Live To Win

The air in Sydney is like a glass; clear and full of water it holds you in a crisp commercial embrace, primary colour opinions smiling inside marble television studios It’s dirty and rotten in glimpses As only a big city can be; gaps in construction facades like missing teeth puffs of smoke from the cracks in the concrete ciggie butts chucked under a bush. In Sydney, even the homeless are assertive not content to be swept into a corner they have made a camp on Martin place a free kitchen, library and beds for all who can brave the curious stares of uniformed school excursions. I’m in favour of the noise and the hustle Existentially wandering through the crowds I love people who don’t care Who you are or what you are doing there This of course is rare in small towns with the population of an extended family Christmas gathering there people notice you without looking an...

Recently after seeing a circus show, I was talking to a friend in the forecourt of the Victorian Arts Centre. It had been a warm day and as the chill of the night approached, the warm concrete exhaled a last breath for the shiny jacketed arts patrons clutching glasses of white wine. My friend is a respected sound designer who works for many of Melbourne’s foremost contemporary dance companies. Speaking about the show we’d just seen, he said to me with a look of slight concern ‘I just don’t understand circus. Like, what am I looking at? How do I read it?’ I answered with a joke, but I was struck by the simplicity of his question and the significance of why he was asking it. It speaks to the deeper issue of an identity crisis for Australian circus, which is aching to be taken seriously as an art form, yet struggles to define or justify itself before the self-appointed ‘gatekeepers’ of culture on funding boards, festivals and awards panels. I think that this crisis can be viewed and...