All summer long, we will be offering you forays into libraries across Quebec to discover their little-known treasures, on unusual themes. This week, we are entering the wonderful world of the circus, at the library of the National Circus School, in the Saint-Michel district of Montreal.
Anna Karyna Barlati welcomes us with clownish green glasses on her nose and long starry earrings, in her domain, at the library of the National Circus School. She has been running this little-known treasure since 2004, the year the School moved into the Cité des arts du cirque, in the Saint-Michel district.
The library of the National Circus School is one of the few, along with that of Chalon-sur-Saône, in France, to have a collection around contemporary circus. In fact, in the world, there are only about ten libraries specializing in circus arts, notes Pascal Jacob, a circus historian who donated his collection of rare books to the library from its beginnings.
In 2004, explains Anna Karyna Barlati, circus was not even recognized as an artistic discipline by the Canada Council for the Arts. Even today, “at the university level, circus is not taught anywhere,” she points out. To set up the library, everything had to be done. Moreover, it is relatively recent that the word “circus” has been used to designate this performance space that brings together various disciplines.
Millenary traditions
In Mongolia, for example, there is a tradition of contortion that is thousands of years old, explains Pascal Jacob. But the concept of circus has only been established there since the arrival of the Soviets, with Alexander Voloshin, in the first half of the 20th century.e century. Similarly, acrobatics, as a discipline, is a practice that is several thousand years old, but it was not once integrated into what we now call a circus show. Anna Karyna Barlati therefore digs into the world’s archives to classify, list and reference these disciplines, in different languages, so that students, researchers, creators and the general public can find their way around.
“I’m going to have books in Czech. Last week I was cataloguing in Mongolian,” she says. The library she’s building brings these resources together under one banner, that of the circus.
“We need to agree on the term, in fact, because the ‘circus’ is our perception,” continues Pascal Jacob. “In non-Western countries, the term ‘circus’ is less clear, less obvious.”
Today, an entire community is buzzing around the concept of circus. Anna Karyna Barlati is in regular contact with the Centre for Research, Innovation and Transfer in Circus Arts (CRITAC) and keeps behind her desk all the master’s theses and doctoral dissertations revolving around the circus that she can get her hands on. From the large gray binders, she pulls out a document entitled Teaching riskFor example.
Beyond the collection and referencing of resources, the librarian is a mediator and promotes the social circus, the circus out of context, in a variety of environments.
“There are researchers that I am currently supporting who are using the circus to help young men in prison,” she says, for example. “They want to help them build their self-confidence and their trust in others, without words, but through their bodies, between themselves. So, they are going to have them do hand-to-hand, juggling in pairs… We are going to support projects like that.”
In Quebec, you have to delve into family stories to trace the history of the circus. A few years ago, the library acquired the collection of Léon DuPerré, a cyclist and tightrope walker who, with his family, traveled around America in the 20th century.e century, first in the Baker troupe, then in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Barley circuses in the United States. This collection was donated by his daughter, Léonne DuPerré-Renaud, who is now 96 years old. To highlight this collection, the librarian produced a short video capsule which can be found on the library’s website.
But we have to go back even further to discover the first circus manifestations in Quebec. In an English book that she takes out on a tablet, The Memoir of John Durang: American Actor, 1785-1816we discover that the latter visited Montreal in 1797 with the Englishman John Ricketts, the one who introduced the circus to America. They even built a permanent circus there, made of stone, probably near what is now the Pointe-à-Callière museum, in Old Montreal. Another book from the library, Theatrical activity in Quebec (1765-1825)relates the experience: “A circus show included equestrian exercises, flexibility tricks and a pantomime performance.” It is said that the audience included both lords and “people from small trades.” And since the audience was “essentially Canadian,” the numbers had to be announced in French as well as in English and German.
Place of inspiration
But beyond the historical references it can provide, the library of the National Circus School is a place of infinite inspiration for creators. In this regard, it has also inherited the collection of documentary resources from Cirque du Soleil, which sold it in 2018.
“There were no books on the circus in this collection,” says Anna Karyna Barlati. Instead, creators seek inspiration from social reflections and other forms of artistic expression. “We’re interested in different subjects, like the status of women, for example,” she says. One designer is currently working on a documentary circus about sexual coercion, she says. Another is designing a Chinese pole act about schizophrenia. “So we’re asking ourselves: how do we articulate the movement?” she explains. A student who created a company in Finland is interested in quantum physics through the circus, aerial straps and new magic. And a group staging a show about Shakespeare in Montreal parks spent a month at the library studying its characters.
“I will choose a lot of works in visual arts, in science, in all fields, to nourish this intellectual and artistic reflection,” says Anna Karyna Barlati.
Guy Caron, founder of the National Circus School and first artistic director of Cirque du Soleil, also bequeathed his book collection to the library.
“The specialized documentation centers are made by and for the community. It is the community’s desire that this collection be accessible to you and to anyone wanting information,” says the librarian.
Every summer, people interested in the world of circus arrive in Montreal and wish to do research there. In the collective work Global Circuson the Quebec circus world, published in 2016, Anna Karyna Barlati offers a glossary that allows you to clearly identify circus disciplines: from Icarian games to rola bola, including the swinging trapeze and devil sticks. For everyone to understand each other, you have to make sure you speak the same language.