Reconstruction Vol. 11, No. 4
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American Circus Re-Invented: Queering Cirque Du Soleil / Michael Johnson Jr.
<1> During Cirque Du Soleil’s twenty-six years, Cirque has challenged the traditional concept of the circus as American’s have come to understand it, by delivering entertainment and spectacle that dramatically differs from circuses like those organized by memorable pioneers P.T. Barnum & Bailey©, or Ringling Brothers© whose roots are found in the earliest history of the circus. The distinguishing hallmark of all Cirque Du Soleil performances is the notable absence of these traditional circus characteristics, supplanted with theatricality, conceptually distinct musical scores, colorful architectural backgrounds, aerial and perpendicular acrobatics, stylized choreography, puppetry and martial arts. The artistic vision promulgated by Cirque Du Soleil illustrates theatrical performance that both assimilates traditional circus-like characteristics while simultaneously integrating new features and challenging conceptual themes which refreshingly deviate from tradition circus performances. This research examines Zumanity: The Sensual Side of Cirque Du Soleil. Written and directed by Dominic Champagne and René Richard Cyr, this performance departs from the other Cirque productions by incorporating a sexual theme that conceptually reflects part burlesque, part cabaret performance. Cirque Du Soleil presents an opportunity to ask some important and challenging questions like: Is Zumanity indicative of a change in how nouveau cirque or contemporary circus movement presents masculinity, femininity, and sexual desire? How does Zumanity conform to, or deviate from, binary heteronormative constructions of human sexuality? And finally, is Zumanity ultimately only a profit making product that serves to whet the appetite of a very select audience for titillation and spectatorship?
<2> To answer these three questions, I expand upon Ame Wilson’s initial research about the reinvention of the circus as an entertainment vehicle of expression in the United States (Wilson), by looking specifically at what contemporary social meanings are created, reproduced, and disseminated about masculinity, femininity, and sexual desire in Zumanity. I first map out the historical origins of Cirque Du Soliel within a larger historiography of the circus with the United States, and the development of Zumanity as an attempt to determine if (and how) Cirque is redefining what audiences have grown to expect from their previous productions. Then I examine how far Zumanity actually goes towards challenging how gender and sexuality is presented after an era of highly sanitized, "family oriented" Vegas. To accomplish this, I examine the theatrical and performative acts (and actors) produced and performed in Zumanity, while theorizing about how Cirque Du Soleil profits from these continually reproduced, carefully constructed, (re)presentations.
Historical Origins and Evolution
<3> American spectators have a long history of expectations regarding circus performances. The circus as a historical refuge in a nomadic community of social outsiders has long been a subject of American entertainment. Historical evidence is replete about the escapism provided by circus employment. With the circus as a refuge for nonconformity both in physical appearance and abilities, this venue also served as a template to challenge prevailing ideas about gender and androgyny in particular. Remarking on the historicity of the circus (and its members) as an enterprise on the social margins, which afforded great latitude in personal, performative choices, Janet Davis notes, "These nomadic circus strangers helped subvert contemporary norms about gender and the body. Dressed in sleek leotards and wearing closely cropped hair, circus men and women often looked indistinguishable from each other, particularly as they exhibited equally difficult feats of agility" (Davis). American consumers expectations have been shaped by historical conventions that surround the concept of the circus; In some significant ways Cirque Du Soleil both replicates and deviates from these conventions that has resulted in reinvigorated interest in this form of leisure time entertainment by American consumers. As evidence of an enduring interest in the circus, PBS has released a three disc, six episode television series on DVD entitled Circus, produced and directed by Maro Chermayeff and Jeff Dupre as recently as 2010[#].
<4> Cirque Du Soleil has origins in the nouveau cirque or contemporary circus movement that is a genre of performance art developed in the late 20th century in which a story or theme is conveyed through an amalgamation of traditional circus skills in a blended, more character driven approach that focuses attention on the overall aesthetic impact of a larger narrative (Albrecht). The blending of traditional circus skills like acrobatics with the theatrical techniques has revitalized the general public’s appetite for contemporary circus performances (Babinski). Cirque Du Soleil for example, houses its productions in stage theaters rather than in large outdoor tents as is common with more traditional circus companies. There are other significant differences that have contributed to the rising popularity of contemporary circus troupes like Cirque Du Soleil. While traditional circus often employs families of entertainers, contemporary circus troupes use conservatory- trained artists and Olympic gymnasts; tiered seating around a circular arena under large tent was the hallmark of traditional circuses whereas nouveau cirque productions utilized auditorium seating in front of the proscenium stage. The production format differs dramatically between the two in that spectacle-oriented acts presided over by a ringmaster, or master of ceremonies, generally was the province of traditional circuses whereas nouveau cirque productions like those of Cirque Du Soleil utilize a series of theatrical, character driven acts tied together by an essential narrative or theme. In the late 1980s, Cirque Du Soleil hired Franco Dragone as artistic director to oversee the production of eight shows of what he described as the "Nouvelle Experience". From the years 1985 to 1998 Dragone would direct nearly all of Cirque Du Soleil's most prestigious shows and played a significant role in developing Cirque Du Soleil's distinctive merging of theater and circus performance. In the early 1990s Dragone's reputation grew with the production of Saltimbanco, nontraditional circus productions in which postmodern dance, music, and circus acrobatics were interlaced with a dreamlike narrative which later included both "Mystère" and "O".
<5> By 2002, under the direction of Dominic Champagne, the highly successful "Varekai" eventually gave rise to the development of "Zumanity" in 2003 and "Love" in 2006. Champagne notably observed that "you could put almost anything in a jar, put it on stage, call it Cirque Du Soleil and it would be a hit" (Zinoman). Of course that success, and the willingness to risk that success, became especially important in the production of Zumanity, because as Lyn Heward, the creative president of Cirque Du Soleil, makes clear "it's edgy and you can't be edgy if you don't provoke a few taboos"(Trebay). More theatrical than circus spectacle, the creators of Zumanity have moved away from the world of the circus and put a new twist on the risqué-sometimes raucous-intimacy of the European cabaret tradition. Zumanity’s thematic narrative, closely follows that tradition, complete with loveseats (at a premium price) covered in lush, red velvet. Indeed, the construction of the space reflects a design that invokes the appearance on which the stage appears as a womb, flanked by shapes, that mimic fallopian tubes through its artful curves and swirls, vaguely reminiscent of an Art Nuevo style. Moreover, a plush red velvet wall perforated with asymmetrical peepholes, invites audience members to voyeuristically peek into the theatre before entering, separates the foyer of the theatre from the main seating beyond. With a uniformly deep red color pallet on carpet, seats, and stage curtain, the setting evokes a decadent 1930s, French cabaret revealing a radical departure from the world of the circus arts, by reinventing the erotic cabaret for mature audiences.
<6> The idea of an interactive theatre based on a cabaret theme invokes images of the historical roots of the French word’s origin. Cabaret was originally a word for an establishment that served liquor but eventually evolved to mean a physical space where intimate performers routinely transgressed conventional artistic and social boundaries by mingling among, interacting with and increasingly titillating audience members as they ate and drank at café tables (Fox). Cirque productions generally are constructed and measured against the collection of theatrical conventions associated with American concepts about the circus and those conventions standardize audiences’ expectations(Wilson). By circumventing, exploiting, and denouncing those conventions, Zumanity appears to directly challenge those expectations in terms of collective preconceptions of performance and pantomime, which refer to normative gender performativity and sexual conformity. Zumanity is indicative of an evolution of circus arts from its traditional and historical origins unlike all other Cirque productions.
<7> Peter Tait observes that as general rule, "Cirque confirms that highly skilled circus acts can reject traditional gender demarcations and be appreciated as beautiful; reviewers repeatedly praised the artistry and skill of cirque performers...Cirque shows deliver a surreptitious subversion of identity" (Tait 131). The distinguishing factor from other Cirque productions is how Zumanity occupies a space of liminality in terms of its both performers and performances, but also in terms of audience participation. Audience members are restrained from participating yet, are relentlessly implored to do so through constant visual and auditory cues from one act to the next. Guy Laliberté, who originated the theme for Zumanity, admitted "that the biggest reason to produce this show was the chance to create something with riskier subject matter. He was interested in the idea of creating a show that explored human sexuality, something that was at complete odds from the other more family-oriented Cirque shows" that preceded the production(The Cirque Tribune).
<8> Zumanity capitalizes on prevailing expectations and contemporary interpretations of human sexuality for the explicit purpose of compelling the audience to question those expectations and interpretations through the strategic use of setting, costumes, makeup, music, lighting, and manipulation of the human form. Individually these acts[#] are thematically linked and progress from one to another in a discursive construction that communicates complex messages about gender and sexual desire. Indeed, the collective impression communicated to audiences through each successive act echoes a larger coherent meta-drama in which both performers and spectators simultaneously experience the same mythical, yet complex journey that marries feats of daring with beautiful choreography situated within an androgynous, polyamourous, sexually challenging landscape of human bodies that differs from previous Cirque productions. Zumanity’s innovative invocation of paralinguistic, globally decodable tale of human diversity succeeds primarily because of Cirque’s aggressive adoption of this new aesthetic of theatricality. In Zumanity, this new aesthetic is taken to new extremes when compared to previous productions like "O", and "Mystère" both of which appeared in Las Vegas[#]. But this change in narrative and artistic direction is not free, either in financial costs for the paying audience or personal costs for Zumanity performers.
Querying Sexuality and Performativity
<9> Does Zumanity actually dismantle the regulatory and disciplinary regimes that establish, empower, and perpetuate gendered behaviors while contemporaneously challenging the moralized defenses of sexual boundaries? Or does Zumanity only create the illusion of doing so simply to be appealing to that segment of organizing ideas that employs the use of music is a consistent thread throughout all acts(P. Shulman 2). In Zumanity, Cirque adopts a unique approach by appearing to embrace a full panoply of potentially liberating and transgressive ideas not typically found in American society, whose artistic tastes outside of Las Vegas tend to avoid the visually risqué or controversial.
<10> To successfully query the polysemic messages communicated through Zumanity, I adopt a poststructuralist framework insofar as I am interested in assessing the relationship between public discourses about human sexual desire, femininity, and masculinity in tandem with broader cultural discourses of cultural consumption through a political economic lens. As Deborah Lupton notes, all discourses are textual or expressed in texts…drawing upon other texts and their discourses to achieve meaning and context embedded in historical, political and cultural settings, is a useful method at revealing popularly held beliefs(Lupton). A poststructuralist view features a critical sensibility that "discourse" entails the creation and circulation of knowledge that employ an active means of communication that is "used purposefully and strategically to achieve desired ends" by constituting and reinforcing existing discourses and vice versa. This approach is especially useful to examine the complex forces, which create, disseminate, and perpetuate normative cultural boundaries that define and thus encompass "appropriate" expressions of human gender performativity and sexual desire.
<11> A poststructuralist approach also necessitates that an analysis of human bodies as gendered and sexualized constructs look to theories that speak to the value imbued in those bodies through culturally specific meaning. Insofar as bodies become mobilized discursively, human bodies provoke and shape discourse. A number of cultural critics have engaged this topic across disciplines and from various theoretical perspectives (e.g. Bordo; Butler; Foucault; Grosz). Judith Butler raises a question about gender through the lens of bodily performativity, asserting that gender is iterative and performatively constituted. Gender, therefore, is "produced and compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence" thereby becoming hegemonically imposed normative constructs (Butler). Butler makes the case that bodies are always performative and defined within discursively established constraints that ultimately determine which "bodies matter" culturally and which bodies do not. Susan Bordo registers equally important concerns with analyses of human bodies that read them "purely" as texts that have been written or inscribed upon, thereby denying subjectivity and agency as relative to ways in which material bodies compel, challenge, and cultivate discourse in that they themselves are capable of discourse (Bordo). Here, I use Butler’s theory of performativity as a matrix through which the Zumanity narrative and performers are analyzed. Specifically, I adopt Butler’s definition of performativity as an "act that is not primarily theatrical" but rather "a discursive practice that enacts or produces that which it names" and thus as applied to Zumanity, gains the conventions of authority through citationality. Butler states that "if performativity is construed as that power of discourse to produce effects through reiteration, how are we to understand the limits of such production, [and] the constraints under which such production occurs" (Butler 20)? The performers in Zumanity do not simply perform their assigned roles but rather actively adopt and reinscribe these carefully choreographed parts in a larger narrative that purposefully obscures where the demarcation between performer and performance is erected. Indeed, the flexibility of that demarcation is itself problematic for some artists. These performances of their stage identity sometimes come into conflict with their "real" identity, and are often difficult to separate, as some artists find difficulty divorcing themselves from the characters whom they play. However, their performativity both on stage and off are always constitutive of the material discourses of, in this case, powerlessness as employees in the larger political economic machinery of Las Vegas entertainment.
<12> The problematic challenges that Zumanity performers face reveals not only what Butler argues are the discursive conditions that regulate gendered bodies, but also illustrates what Bordo argues is the way in which bodies are "read" by not only audiences but the performers themselves. These issues become even more complex and important when seen from the perspective of performers whose responsibility it is to regularly and consistently reproduce, week after week, an "authentic" and entertaining production, conveniently divorced from the "real world" in which they work. One image of "queer" sexuality is offered to the audience in a commercialized, voyeuristic environment (complete with peep holes) while the performers have to deal with the implications of this sexuality in real life. In the documentary Lovesick, which follows the lives of a series of Zumanity artists at the beginning of the production leading up to its Las Vegas premier, the artists themselves struggle with the challenges of how Zumanity operates on both a professional and personal level, ultimately making the very subject of human sexuality very "real", despite its theatrical appearance on stage for the benefit of a paying audience. Lovesick highlights this challenge between professional distance and personal closeness where "work" is a hypersexualized environment prompting one artist, Jonel Earl to ask her fiancée "maybe we should ask a porn star" how to maintain a "professional" distance from the physical closeness that Zumanity demands of its artists(Kronish). Indeed, during the film, Guy Laliberté pointedly stops rehearsal to remind artists of their contractual duties to perform topless and later invokes the need to be "provocative" in order for Zumanity to distinguish itself from other Cirque productions which some audiences might have already grown accustom to seeing.
<13> Because individuals can exercise autonomy over their performative selves, this rewriting of their bodies, reflects Butler’s theory of performativity through the strategic deployment of embodied agency (Wilton). Clearly this process operates within the strict confines of the material conditions that Zumanity performers must endure. The need for employment and the personal satisfaction which performers derive from working in a world renown, highly profitable artistic production work to coerce compliance. I argue that the conformity to these culturally recognizable scripts expose how these artist’s bodily practices on stage become commodified theatrical products in direct relationship with and juxtaposition to, the verisimilitude of 'queer' messages communicated within Zumanity’s narrative about how gender and sexuality function. Though these culturally recognizable scripts inherently run the risk of failure, in Zumanity the commodification of bodily practices on stage reaffirm through repetition, the circulation of ideas about normative gender and sexuality. The theatrics performed by Zumanity artists forcefully attempt to perpetuate the reinscription of these concepts (albeit in a new, novel way), as is demonstrated in many of its acts. As Butler makes clear, the materiality of bodies is always constitutive and integrally related to the unambiguous centrality of one’s discrete identity and conception of "self". The constraints by which bodies are materialized as ‘sexed’ and how social actors understand the ‘matter’ of sex is intimately related to repetition as an important method of cultural intelligibility. Zumanity adopts some practices that attempt to differentiate the gender of its performers through theatrical means, but these practices nevertheless fail to actually challenge the regulatory, identificatory practices that inextricably link sex with gender.
<14> Two important elements of this production are costume and makeup, which appear to transform the performers and the human body into transfigurative forms. The use of unisex costuming and androgynous makeup combined to create an indistinguishable identity in its performers. The aura of otherworldliness is enhanced with stylistic elements both vaguely historical and yet simultaneously futuristic in which performers appear imaginatively adapted with a sensuous physicality neither masculine nor feminine. Almost all the performers in the production are semi nude or barely clothed in flesh-toned cloth that from a distance can easily be mistaken for nudity. And yet many female performers are bare-breasted, while most male performers remain seminude. In "Waterbowl" performed by Estefania Karaeva & Gyulnara Karaeva, two female contortionists perform an amazing array of underwater acrobatics, conveying impressions of simulated sex acts while simultaneously and shockingly exposing the physical limitations of the human form. In a five-hundred gallon champagne glass, these women intertwine in a dazzlingly complex underwater ballet whose choreography, as time passes, increasingly becomes more sensual. This display of female same-sex sensuality combined with the astonishing display of embodied physicality communicates a set of conflicting messages. Their unusual contortionist abilities problemitizes initial conclusions about the performers gender by complicating female athleticism and femininity. However, this act exposes the superficiality of Zumanity’s message about gender. By reducing femininity to visually cognizable, sexualized bodies that perpetuate an illusion of (unfulfilled) lesbian desire, this act (like many others) does little to destabilize those bodies, however schismatically athletic they may appear. Indeed here gender is rendered as a formation of materiality whose undeniable presence is exploited for salaciousness rather than transgression.
<15> Indeed, another "female" performer like that of Misty LaMouche’s aka the "Mistress of Seduction"[#], is fraught with complex meaning. Here female becomes synonymous with male privilege by reemphasizing male supremacy in the position of thematic leadership as emceee, throughout the production, albeit in women’s clothes. Although Joey Arias, who was first cast as the androgynous, whiskey voice emcee Misty LaMouche points out, "play is no idle concept when it comes to staging a Cirque Du Soleil production, erotic or otherwise. It's all about play. Were playing with gay, straight, bi, drag, bondage, and it's going to be showcased on the stage in front of middle America" (Trebay), that showcase is one that does little to undermine the functional equivalencies of gender. Rather it actually reaffirms normative messages about the solidity of gender with the use of fur and feathers, leather and lace, velvet gowns and wasp-waisted corsets that come together to create a visual illusion of transgression. These imaginary morphologies are orchestrated within a audio-visually compelling theatrical narrative of regulatory schemas that define and render intelligible its components, act by act, scene by scene, body by body.
<16> "Male" bodies are equally susceptible to critique in their various iterations. The plasticity of phallic symbolism is never far from view, despite their invisibility within Zumanity’s narrative schemas. Quoting Thierry Mugler the Zumanity French couturier, Trebay notes that "the costumes...will substitute prosthetic genitals for the real thing. ‘What we’ll give them is even bigger and more realistic’ Mr. Mugler said". Here the phallocentrism is brought front and center in all its hypersexualized glory. In "Aerial Straps"[#], audience see a semi-nude male performer in an exercise, using four leather straps to propel himself from one aerial figure to the next. This is accomplished against an auditory backdrop of sounds of heavy breathing, moaning, and the friction of the leather. This male performer maneuvers himself through strenuous muscular movements with and through these suspended ropes accentuating the rippling muscle of the artist, thereby serving as titillation for female viewers(Skidmore). The development of this act reveals an inextricably linked connection between men graced with beauty and muscular strength that is reminiscent of the Roman ring act in which the performer uses two rings suspended in the air originally popularized by Lilian Leitzel with Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus© . This act has historically served as an expression of unambiguous, masculine endurance requiring upper body strength to carry out their aerial routines. "Aerial Straps" becomes a site for the erotogenization of masculinity that resists substitution or displacement, despite the replacement by a female gymnast later in the production. Indeed, "Aerial Straps" is saturated with gendered meaning explicitly because of its later inversion by a female artist. The change itself was one that presumes not only a tantalizing display of autoerotic asphyxiation of the female body as symbolic castration but also because the act fulfills the BDSM threat of punishment. It is a punishment that Butler describes as failing to "symptomatize the displacement of phallicism and implies that there is no other way for women to assume the phallus except in its most killing modalities" (Butler 103).
<17> By utilizing such tactics, Zumanity appears to expose the fallacy of gender being reducible to its hierarchical position in society and thereby potentializes the casual determinism between sexual identity and gender. Zumanity does more than subtly suggest or accentuate the beauty of the human form, but purposefully communicates a fluidity that both tantalizes and challenges (Di Nunzio). But that is in fact, all that the production accomplishes. Zumanity certainly does not purport to repudiate the stability of gender normativity. And while audiences are willing captives to these displays of gender nonconformity they are nevertheless free to erect boundaries that adopt the normal exclusionary strategies enjoyed by society where gender nonconformity occurs(Fausto-Sterling). Social meanings of muscular physicality that are equated with masculinity or the lack thereof that's equated with femininity, and the visceral responses to such visual examples are purposefully toyed and push the boundaries of personal comfort, but never are really undermined. At every performative instance, Zumanity artists work to create an illusion that illuminates the prevailing, dominant normative discourses about masculinity, femininity and human sexuality for its audiences in discordant ways. But that illusion is one that is easily dispelled when held up to rigorous scrutiny.
<18> "Queerness" is defined as "...not who you are, it is what you do, it's your relation to dominant power, and your relation to marginality, as a place of empowerment. 'Queer' opens spaces for people who embrace all manner of sexual practices and identities" (Halperin). David Halperin, following Michel Foucault's example observes that "queer" identities do not necessarily include homosexuals but also include non-normative (polyamourous or childless) heterosexuals. While other theorists like Nikki Sullivan have utilized the word linguistically to "make strange, to frustrate, to counteract and to de-legitimize...heteronormative knowledges and institutions and the subjectivities and socialites that are (in)formed by them..." (Sullivan), here I adopt Sedgwick’s definition of the term. "Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. ‘Queer’ then, demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative". According to Sedgwick, limiting sexuality to homosexual or heterosexuality, in structured binary opposition, is just too simplistic (Sedgwick). This therefore necessitates that to successfully "queer" normative concepts of theatrical performance and circus, Zumanity must destabilize the hegemonic constructions of its experience and the expectations that audiences bring with them. Only by separating and exposing underlying meanings, distinctions, and relations of power in larger culture that others oversimplify can audiences focus on the contemporary practices that divide sexual practices and identities into comparative binaries. Laurence Senelick notes that "Queer theatre is grounded in and expressive of unorthodox sexuality or gender identity, antiestablishment and confrontational tone, experimental and unconventional format with stronger links to performance art" (Senelick 428). I would argue that Senelick’s interpretation is anemic in its construction, insofar as its applied to nouveau cirque productions that bridge theatre and circus, as is the case with Zumanity.
<19> It is only in "Two Men" performed by Arthur Kyeyune & Brandon Pereyda, do we find what Sedgwick might define as a truly queer[ed] act. Originally entitled "Hand 2 Hand", audiences see two men (one white and one black) appear on stage, and engage in a complicated choreography of combined feats of strength and acrobatics. Beginning in a slow, meticulous series of twists, turns, and balancing each semi-nude performer uses the others body as counter-weight to the other while allowing the spectator to view each new sculpture they create. When using their muscles as a virtuoso display of strength, they offer a new interpretation on the historical; "adiaogo and living statue numbers [which] have often been comprised of male and female duos…in which the primary lifter was always male and he hoisted and balanced the female…" (Skidmore 22). Here their roles have been queerly inverted; each performs complicated physical holds and movement, both repelling and attracting each other in keeping with an increasing pace and rhythm, that when combined with music, ends in a powerfully intense homoerotic, sexualized climactic kiss. The symbolism of that kiss in contrast with the preceding act of masculine strength illuminates the muscular dance that reveals the power and beauty of the human form, albeit in a dramatic, complex interracial and queer presentation. In its transgressive occupation, violation of trenchant taboo, and inducement to expose erotophobia and homophobia their kiss serves a transformative vehicle that directly confronts audiences interpretation of socially conformist attitudes towards queer masculinity and same sex desire. Indeed the unambiguousness of their kiss, in contrast to their athleticism read through a masculine lens, serves as a bodily challenge to the culture of heteronormativity that "dominates best when expressions of intimacy between men remain hidden and private, or are domesticated and disavowed in public" (Morris).
Interpretation, Interpellation and Commodification
<20> Reading the performative narrative of Cirque productions requires an active participation by both performers and audiences, but it is possible to make an interpretation about the meaning of the text, which assembles the complex auditory and visual symbols into a coherent and comprehensible message. This model of semiotic assemblage presumes that the viewers are culturally competent in their ability to interpret the sounds and images that they experience. And as Skidmore observes, "the audience members are informed spectators and possess the necessary skills to fit the various morphological pieces of the mise en scéne together in a complete and coherent fashion" (Skidmore). How audiences construct a narrative out of Zumanity’s numerous acts reflects dominate discourses about masculinity, femininity and human sexuality that serve as conventions that can be decoded to play an important part in the comprehension of the audiovisual text, though this research does not attempt to interpret Zumanity so much as to offer a critical deconstruction. Collectively the symbols on stage replace the narrative found in dialogue, while visual signs wholly replace the function normally serve in some part by words but these conventions are always rendered comprehensible in contrast to and against a metaphorical paradigm that provides audiences with a system of decodification. Zumanity purposefully provides nostalgic, symbolic reference points to the historical circus, while simultaneously deviating from its own preceding productions by offering queer interpretations on those same Cirque productions. But these reference points only illustrate an exploitative tactic to obtain and generate audience interest while maintaining a public allure of exoticism.
<21> Cumulatively, the acts are described as "reinventing the art of seduction" by appealing to idealized perceptions of intimacy, foreplay, indulgence, decadence, extravagance and desire (Foley) which in turn alternatingly reinforce and undermine prevailing binaries of masculinity/femininity, straight/queer and dominance/submission. The narratives that each performance follows are difficult to categorize because each performance transgresses traditional circus for spectacle, with surreal characters, performing implausible physical feats. Equally important to the curious acts found in Zumanity is the production’s location in Las Vegas, whose historicity as a popular destination, potently speaks to the value associated with consumerist entertainment as its casinos, hotels, organized crime dynasties, legalized prostitution and general reputation of debauchery attest to. Zumanity purposefully attempts to pursue what Oscar B. Goodman, the mayor Las Vegas, says is a "new brand we are creating, that's one of freedom based on sensuality" and under whose leadership a new ad campaign that pursues a kind of licentious motto: "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas"™.
<22> It is upon this landscape that Cirque Du Soleil has geographically located Zumanity in order to capture and capitalize upon the city’s reputation for social liberalism and moral hedonism. Yet Zumanity also encourages the opening of a safe space for couples that embraces and repudiates the "adult" shows typically framed by a male gaze and directed almost exclusively at male audiences. Although Zumanity purports to challenge coupledom with polyamourous acts like "Gentle Orgy" and "Extravaganza aka Finale", these examples do little to defy the institutional sedimentation of sexual pairing brought about by sexual/gender binaries. Indeed, even in those examples where queer sexuality is purportedly on display, like that of "Waterbowl" or where it truly exists on stage, as in "Two Men", pairs dominate both the narrative, and the material lives of the performers. Indeed, even in the documentary film, Lovesick nowhere do the filmmakers observe multi-partner relationships. The safety of coupledom is cemented in part by the historical trajectory that Las Vegas has pursued into the early 1990’s. The geographic setting of Las Vegas and its reputation as "sin city" calls into question to what degree has Cirque truly challenged audiences’ expectations, especially in terms of the commodification of sex and novelty. William Fox observes, "We’re used to seeing sex and acrobatics in Las Vegas, and it will take a great deal more of the mysterious to entrance us" (Fox). Fox's criticism is apropos; the $15 million dollar theatre at the New York-New York Casino & Theatre is strategically located in a high-desert town that was previously transformed from an era of "Minsky’s Follies", the state’s first (female) topless review in 1957 to the 1990’s era of "family-friendly entertainment" that "attempted to be a pseudo-Disnelyand that didn’t work out" notably by failing to bring in Disneyland revenues. That transition was one that "had been a reaction to falling revenues from gambling" which eventually threatened, according to Felix Rappaport owner of the New York-New York Casio & Hotel, to inhibit people "enjoying the night life who didn’t want to be dodging strollers" (Trebay). Thus Cirque Du Soleil conveniently located a moment in time and a place to capitalize on these confluence of socioeconomic and political events to stage its production.
Popularity, Plentitude and Profits
<23> Substantial financial evidence suggests that Cirque Du Soleil is an organization that has successfully capitalized on American appetites for illusory boundary-crossing and superficially, thought-provoking entertainment. Its financial success attests to this fact. In 1980, only 73 people worked for Cirque Du Soleil, while today the business has over 3,800 employees worldwide. Since 1984 more than 70 million spectators had seen a Cirque show with 10 million having seen a show in 2007 alone, during which it will present 15 shows worldwide (Cirque Du Soleil, Inc.). As of 2002, tickets to a Cirque performance averaged $50, selling out 92% of the time and generated annual revenues of over $119 million with profits ranging from 15 to 20% (Bennet 419). Despite its many alterations, Zumanity possesses an abundance of nostalgic symbols, which reveal a desire by Cirque to be connected to its historical heritage free from the shackles of heteronormative sexual and patriarchal gendered ideals. Though those alterations appear to simply be a strong business model of adaptation to changing customer demands given the profitability of Zumanity's production. The messages about human sexuality and gender communicated through Zumanity become vitally important to the avant-garde tastes of specific socioeconomic segments of the US artistic market.
<24> It is against this backdrop that we locate the financial success and popularity associated with Cirque Du Soleil productions. Indeed much of the traditionally defined circus entertainment is reproduced in much the same formulaic way, albeit in a dramatically unconventional format. It is for this very reason, that Cirque Du Soleil has been so successful. This organization has strategically utilized the formulaic historical approach to traditional circus entertainment, while abandoning antiquated attitudes and tactics, while simultaneously expanding and pushing the boundaries of audience expectations; developing new, unexpected and popular results. Cirque Du Soleil achieved increasing financial success by co-opting on the essential element of spectacle by presenting an interpretation of reality viewed against a backdrop of theatricality limited only by the capabilities of the performers and the audience’s imagination, while seeking to propel audience expectations toward the titillating and tantalizing unexpected. The evolution of circus entertainment can also be traced to changing attitudes about audience appreciation and expectation. Cirque Du Soleil performances uniformly approach audience attitudes in a way that rejects the historical methodologies of circus entertainment (Strauss).
<25> However, Zumanity’s financial success is also conditional upon a socioeconomic hierarchy of privilege. The costs per ticket, combined with the extensive use of music, paralinguistics, movement, and dance automatically invoke themes found in opera and ballet. While Cirque Du Soleil productions do not purposefully exclude anyone (and indeed would reasonably jeopardize their own financial future by doing so) the content of their performances, according to Wilson produce by default "a different audience than one would expect to find at the traveling circuses of the last century" and whose "performances…are far more sophisticated and polished than those of their predecessors in the circus arts"(Wilson 136). Thus, audiences must come equipped with both the financial and cognitive ability to "appreciate" their productions, which inevitably raises questions about the accessibility of Cirque productions for marginalized segments of society, while reinscribing socioeconomic and classist hierarchies that have historically denied those segments of society access to the arts.
Looking From the Inside Out
<26> To gain a more insightfully complex reading of Zumanity, I also looked to the only current documentary that examines the production. Lovesick, filmed during Zumanity's creation period in Las Vegas, 2003 conveniently demonstrates how the illusion of spectacle and provocativeness is always in tension with established, normative boundaries of audience acceptance. In a seemingly obvious contradiction, the film depicts how Laliberté hires an external writer to coach Joey Arias on the need to limit explicit language to avoid fulfilling audiences’ expectations of "vulgarity" versus more socially appropriate forms of "artistry". The very issues that Zumanity attempts to transgress are intractably reinscribed in the lives of the production’s artists, staff, and executives. Lovesick illustrates this best when issues of monogamy between Alex Castro and Grace, his girlfriend are tested when she suspects infidelity between him and a fellow artist, which in turn becomes further complicated with Grace’s pregnancy; marriages between performers (like that of Jonel Earl and husband Vseva), and production executives (like Andrew Watson, creative director) are not exempt from similar problems which stem from both physical and emotional distance (Kronish). arising from the psychic and geographic distances between Zumanity’s production and staging locations.
<27> From an "insider’s view" the film produces a nuanced perspective about how this production recreates the normative expectations of human sexual desire, masculinity and femininity through bodily performance all the while creating messages that communicate the opposite to audiences who watch the show. While Zumanity creates a forum in which a panoply of human sexual desires are on display, that display is produced in a safe space equally subject to discursive forces of normativity. If heteronormative, dominant society’s cultural power in fact rests on its inability to see how that power is constructed and thereby rely on feeling that its power is naturally occurring, efforts that transgress and challenge that invisibility will always be meet with resistance, ridicule, or outright sabotage.
<28> Popular cultural products fulfill a dual role. They are products designed and marketed as commodities to be sold to consumers in large volume, thus to be successful those works must meet certain criteria (in terms of costs and revenue) while appealing to viewers living in a specific time and place. Simultaneously, popular cultural products must also reproduce associated social "beliefs contexts and practices since these products draw on and mirror those societies and time for which they are produced" (Lipschutz 2). This then creates a paradox in which works meant to critique specific aspects and the organization of society must tap into those beliefs and practices if they are to resonate with audiences in order to achieve a modicum of commercial success. Thus, one would correctly conclude that Zumanity’s safe, palatable spectacle does not actually result in overt discomfort, because the production commodifies sexual differences as an exclusively artistic expression divorced from its libratory potential.
<29> Does the value of increased queer visibility and display of non-normative gender performances outweigh the highly commodified spectacle of Zumanity’s potential for inciting socially nonconformist questions about these subjects? Critiquing a Broadway stage performance Sara Schulman pointedly asks if productions like Zumanity, simply construct a "fake public homosexuality…to facilitate a double marketing strategy: selling products to gay consumers that address their emotional need to be accepted while selling a palatable image of homosexuality to heterosexual consumers that meets their need to have their dominance obscured" (S. Shulman 146). The same criticism towards Zumanity is equally appropriate to this discussion. Schulman attempts to answer this second question by drawing a distinction between a corporate product and art by noting that "art is an engagement with the parts of a human being that are unique, difficult to express and essential to understand" which inevitably "provokes an emotional catharsis that results in a revelation" (S. Shulman).
<30> This research sought to answer three questions. First, was Zumanity indicative of a change in how nouveau cirque or contemporary circus movement presents masculinity, femininity, and sexual desire? Second, how does Zumanity conform to, or deviate from, binary heteronormative constructions of human sexuality? And third, is Zumanity ultimately only a profit making product that serves to whet the appetite of a very select audience for titillation and spectatorship? To answer these three questions, I traced the historical origins of Cirque Du Soliel within a larger historiography of the circus with the United States. I examined the historical roots of the organization and its origins in the nouveau cirque or contemporary circus movement as a genre of performance art that merged previous concepts of the circus with theatre. From this analysis I’ve attempted to illustrate how Cirque redefined what American audiences have grown to expect from their previous productions while exemplifying how Zumanity has deviated from those previous productions in some significant ways in terms of rendering visible non-normative gender and sexual minority performances. Following an era of highly sanitized, "family oriented" Vegas, Zumanity embarked upon what appeared to be a worthy journey to genuinely challenge the highly valued and commonly understood norms of masculinity, femininity and sexuality.
<31> A rigorous and close examination of the theatrical and performative acts (and actors) produced and performed in Zumanity, disappointingly (but not unsurprisingly) reveals that appearances are not always what they seem. In many ways, Zumanity is but another engine of profit for Cirque Du Soleil that continually reproduces, carefully constructed, (re)presentations that strategically deviate in predictable ways to titillate an avant-garde, socioeconomic class of consumer whose expectations mirror those whose financial resources permit them to indulge themselves in the most superficial of ways. That is not to say that Cirque’s efforts should not go completely unrecognized. Zumanity marks an important contribution in a larger, more complex discussion about the commercialization of entertainment and its intersection with normative, heterosexist, American society’s willingness to expose itself to critique (however superficial). What remains to be seen however, is if future incarnations of Zumanity will continue to yield profits despite its flaws, and become the new norm by which Cirque Du Soleil will be known for? And if that proves to be true, what new opportunities might that produce for other competitors, more willing to push the sensitive boundaries of American cultural sensibilities over gender and sexuality? We can only wait to see, but if Zumanity is the first step in a journey of 1,000 miles, I have reason to look forward to the future.
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