Circus and its Others

Circus and its Others (CaiO) is an international, cross-disciplinary research initiative that explores the ways in which contemporary circus artists and companies relate to the concept of difference in their practice. Since its launch with a study day in 2014, the initiative has generated three international conferences (Montréal, 2016; Prague, 2018; Davis, 2021) and a double issue of the peer-reviewed journal Performance Matters (Vol 4., nos. 1-2, 2018). This ever-blossoming inquiry along the way has started to feel like a movement, in that the scholars and artist-researchers involved are united by more than the same research interests. Circus and its Others participants share the desire to continue to establish circus studies as a field while at the same time resisting its full institutionalization, engaging in an ongoing reflexive inquiry that allows itself to query its own inclusions and exclusions.

Circus, solidarity, difference, mobility: The fourth Circus and its Others conference will be held in Bogotá, Colombia, on February 28 - March 3, 2024, and will be the first international circus studies conference ever held in Colombia. As such the conference is intended to catalyze the development of circus studies as an academic discipline in Colombia and the Latin American region. As with each of our previous conferences, our gathering will take place alongside a festival, this one at the newly re-imagined National Centre for the Arts Teatro Colón. This festival, co-curated by the CaiO academic and creative committee along with Artemotion and the National Centre for the Arts, involves multiple components including street and ritual performances, in celebration and recognition of contemporary circus’s multiplicity and differences. These combined activities will explore Colombia’s status as a meeting point between North and South America, and a continued key site of movements of people and ideas within and beyond Latin America. Our current plans target a fully in-person conference, that will be free of charge to all. 

Please go to circusanditsothers.org for further information.

Circus and Its Others IV Academic and Creative Committee

Charles Batson, Union College, NY, USA; Karen Fricker, Brock University, Ontario, Canada; Aastha Gandhi, independent scholar, New Delhi, India; Julieta Infantino, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Olga Sorzano, Artemotion, Colombia. 

Partners and Allies CaiO 2024: Artemotion (Colombia); National Centre for the Arts Teatro Colón (Colombia); Ciclo de Estudios sobre Historia do Circo (Brazil, Latin America); Esta Pasando (Latin America).