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Each July Montréal Complètement Cirque transforms the city of Montreal into an eleven-day contemporary circus celebration. With shows indoors and out, crowds of enthusiastic onlookers are sometimes caught off guard by a glimpse of a wire-walker crossing a busy intersection or a contortionist balancing on a trash bin. When it began in 2010 the Montreal Cirque Festival (as it is known in English) became the first international circus arts festival in North America. As a circus enthusiast eager for a chance to see the latest work by companies that rarely tour the United States, the biggest draws for me were the nine indoor shows, which featured artists from seven countries and were presented in venues scattered across the city. This year the festival promised spectators that the circus is never what you think it will be ("Le cirque, ce n'est jamais ce que vous pensiez …"), and indeed, while the event was as jaw-dropping and spectacular as I had hoped, it also offered something more unexpected. In subtle and surprising ways the festival performances consistently eschewed categories and pushed past stereotypes to provide nuanced representations of gender onstage and in the ring.
The festival tagline begs the question: How is circus performance generally thought of today? The golden age American circus, which used to provide a holiday from work and school when it pitched its tents in a town, is no more. Yet, it is this traditional version of circus, with its red-nosed clowns, sequined dancers, and trained animals, that still holds fast in the minds of many. The contemporary circus departed from this vision of massive spectacle, and rooted itself firmly in a focus on artistry and the use of circus disciplines as a means of storytelling. Still, the word circus broadly evokes the traditional incarnation, and it is likely that many festival-goers went into the shows anticipating spectacular and skillful acrobatic displays, not sociopolitical commentary. Time and again, however, the festival offerings silently questioned dominant, culturally held beliefs about normative gender behavior.
Bromance, the only festival show explicitly marketed as an investigation of gender norms, was described as an exploration of male companionship. The production by the UK-based Barely Methodical Troupe featured three performers fresh out of circus school: Beren D'Amico, Louis...