About Circus
Although now established as an international artform, Circus is a British invention. In London in 1768 Philip Astley brought a display of horsemanship - together with jugglers, acrobats and dramatic scenarios - to a ringed arena, creating the world's first circus.
Circus today finds its way to almost all corners of the UK, with performances taking place in the traditional touring Big Top tent; at dedicated theatre and art spaces; in urban or rural festivals; in cabaret, on TV or in variety shows and nightclubs. There are also a small number of established professional circus training schools and a larger number of community circuses.
An enormous number of people go to see circus.
Statistics state that 18 % of the population visited a circus, street festival or carnival in 2000 (Social Survey Division of the Office for National Statistics 2001 - referenced in Arts Council of England Strategy and Report on Circus 2002). This is a sizeable number of people, larger than for some other artforms such as dance performance (10%) which receive substantially more funding and support. Audiences are growing all the time with an increasing number of new circus productions from UK companies and visiting foreign companies. There has been little research into audience figures for circus, but the Arts Council of England Jermyn Survey 2001 estimates the mean audience figure per company as 156,000 and the median figure as 30,000 over the course of a year — usually concentrated into an average 30-week working period.
Circus appeals to a broad cross section of the population. The traditional touring tented circus, by travelling from town to town, village to village, reaches people who would not otherwise experience any live performance.
What we now call 'circus' has a colourful history, and we hope to collect plenty of useful links and references in the Research section.
