Cirque Global: Quebec's Expanding Circus Boundaries ed. by Louis Patrick Leroux and Charles R. Batson (review)

In his introduction to this exciting and timely edited collection, co-editor Louis Patrick Leroux discusses the role of the cirque/circus as a performing art and business that draws on global and multinational traditions and on an international artistic pool while still linked to Quebec, a distinct society. The importance of this volume lies in its successful combining, coordinating, and compiling of a wide range of historical, theoretical, practical, and personal approaches to the cirque or circus, an important distinction that is thoroughly and convincingly explained. Indeed, the title promises what the book delivers. Cirque includes, but is not limited to, the ne plus ultra Cirque du soleil; Quebec's circus boundaries are indeed expanding. Global refers both to the inclusion of international artists and traditions and, in the case of Cirque du soleil, in particular, to the global trajectory of productions and to its controversial "global" vision. The disciplinary perspectives and fields represented are also global. An art, a business, an economic phenomenon, a cultural tradition, a political statement, an identity marker, a physical performance, and a career, cirque merits the transdisciplinary, broad-reaching, and boundarybreaking global consideration successfully achieved in this collection. Furthermore, the presence of the French word "cirque" in the title announces the inclusion of translated articles, thus expanding the boundaries of scholarship.

Divided into five parts, it is bookended by Charles Batson's finely crafted prologue outlining its role as a "contemporary circus reader" and a foundation for scholarship within and beyond Quebec and by Leroux's epilogue that weaves together, across the warp and weft of perspectives, the fifteen chapters. Included is a glossary with photographs, a useful tool for the less cirque/circus savvy.

In "Quebec on Planet Circus," the authors explore the origins of circus in Quebec and its development to cirque considering its links to international traditions. From the 1797 arrival in Canada of a British company (Boudreault) to the emergence of a Quebec theatre tradition and an international presence likened to "an empire in which the sun – both the star and the company – never sets," Quebec's place on, and contribution to, "Planet Circus" is a "tale of origins" situated in, and resulting from, "a concert of nations." "Cirque Brands" considers the company's success in "selling experience" through its staging of "a fantasy about globalization," perhaps even as "a balm to globalization's precarities." Its fan base is reminiscent of that which was previously the preserve of the Catholic Church; cirque must be considered a social and/or political form of expression emanating from a "fragile, small culture." Its link to the local is further demonstrated by its role in urban gentrification and city branding where the "circus has value … as part of the local scene." The contributors to "Dramaturgy and Aesthetics" write about the circus arts from three different perspectives. The "aesthetics of intimacy and authenticity" of Les 7 doigts de la main has shifted the gaze to a "heightened physical language of performance," encouraging intimate, authentic exchange. The distinction among "character, fleshy and performer bodies" illuminates the multiple layers of meaning with which Cirque de soleil performers are entrusted and disguised and that may imbue the performance with a social function as the "lowly" rise to great heights. If, in Cirque productions, the character body separates the performer from the persona, this difference becomes blurred in Totem where Indigenous performers play "themselves" alongside non-Indigenous entertainers disguised as "Indians," all of whom participate in a "Disney-fied" and approximate retelling of the First Nations' creation myth. "Circus Problematized" exits the big top to consider the business of managing and marketing Cirque de soleil by exploring conflicts between artists and managers, Cirque's (mercifully) failed casino project in Montreal, and its connections with China not only through the recruitment of elite athletes but also through para-diplomatic activities involving "complex transnational networks." The final section, "Affecting Change," studies the Cirque...