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Angus MacKechnie, Jacksons Lane’s Creative Director, is pondering the meaning of circus…

It was fitting that our new circus season at Jacksons Lane began with By a Thread by One Fell Swoop Circus.

I saw the show in Edinburgh this summer: seven exceptional Australian circus artists, one long rope and fifty minutes of brilliance. From a personal point of view, before it had even begun, it was going to be my sort of show.

What struck me again was how much depth circus can find from a very simple starting point. The rope becomes something to climb, pull against, balance on, fall from, play with and share. Across the show, the tone shifts from precision and risk to humour, playfulness and moments of real connection and warmth.

I’ve seen that many times in the contemporary circus I love, in the work of Ockham’s Razor, Gandini Juggling, Mimbre, Circa and many more. The skill is extraordinary, of course, but you also see the people performing it: their personalities, their relationships with each other, moments of humour, vulnerability, effort and trust.

One Fell Swoop are extraordinarily accomplished, but By a Thread never becomes simply a display of technique. The skill is there to make something theatrical, playful and human.

It also raises a question I am often asked: what exactly is contemporary circus?

Most of us first encounter circus in a fairly traditional way: a big top, a sequence of acts, moments of danger, spectacle and amazement. Contemporary circus starts with those same mind-boggling skills and disciplines, including aerial, acrobatics, acrobalance and juggling, but uses them in different ways.

The individual performer is often much more visible. Rather than a sequence of separate acts, skills are woven together through choreography, character, music, visual ideas and narrative. A whole show might grow from one discipline, one object or one simple idea. The technique is fundamental, but it becomes part of something much bigger.

Across the forthcoming season at Jacksons Lane, circus takes many different forms. Sometimes it is narrative, sometimes abstract, frequently comic, occasionally intimate and often spectacular. As I put the season together, I realised there is no single Jacksons Lane house style, and nor should there be.

What connects the circus work we programme is exceptional physical skill alongside boldness, imagination, personality and humanity.

There is plenty more of that to come this autumn. Joli Vyann bring together circus, dance and theatre with a very particular physical connection between the two (married) performers. Brainfools bring something looser, more mischievous and more chaotic. Yes Person explores the shifts and contradictions of personal identity, while Itch brings a darker, different Baltic perspective to our fear of death.

And that variety runs right across the season. Different artists, different disciplines, different scales and very different ways of using circus. That range is exactly what I want Jacksons Lane to hold.

By a Thread was a really good place to begin.

Angus MacKechnie | Creative Director | Jacksons Lane