Choreoluminosity: Balancing Fire in the Circus Ring

Written from a dancing choreographer’s perspective, this paper draws on the lived experiences of Elektri(c)k (Man 2019), an international contemporary circus project, which culminated in five public performances at the government funded theatre El Teatro Circo Price, Madrid. More specifically it will put into discussion artistic wrangles around the poetics and ethics of performances with fire, ‘when the world is ablaze’ (Marder, 2015). Choreoluminosity, which explores the affective relationship between light and the choreographic, is used as a critical and embodied framework to problematise these creative tensions and desires to work with volatile matter. Drawing on vital materialist sensibilities, choreoluminosity cultivates and hones ways of working with embodied responses that are formulated in relation to other – human and the non-human. Bringing fire, in this case a live flame into the circus ring, is an act in and of itself loaded with significance and metaphorical readings, from ritual and shamanistic practices to a glaring reminder of climate emergency. In our age of deepening environmental crisis, I draw on what eco-scenographer Tanya Beer (2021) identifies as an ethic in eco-scenographic practice, where sustainability is integrated as part of the artistic vision and design, in order to work beyond simply exercising eco-efficiencies. In the privileged safety of the Elektri(c)k performance context, I hoped to offer alternative metaphors for forging relationships of care and responsibility with matter, while questioning how the flame’s evocative and image-provoking capacity might serve to kindle and project new imaginings with energy, albeit towards fragile futures.

References
Beer, T. (2021) Ecoscenography: An Introduction to Ecological Design for Performance. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.
Marder, M. (2015) Pyropolitics: When the World is Ablaze. London and New York: Rowan and Littlefield.