Cordier, Marine

Hanging Bodies: Gender in the Contemporary Circus - 2007.


35

This article examines the transformation of gender relations in an artistic world itself in change, the contemporary circus. This universe orientated towards exploits and heroism traditionally implements a strict sexual division of labour, incarnated in techniques, postures and stereotyped roles assigned to each sex. However rising generations, having known other modes of socialization, have developed a conception of this profession that is less performance-centred. While analysing how the relation to the body and techniques have been reconsidered, that author shows how each gender seizes ? or not ? the occasion to take on previously forbidden registers or role, thus changing gender norms. Then the question is how far that opens up the possibility of mixity, or if it is simply a recomposition of gender difference.