CIRCOSTRADA × SIPAM - The Rise and Future of Contemporary Circus
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Contemporary circus has spent decades fighting for a place at the table of the performing arts. It has had to prove that virtuosity is not the opposite of thought, that spectacle can carry meaning, and that the body in motion can be more than entertainment. Yet, as the CIRCOSTRADA × SIPAM panel made clear, this rise has not followed one single path. Across Europe, contemporary circus has developed unevenly: with institutions in some countries, through independent festivals in others, and sometimes almost from scratch, through the stubborn labour of a few people who believed that circus could be read, supported and understood as an art form.
Moderated by Verena Cornwall, Director of Circus Futures, the conversation brought together voices from several stages of that journey. From Sweden, Kiki Muukkonen, Artistic Director Circus at Subtopia, spoke from the perspective of a scene that has been built over nearly two decades and now faces the challenge of renewal. From Bulgaria, Geo Kalev, Chairman of Mini Art Foundation, described the work of opening space for contemporary circus in a country where the form is still emerging. From Hungary, Zsofia Zoletnik, artistic manager and co-founder of OneTwoMany Collective and MUCH, reflected on launching the country’s first contemporary circus festival while also mentoring the artists who might shape its future. From Romania, Ama Butoiescu, Artistic Director of Circul Metropolitan București, brought the perspective of an institution negotiating between a popular circus tradition and the need to educate audiences toward more contemporary artistic languages.
Together, they asked what it means to build an ecosystem for circus and what it means to keep that ecosystem alive once recognition has finally been achieved. The answers were rarely simple. Funding, venues, audiences, training, artistic freedom, institutional legitimacy and the fragility of the performer’s body all appeared not as separate issues, but as parts of the same delicate structure.
For Ama Butoiescu, the very presence of contemporary circus and street arts within a major festival context such as Sibiu was already a meaningful gesture. It signalled that circus no longer needs to remain in a separate category, tolerated as entertainment but not fully embraced as art. “I am extremely happy that the International Theatre Festival in Sibiu promotes street arts and contemporary circus,” she said, “because we need to coexist, we need to collaborate and we need to help the community.”
That word — coexist — became one of the quiet foundations of the discussion. Contemporary circus, as Butoiescu framed it, does not need to erase older forms in order to become legitimate. It does not need to turn its back on popular joy, family audiences or the history of the tent. Instead, it needs to create bridges between styles, publics and generations. Circus, she argued, has always carried a multicultural identity, both through the artists who perform it and through the creators who imagine it. The task now is to create an environment in which street arts and circus are “respected and also financially supported.”
This is the first level of ecosystem-building: recognition. Before there can be touring circuits, training structures, residencies or festivals, a field must first be named and valued. In younger scenes, that recognition often depends on a small number of people willing to do the work of translation, not only between languages, but between mentalities. They must explain to funders why the circus is not merely a children’s attraction. They must convince venues that physical performance can carry conceptual weight. They must persuade audiences to follow a form that may look familiar at first glance, but behave in radically different ways.
Yet, as Kiki Muukkonen pointed out, the challenges do not end once an ecosystem exists. In fact, they change shape. “There are different kinds of challenges to found and to sustain,” she said. “Founding, you are looking for resources and recognition. Legitimacy.” But sustaining is something else. Once the field has gained visibility, it risks dependence on a few key people. It risks becoming rigid, predictable, too comfortable inside the very institutions that once refused to recognise it.
For Muukkonen, the danger of an established scene is that stability can harden into habit. “The challenge in sustaining is to stay agile and also to let go,” she said. “What was brilliant ten years ago is not necessarily brilliant anymore.” That sentence carried particular weight in a conversation about a form born from movement, risk and reinvention. Circus cannot afford to become a museum of its own legitimacy. If it fought to be recognised as art, it must also resist the temptation to confuse recognition with arrival.
The problem, then, is balance. Muukkonen described the tension between stability and renewal with precision: “If it only grows and only gets stable, then it will be rigid. But if it is only experimentation, it will be fragile.” In that small formulation lay one of the central questions of the panel. How can contemporary circus build structures strong enough to support artists, but flexible enough not to determine what they should create? How can a field become sustainable without becoming standardised?
For countries still at the beginning of this process, the problems are more immediate. Geo Kalev spoke of the loneliness of starting something new with a small group of people. At first, he suggested, the work can feel isolated, almost experimental by necessity. But the next phase is connection: finding others, moving faster, becoming more precise about what the field needs. For Kalev, the future of the circus lies not only in festivals or professional networks, but in children. He imagined a future in which young people grow up knowing circus disciplines just as naturally as they now understand football. “Everybody now knows what football means,” he said. His hope is that circus, too, can become part of a shared cultural vocabulary from a very young age.
That long-term view matters because ecosystems are also created by building desire, familiarity and confidence. In Bulgaria, where contemporary circus remains far less visible than traditional circus, Kalev sees the need to give stages to young artists and to look deeper into their movements, expressions and ideas. “Contemporary circus is expressing messages and ideas,” he said, noting that this is still not widely popular in Bulgaria.
In Hungary, Zsofia Zoletnik described a field still marked by instability. MUCH Festival has had only three editions, and its mentoring programme is still young. Planning, she said, has often been difficult beyond a six-month horizon. The work has been shaped by constant problem-solving, limited resources and an overwhelmed team. Yet she also spoke with hope: the possibility of more stable cultural funding, longer-term structures, a larger team and, eventually, a festival that can continue beyond its founders. “I hope in ten years it is going to be a bigger team that is running it,” she said, imagining a future in which others might take over the work with her, or even without her.
This idea of letting go returned again and again. In emerging scenes, founders are often necessary. They carry the vision, make the first connections, fight the first battles and absorb the first risks. But if an ecosystem remains dependent on them, it cannot fully mature. Legacy, in this sense, is not control. It is the ability to make oneself less indispensable.
The question of curation opened another layer of complexity. Contemporary circus has often relied on platforms, showcases and festivals to champion emerging voices before the larger market is ready for them. But the panel also asked a sharper question: how can platforms support new artists without training them to reproduce a recognisable “festival style”?
Muukkonen rejected the idea that platforms should define contemporary circus. “Platforms are not there to define what contemporary circus is,” she said. “They are there to keep the doors open.” Yet she acknowledged that every selection creates influence. The responsibility of curators is therefore not neutral. Selection committees must ask whether they are simply reproducing their own taste. They must distribute curatorial power, involve people with whom they disagree, and create friction inside the selection process. “Dare to programme things that you do not necessarily like,” she said. “Give space for different artistic languages. See beyond your taste.”
For Muukkonen, festivals should be precisely the places where diversity of language becomes possible. Unlike a venue presenting a longer run, a festival can take greater risks. It can present premieres, works in progress and uncertain forms. She described how, at Subtopia’s festival CirkusMania, the programme includes many premieres and works still in development. Sometimes, she admitted, the organisers see the work together with the audience for the first time. That uncertainty is not a failure of curation, but part of what gives a festival urgency.
Zoletnik approached the same question from the perspective of mentoring. In the first edition of MUCH’s mentoring programme, she said, the team made the mistake of taking on artistic mentoring themselves. In doing so, they inevitably influenced the artists through the possibilities they offered. The programme has since changed. Artistic mentoring is now separated from production support, allowing the festival team to help with logistics, deadlines and materials without imposing a creative direction.
The panel then moved toward one of contemporary circus’s most persistent tensions: the line between theory-driven work celebrated on festival stages and the popular, family-facing tradition that still fills tents and institutional houses. Butoiescu resisted a strict separation. For her, contemporary language does not need to be segregated from traditional circus. On the contrary, she has seen family circuses across Europe beginning to include contemporary and modern elements in their programmes.
The real task, she suggested, is audience education. Many spectators still understand circus primarily as family entertainment. That belief should not be dismissed with contempt, but it should become the starting point for a bridge. Contemporary circus must find ways to connect artistic quality, emotional force and performance without becoming trapped in debates about style. “Contemporary circus should find a way to connect the traditional part and the contemporary part,” she said. It should help audiences understand “this new way of envisaging art, because it is a form of art.”
At Circul Metropolitan București, Butoiescu described the performance space as a kind of creative laboratory. Audiences are exposed to different forms and gradually invited to read circus through technical skill or style, and emotion. “Emotion is the thing that they should embrace,” she said. The spectator should not only judge the work from an artistic or stylistic point of view, but receive what the performance transmits.
Her defence of the circus was ultimately a defence of its human power. In a world marked by political instability and social fragmentation, she argued, circus can connect people through art, emotion and non-verbal communication. These are not secondary qualities. They are precisely what allows circus to cross age, culture, class and language. “I believe in the power of circus to make people coexist,” she said, describing it as a universal language that allows audiences to relax, open their senses and encounter one another beyond the divisions that usually define public life.
For Kalev, programming in a country still new to contemporary circus means choosing work that can open perception. In Bulgaria, he said, traditional circus remains much more familiar, while contemporary circus as a vehicle for ideas and messages is less popular. His response is to create space for young artists, to give them a stage and to take their movements and expressions seriously. Experimental work, for him, is a way of allowing the field to discover its own language.
Zoletnik, meanwhile, described a different programming dilemma in Hungary. MUCH takes place in a venue strongly associated with cutting-edge contemporary performing arts, with a distinct aesthetic identity. But circus, she argued, has the capacity to speak to a wider range of society. For that reason, the festival does not programme only the most experimental work or only the largest international productions. It also seeks pieces that Hungarian artists can recognise as possible. If emerging artists only see huge acrobatic productions with large casts and complex technical setups, they may admire them without imagining themselves inside the field. Smaller, more direct performances can become catalysts. They show what might be made with available bodies, spaces and resources.
The final question brought the discussion back to the performer’s body. What distinguishes circus from athletics? And how can artists be supported once their bodies can no longer perform in the same way?
For Butoiescu, the responsibility of institutions is concrete. At Circul Metropolitan București, she said, the institution works with around one hundred artists, from very young performers to artists in their forties and fifties. This, she argued, proves that circus artists can be respected, protected and supported over time. The fact that they perform several different productions in different styles shows that, if artists are cared for properly, they can build longer and safer careers. Institutions must offer them not only visibility, but tools for an uncertain future.
Muukkonen answered the question with a striking simplicity: “The body is art. The body is material. The skin is art. If we decide it is art, if you frame it as art, if you experience it as art, then it is art.” Her response cut through the comparison with athletics. Circus may share physical discipline with sport, but its frame, intention and reception are different.
Zoletnik added another perspective: age does not only represent loss. Young circus artists often want to show everything their bodies can do. Their technical skills may be astonishing, but their conceptual experience is still developing. With age, she suggested, there can be a beautiful transition. The tricks may change, but the thought can deepen. “There is this beautiful curve,” she said, describing the maturing life of a circus artist. She values all stages of that journey: the virtuosity of youth, the intelligence of maturity, the presence of older artists who continue to perform with the bodies they have.
That idea offered a powerful ending to the conversation. Contemporary circus does not need to choose between body and thought, tradition and experimentation, popular joy and artistic legitimacy. Its future may depend precisely on refusing those binaries. It must protect the body without reducing the performer to technique. It must build institutions without becoming rigid. It must educate audiences without losing the pleasure that first brought them in. It must create platforms for new voices without turning difference into a marketable style.
