Three women are remembering their introduction to the circus as children. It offered not just a world of wonder but also freedom and refuge. The trio share and re-create cherished memories of their tumbling and clowning; one loved contortion tricks so much that she convinced her school to include one in the nativity play.
Circus gave performance careers to these “show ponies” (who at one stage don feathery plumes) but it has not been kind to them. After all those years of training, with all that wisdom in their bodies, they are reaching their 40s and 50s and find themselves shut out of an industry obsessed with youth. “And you know what they do to old ponies.”
Lena Ries, Anke van Engelshoven and Romy Seibt run the Berlin-based company Still Hungry and collaborated with Bryony Kimmings on the show Raven, about juggling parenting with performing. They have now reunited with Kimmings to co-create a piece that demystifies and deconstructs the sort of bombastic circus act lampooned in their opening scene. Like magicians revealing their secrets, they execute tricks while explaining how they are achieved – a radical approach that risks making them appear less impressive.
But the unvarnished truth is what they’re after and the trio walk a tightrope of celebrating and satirising the art form, especially its place in popular culture. There is a hilarious sequence on our romantic associations of circus with plucky orphans and fortune-telling sideshows. In between these sketches are compelling aerial routines, meteor-juggling and dance breaks.
The French company La Generale Posthume used canine rather than equine imagery to make some similar arguments in their scrappily lovable production Vilain Chien, about the expectations placed on female bodies in circus and what sort of tricks performers are taught. But Show Pony is not just for circophiles. What is striking is how many of the prejudices and expectations – make everything look effortless, don’t talk about period pains or menopause – apply offstage, too.
This is a show that looks to the past and future with a mixture of often mordant humour, poignancy and pride, continually entwining insights about how the trio’s lives and the art form have changed. Each of them trained as soloists with their own specialism and one joke finds them struggling to find a joint routine that combines their distinct skills. But what emerges most is the bond between the women as they refuse to be reined in by circus’s biases.
At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 26 August
