard du Crime.
(illustration credit 20.1)
THIS TRAIN IS a goddamn circus,” the stranger muttered as he moved down the crowded aisle. Fanny watched him pass, her head propped against the window, then returned her gaze to the lush countryside racing by. She released a small but noticeable sigh. “I’m not sure how I feel about that expression.”
It was the audition day, and we were on the move, to the branch of the National School in Châlons-en-Champagne. For the young women, the day marked the culmination of years of work, and their nervousness showed. Maud couldn’t stop commenting on the passing scenery, on the appealing shape of the houses and the lazy looks on the faces of cows chewing grass in the fields. Fanny popped her gum incessantly and had the music on her headphones cranked up loud enough for me to hear it over the noise of the train. Personally, I was thrilled. With the easy end to the year, I had found my thoughts drifting less to the past and more into the future: Where was the circus going? What would the next generation contribute to this evolving art? The day would provide the chance to investigate.
In Châlons-en-Champagne, we piled off the train and hiked through the center of town, which was cute, vine-strewn, and cobblestoned, yet stained by hints of industry in decline. Over a muddy brown river, sooty buildings loomed ominously. It was barely noon, and already the park benches were packed with men drinking from plastic bottles of beer. The school, I was disappointed to find, was in similarly rough shape. The red paint on the front doors was blistered and marred by several wide pink swaths, failed attempts to camouflage graffiti. The plaster façade of the building appeared to have been laid into by a machete. Cracks slithered toward its cupola.
Fanny and Maud disappeared through a pair of glass doors to check in. I lingered on a wooden fence outside, basking in the buzz of the crowd. Nervous kids stood clustered together in a parking lot nearby. Around the periphery, solitary parents hovered anxiously, eyeing each other over steaming cups of coffee.
According to Turin, during the school’s early years it had struggled to recruit students from diverse backgrounds. The new circus had been around for twenty years and state-supported for ten, but the general public still regarded the circus with suspicion, and so parents—especially middle-class parents—had trouble accepting their children’s interest in the school. “They thought their kids were running off to become chicken thieves,” Turin said. Accordingly, the kids who had enrolled tended to be those who struggled in traditional academic settings. Rebels themselves, they were attracted to the circus’s outsider reputation.
Today this has changed. As the circus penetrated the mainstream, it became less of a professional risk. Parents understood the circus: they had attended shows like Cirque Plume and Cirque du Soleil and seen circus performers in hotel and car advertisements. There was an infrastructure to support their children, a network of schools, venues, and resources. “Parents today have a better understanding of the life their kids are choosing,” Turin said
. “It’s a viable professional field, something between sports and performance.” Accordingly, the school’s demographic had shifted. The kids today are working-class, bourgeois, high-school graduates, some college graduates. “It’s easier now for a kid with other options to choose the circus,” Turin said.
In the parking lot, I couldn’t help noticing traces of this shift in the kids’ behavior (lots of amiable chatting) and the parents’ dress (khakis, windbreakers, fitted leather gloves). Later, I tracked down one of the parents, a dowdy dad named Pierre. In a neon-green jacket with a logo on the pocket that looked vaguely molecular, he was pacing circles around a tree, puffing Gauloise after Gauloise, trying to distract himself from what the fate of his son, Guillaume, would be. I asked Pierre if Turin was right, if parents were more open to the circus than they used to be.
“It depends,” he said. “I’m all for it. His mother still has some issues.”
I asked him what the problem was—safety?
“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s more the conversations. You know, ‘What does your son do?’ ‘Well, actually he’s training to be a contortionist.’ ” Pierre paused. “It’s not something you expect yourself to be saying as a parent.”
BEFORE DEPARTING FOR CHLONS, I had sat down with Frédéric. As director of programming, he could give me the best sense of the selection process. It is cringe-inducingly tough.
The test unfurled in three phases. In the early spring, the school received over three hundred applications from around the world, including dossiers describing each applicant’s training and goals, plus a video sample. Working with a team of administrators, Anny and Frédéric trimmed the group to 120, all of whom received an invitation to the “pre-selection.” This test, which I would be observing, lasted two days (sixty students per day) and consisted of classes in the school’s major disciplines: acting, dancing, and acrobatics.
“In the pre-selection it’s mathematical,” Frédéric explained. Judges—mostly professors from the National School—graded the students on the same scale that Luc had used at the beginning of the year: 0 for hapless, 7 for breathtaking. At the end of the day, the judges met together and tallied their marks. The candidates with the top forty scores moved on to the final round. The only exception, Frédéric noted, came when a student failed to score at least the median in acrobatics. “If you’re not at least an average acrobat, you don’t belong in a professional circus school.”
In France, most of the top universities—in engineering, politics, law—select their students through rigorous exams called concours. For the circus, the concours, the third round, is like a cross between a bar exam and an NBA training camp, complete with cafeteria-style meals and dormitory beds. The whole process, which is meant to determine the fifteen best circus prospects, lasts ten days and covers most physical disciplines (juggling, jumping, the splits), plus a battery of artistic workshops. The judges pay attention not only to a candidate’s achievement but also to her responsiveness to teaching and guidance. “We want to get a sense of how they might develop,” Frédéric said. Do they seem eager to improve? Can they integrate criticism into their work?
There’s also a social component. Attending the National School is an intense experience: classes are small, quarters close. Trust is obviously a big issue, both in the training room and outside. (“It starts to feel like you’re alone in this little circus world,” Tiriac, a freshman, once said to me.) Given this, the school watches how the students relate, how they chat and bond in between classes.
The goal, Frédéric said, was to pick a cohort as much as individuals. “We want a balance of skills,” he said, “but we really want team players, people who can listen and share. The circus is an inherently collaborative endeavor. We think the same qualities that allow students to excel at the school would also allow them to excel in a company: teamwork, a certain humility, an interest in placing the company over yourself.”
To this end, the school is willing to make sacrifices. I discovered this one wintry night when I accompanied a dozen freshmen to one of Paris’s famous cabarets. We sat front row, thanks to a student named Jonas, who went to prep school with a juggler in the show, Vincent. The night is mostly a fuzzy memory, a wash of bright plumage and bare breasts, but I remember Vincent’s entrance distinctly. About twenty minutes in, he came bounding on, with thick pectorals and biceps bulging under a stretchy shirt. He sprang into the air in a grand écart, landing in full splits. He could juggle seven balls, upright or inverted. He could back-flip high and tight.
Unfortunately, he was also as cloying as a cell-phone salesman. In the lobby, where we met him after the show, he greeted us with high-fives and winks. When I told him I was American, he asked me if I was carrying a gun and then pretended to shoot me with his fingers. (“Bang! Bang!”)
As we were leaving, Étienne, another student, mentioned that Vincent had applied for the National School the year before and had been rejected. I asked him why. He shrugged. “I think he’s just not what they’re looking for.”
THROUGH THE SCHOOL’S narrow interior hallway, packed now with circus hopefuls, Maud and Fanny moved toward a list of classes taped to the wall. On the bus, there had been some vague hopes expressed that the school might pair the girls together, but this was not to be: Maud would start with dance, Fanny with acrobatics.
I opted to follow Maud first, and we made our way into a mirror-lined studio where a group of jittery candidates had formed a line of spandex against the wall. It was a noticeably young group. The school’s official entrance age is sixteen to twenty-three, and many kids apply as early as possible, to have multiple opportunities to pass the test. Surprisingly, the group was also mostly female—surprising because the majority of the graduating classes at the National School had been disproportionately male. (The only explanation for that I ever heard came from Luc. “Men are generally better acrobats than women,” he told me in a moment of candor. “They’re more willing to take risks.”)
The test passed quickly and frantically. A parade of clipboard-wielding judges entered and arranged themselves silently near the door. Carine, a dance teacher at the school, emerged from the group and led the candidates through a brief warm-up followed by a rigorous series of dance combinations choreographed to Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five.” (If France’s National School had a sound track, Dave Brubeck would occupy half the tracks, Jacques Brel another third.) Normally meek and encouraging, Carine put on a drill sergeant’s growl for show. “Push the sky!” she barked. “Push the ground! Don’t just link the moves. Move through them! Soyez dynamique!”
The students lurched around the room with frightened looks. I watched Maud. Dancing wasn’t her strong suit—she’s too tentative—but she held up well, and this despite some stiff competition. The school makes no secret about the contents of the test; most applicants arrive with at least a little dance training. (For guys this can be an issue, though less than it used to be since forms like hip-hop and Capoeira have become more popular.)
After fifty minutes or so, a bell rang in the hallway. The students flooded into the hall, energized. I spotted Fanny on the other side of the hall. I plowed my way toward her, and together we slipped into her next test: acting.
Unlike dance, which is stressed in the curriculum, acting occupied a peculiar position at the National School. For freshmen and sophomores, it was a core yet secondary skill, a bit like music lessons, with less frequent classes than in acrobatics or dance. I thought it was an odd arrangement, given the prominence and importance of acting in professional shows, not to mention the relevance of the training. Acting teaches a performer how to understand the conceptual core of a piece; it determines her ability to source and channel her emotions, to re-create an interior state that transcends not only however she happens to be feeling in that moment but whatever specific physical act she happens to be performing.
The test seemed to confirm the necessity of acting training. The applicants were dreadful. One little bruiser, a flo
ppy-haired man built like a linebacker, played every scene with a sneer and a low growl, as if impersonating Robert De Niro. Before the improvisation portion of the test, the teacher had to explain to several others how improvisation worked. (“It’s like make-believe. Whatever comes from your imagination is valid.”) The scene reminded me of watching athletes in television commercials, and what a rare thing it was for a person to be both physically and expressively gifted.
Fortunately, Fanny was the exception to the rule. As the daughter of actors, she was easily the best in the room, and it was largely her acting ability that carried her through to the next round. Later, after I had returned to America, I would hear that she had been cut in the last round, just like the year before. I was sad at the news, but I knew she would be all right. There are worse places to be an actress than Paris.
BEFORE COMING TO FRANCE I had never heard of, much less been to, a circus library. Now they were a fetish of mine. The library at CNAC was supposed to be exemplary. I had been hearing about it since the beginning of the year. “Oh, wait until you get to Châlons,” Anny had told me during our tour of her own collection, a few shelves in a trailer. “That’s serious.”
During lunch break, I made my way up to the library, which was tucked off a narrow hallway on the second floor. The place immediately struck me as almost pitifully small, the size of a modest classroom. Half-empty shelves lined three of the walls.
Near the door, a woman in orange glasses sat behind an impressively messy desk. This was the head librarian, Miriam. We soon embarked on what she generously called a “tour.” She pointed out what was on the various shelves while rotating like a weathervane. She showed me a metal cabinet containing the boxed archives of Tristan Rémy, the influential circus historian. “The lock on the cabinet is broken,” she said as she jiggled the handle. I asked what exactly the boxes contained. “You know, we’ve never really had the time to go through them,” she replied.