circus on

Here’s the video of the full performance of our realisation of Cage’s _____, ___ ______ CIRCUS ON __________. The score provides instructions for ‘translating a book into a performance without actors, a performance which is both literary and musical, or one or the other’.

Our version had the title Bowbarovsk, a Travelling Circus on Nights at the Circus. In this realisation, performed at Bath International Music Festival, we used Nights at the Circus (the circus reference is circumstantial) by the Festival’s featured writer Angela Carter. Fragments of the text can be heard throughout the realisation, drawing on the book’s narrative, which moves from London to Petersburg and then to Siberia, following the movement of a group of circus performers at the end of the 19^th Century. The mesostics were created by MA Creative Writing students, whilst the recordings of places and sounds mentioned in the book were collated in the Music Department. The relevant musics are principally circus marches and waltzes, played by musicians from the Music Department. The title is a portmanteau of the first and last places mentioned in the book, and references the changes of location in the narrative.