Cirkus och cirkuskonster

The Routledge Circus Studies Reader offers an absorbing critical introduction to this diverse and emerging field. It brings together the work of over 30 scholars in this discipline, including Janet Davis, Helen Stoddart and Peta Tait, to highlight and address the field’s key historical, critical and theoretical issues. It is organised into three accessible sections, Perspectives, Precedents and Presents, which approach historical aspects, current issues, and the future of circus performance.

The chapters, grouped together into 13 theme-based sub-sections, provide a clear entry point into the field and emphasise the diversity of approaches available to students and scholars of circus studies. Classic accounts of performance, including pieces by Philippe Petit and Friedrich Nietzsche, are included alongside more recent scholarship in the field.

Edited by two scholars whose work is strongly connected to the dynamic world of performance, The Routledge Circus Studies Reader is an essential teaching and study resource for the emerging discipline of circus studies. It also provides a stimulating introduction to the field for lovers of circus.

Jag hade inte kommit för att träffa Kalinka. Jag skulle träffa Sultan, hennes ståtliga pappa som kunde allt inom cirkus. Men inför Kalinkas envisa strävan att nå fram samt hennes oemotståndligacharm kapitulerade jag. Vi «flyttade ihop» bakom cirkusscenen. I ett kaos av hisnande akrobatik, dånande musik, eldnummer och allehanda ljudeffekter föddes en stjärna. Nanuk, som hon fick heta, var tillsynes fullkomligt oberörd av sin dramatiska miljö. Hon visade prov på ett förbluffande självförtroende och en inneboende medvetenhet om sitt livs innebörd.

Vårt partnerskap kom att baseras på ett djupt ömsesidigt förtroende och en total respekt för varandra. En innerlig kärlekshistoria och ett äventyr utan dess like växte fram. Vi levde i total symbios, hon var jag och jag var hon. Vår tillvaro visste inga gränser. Vår tillit till varandra slog

omgivningen med häpnad vart vi än befann oss liksom Nanuks proffsighet och självklara stjärnstatus.

Tills en dag då en oerhörd tradgedi krossade vår livsdröm och allt tog slut. Men inte ens i detta mörker övergav hon mig. Hon kom tillbaka, i formen av en blomma.

Both a great American adventure and a rare entry into asheltered world, Under the Big Top describes one man''s pursuit of every child''s fantasy: running away to join the circus. Bruce Feiler''s unforgettable year as a clown will forever change your view of one of the world''s oldest art forms and remind you of how dreams can go horribly wrong -- and then miraculously come true.

In commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Henri J. M. Nouwen’s death comes this never-before published story of his surprising and inspiring relationship with a trapeze troupe, The Flying Rodleighs.

During the last five years of his life, spiritual leader and teacher Henri Nouwen became close to a travelling circus trapeze troupe, The Flying Rodleighs. Like Nouwen’s own life, a trapeze act is full of artistry, exhilarating successes, crushing failures and continual forgiveness. Nouwen wrote about his experience in a genre new to him: creative non-fiction. In All of Life in Nine Minutes, his colleague and friend Carolyn Whitney-Brown presents his trapeze writings woven into a dramatic narrative that imagines Henri’s life flashing before him during his first heart attack. 

Readers will meet Nouwen as a spiritual risk taker who was transformed by diversity as he learned to see the world through many perspectives, including his participation in the Civil Rights movement, his life in community with people with intellectual disabilities, his personal growth through friendships during the 1990s AIDS pandemic, and other unexpected encounters. 

What will we do with our lives, and with whom will we do it? Through this story of flying and catching, Nouwen invites us all to let go and fly – and not be afraid to fall.

From the author of SOPHIE''S WORLD, ''A masterful mixture of fantasy and reality...a simply wonderful read'' SHE.Panina Manina, a trapeze artist, falls and breaks her neck. As the ringmaster bends over her, he notices an amulet of amber around her neck, the same trinket he had given his own lost child, who was swept away in a torrent some sixteen years earlier.This tale is narrated by Petter, a precocious child and fantasist, and perhaps Jostein Gaarder''s most intriguing character since Sophie. As an adult, Petter makes his living selling stories and ideas to professionals suffering from writer''s block. But as Petter sits spinning his tales, he finds himself in a trap of his own making.