One of my great discoveries last year, apart from the joys of Blogging, was the fascinating content of YouTube. There's some great stuff in there, not least The Esther Benjamins Trust playlist (see right for all of our video footage). This morning I dipped into the generally available material relating to circuses and found this film which is fairly representative of the terribly dated performance that one can expect to see when the Indian circus comes to town:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoYL5NO8IF0
And of course, as I have written in so many of my previous posts, the audiences have little idea of the scale of violence, abuse and exploitation that trafficked Nepalese child and teenage performers have to endure on a daily basis during their de facto imprisonment within the circus.
Moving on from that I found another circus performance by The Dreamtime Circus that couldn't contrast more with the Indian "show":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTH3lZ1n_l0
This San Francisco based organisation (www.dreamtimecircus.org) lays on free performances around the world. Their mission, as per the website states:
"The Dreamtime Circus is a troupe of fire fairies, clowns musicians, and all types of other magical and fantastical creatures who travel far and wide to share the uplifting experience of the circus with the peoples of the world.
We seek to use fire and circus arts as mediums for fostering cross-cultural communication and open exchanges of cultural ideas and artistic expressions.
As offerings of good will and solidarity, we perform free circus performances for the communities we visit, focusing our efforts on serving those surviving natural disasters, dislocations, or military conflicts.
Wherever our travels take us...
~ We'll create a safe, magical, and inspiring space for kids and grown-up kids to play. create and become whatever their imaginatin allows them to be.
~ We'll cross cultural bridges, speaking the universal languages of art and laughter through our circus antics.
~ Instead of just the coins in our pockets, we'l offer free circus shows as a way of giving back to the communities we meet along the way.
~ We'll respect the people, cultures, and sacredness of the land.
~ We'll dream our lives, live our dreams, and encourage everyone aruound us to join in."
To my great interest, the circus is now on tour in India and I wrote to them immediately to see if they might be interested in helping our advocacy work against modern day slavery and child trafficking. I'd give my eye teeth to entice them across the border to lay on a show or shows in Nepal. Not only would this raise the profile of our cause but I think it would be very useful for our beneficiaries - for whom the circus represents only stigma and an enduring legacy of horrors - to see the status of the modern circus as a true art form.
