Coda

This chapter discusses the 2011 Supreme Court ban on children and adolescent youth under eighteen from performing in Indian circus, and its aftermath. It also examines the various attempts within the community and government institutions to establish circus training centres at various points of time, as well as the idea of the ‘new circus’, which has been gaining popularity in the West over the last few decades.

Circus choreographies of bodies and things

The text reflects on the 12th Festival of New Circus and Contemporary Clown Klovnbuf through the prism of contemporary circus' character and its slippery position in contemporary performing arts practices. Following a short overview of developments that have helped shape today's context, the performance analysis focuses mainly on tendencies incorporating critical thinking and the exploration of original forms, means (the trained circus body) and conditions, thereby expanding perspectives in this field of art. It also addresses the issue of the position of contemporary circus in this local environment characterised by a small circle of people involved, challenging working conditions, vulnerable production and weak scientific discourse.

Markets changing, changing markets: Institutional work as market shaping

There is increasing interest in the marketing discipline to adopt an institutional perspective when examining markets. This requires seeing markets as complex systems that evolve through time, rather than as preexisting, stable structures. Using a historical, longitudinal case study, we integrate the “institutional work” framework as a lens to understand the process of market change in the novel, historic case of circus in North America through the 20th century. We explore the decline of the market for traditional American circus, and the emergence, in the 1970s, of the adjacent market for new circus, with a specific focus on the world’s preeminent new circus company, Cirque du Soleil. Theoretical contributions of the article include a “market-shaping activities” framework that illustrates market shaping involves considerably more actors than the dyad of producer and consumer. Market-shaping occurs through an interdependent process involving institutionalized practices, beliefs and expectations, and the intentional activities of market actors at any institutional level. Market change is shared, iterative, and recursive, that is cocreated, and undertaken by market actors both formal and informal. Market shapers do not necessarily work in an orchestrated fashion; nevertheless, vibrant networks of complementary actors contribute positively to the construction of shared identities and normative networks. From a managerial perspective, we find implications for policy makers, funders, strategists, and marketers.

Economic and Social Policies under the Reagan Administration

President Ronald Reagan brought a new circus to town in 1981. He billed it as offering never-before-seen, awe-inspiring acts of skill and daring, with demand-side management by ‘rational expectations monetarists’ and supply-side engineering by ‘new economists’, the performers in the centre ring would tame inflation and usher in permanent growth. Others would increase defence expenditures while cutting taxes and balancing the budget all at one and the same time without hurting the ‘truly needy’ or weakening the legitimate ‘safety nets’ of the ‘merely seedy’. The grand finale would bring forth the problem-saving capacities of states and localities as well as private philanthropies, all of which had been ‘crowded out’, according to Reagan, by an overspending, overtaxing, over-regulating, problem-causing federal government, which had been the featured performer in previous, not very successful ‘great shows’ in Washington.