When I went to circus school, I learned that circus consisted of the following five disciplines:
- Juggling and object manipulation
- Aerial
- Acrobatics
- Equibrilistics and balance
- Clowning
Later, I found out that some people also include
- Partner acrobatics
- Ring master
These different disciplines are all very different and give different dimensions to the circus, as well as a great variety. They all had their place.
But lately and especially in new circus I have noticed that there are many shows with only one or maximum two of these disciplines. There are acrobatic shows, juggling shows and balance shows.
Here are some of my ideas of why:
Maybe this has come from small groups that want to explore their discipline deeper, and in order to do that it takes some acts to show the different possibilities within the discipline.
It could also be that people with one specialization meet other people with the same specialization and then decide to make a show together. I think it is much more likely to meet people in your own specialization than someone from a totally different field.
One other explanation could be that it might be easier to "break free" from "traditional circus" by doing it monodisciplinary as it even more underline the differences between traditional and new circus.
It could be easier to sell a show to a venue if it resembles more to other forms of performance that are usually monodisciplinar, like dance or theatre. Because then it is easier to label it as "juggling performance" in the program.
Do you have any ideas of why the monodisciplinar shows has seemed to have increased?
Tilde Björfors has written a lot of interesting things on this topic in her circus research on this link: 7 Dimesions and 7 disciplines (In Swedish).
In the club at uni we did a monodisciplinar show last winter as there where only object swinging, manipulation and juggling in the club at that time. We did a high light video:
