Croatian trapeze artist Petra Najman (21) and British contemporary dancer Elliot Minogue-Stone (25) are the youngsters of Circus Without Circus. They explored the possibilities and limits of an iron bridge in Copenhagen in August 2021. ‘It was one huge adventure, not only artistically but also emotionally: what are our limits and what are we able to do for the sake of the art?’
Why did you apply for Circus Without Circus?
Elliot: I think I’m always interested in stuff which prioritizes research. I always get this feeling that there’s never enough time to just be working on things without a really pressured sense of outcome. Circus Without Circus sounded like an interesting thing, a sort of new take on research for myself. I never worked with circus artists before, but I’ve always really admired circus and how it engages and connects with people. From what I’ve seen it has really managed to cross a lot of bridges between different communities, which I know contemporary dance traditionally doesn’t get to. So it was a combination of these things, while being in this weird covid world of not really doing much practice based work. It sounded like a great project.
Petra: I wanted to launch myself into research, I wanted to explore something else and pass the borders of circus. And meet other people of course.
What were your expectations for this first residency?
Elliot: I don’t think I came with loads of expectations. Of course I was curious about how it was all going to work, to be honest. I’ve never taken part in something like this before, it was all quite new for me, I just went along with quite an open mind.
Petra: I didn’t know at all what to expect. Not about my partner and not about the place we were going to. It was all completely new and strange. But from the first moment – the online meeting with Metropolis – it was really nice.
Did you two have preparatory meetings before the residency started?
Petra: We had three Zoom meetings, yes.
Elliot: It was quite vague, but we came with a sense of where we’re coming from individually and what sort of artistic curiosities we touched with it. Stuff like that.
Petra: We presented ourselves to each other, how we are functioning, what we like to do, …
So did you have some sort of plan or concept for the residency?
Petra: (long pause) Well, both being performative artists, we thought it was better to meet in real life and start to work together with our bodies. We didn’t make a specific concept, we just wanted to come there, be there and play together.
Elliot: Indeed, we didn’t come with much planning at all. Which, I have to say, for the next residency I will do differently; I’ll plan a little bit more. (laughs) For myself. I’ve spent so much time in my bubble of dance, I don’t spend that much time explaining the components of what I do. Leaving that bubble and going into a new sort of realm… I don’t really have the tools to adequately explain the values of the work that I am busy with. Just because I haven’t spent the time practicing that. So that was a bit of a shock for me. I wish I had more of those skills before I came in. But besides that it was also really nice just to go and see.
Petra: I also think next time I’ll plan a bit more, also for myself. But I think as we didn’t plan, there was a beauty in this, because we really explored from zero. We were completely open. There was a great deal of liberty. We should have planned some more, but this was a really interesting experience.
Could you tell us what you’ve done during the residency?
Petra: I’ll tell from my perspective and then you can tell from yours, okay, Elliot?
Elliot: Perfect.
Petra: So the first day we met with Boaz (Barkan, a Danish choreographer), who was kind of our mentor, and we talked about art and how we create things. We walked in Copenhagen, explored the city and decided to work on site-specific places. We chose a bridge. We started exploring the bridge: dance on it, play on the edges, jump in the water, … I really liked it. We also put a trapeze on it, I did some moves, I had fun with a bunch of people who jumped from the bridge… So we decided to work around the bridge and the thematic of being on the edge of things.
Each day we were playing. We put the speaker on and were dancing on different songs. It was really cold and rainy. We were suffering a lot. But really: we were suffering. It was really hard to work. Two days were too rainy, it was impossible to work outside, too dangerous, so those days we worked in the theatre. Inside the theatre we did some contact dance, made a choreography… we were just playing with our bodies and did improvisations that were really interesting – dancing on Grace Jones for example.
After those two days we went back to the bridge. In the meanwhile we talked with our other mentor, Kitt Johnson (Danish choreographer), because we were a bit lost. We had some ideas but we didn’t know how to put them together. Some things were working, other things didn’t work. But we continued to play and to explore on the bridge. Yeah, we spent a lot of time exploring, playing with music, playing with emotions, feeling the bridge, feeling the presence of that structure…
Elliot: This theme of being on the edge appeared to be both physically and emotionally. But what I remember most of the residency is just a lot of time spent on the bridge. Not really with a super specific goal or aim, but just kind of being there, climbing on the structure, fitting into the architecture of it, allowing our bodies to become part of it, going underneath it, going in the water… For me that was the recurring feature. The two days in the theatre maybe allowed us to work more on our practice; there was a sense of exchanging material and also this surrendering to Slave to the Rhythm of Grace Jones, which was one of our ongoing sounds. Yeah, those were the things that stayed with me. And a sense of perseverance. We kept going. There was definitely some suffering. (laughs) It’s so weird talking about it now that I’m not there, but there was something so specific about that location and the intensity of the weather… And I’m British, I’m from a super wet and cold place, but this was another level for me. It was unrelenting. We totally depended on how the weather was that day. A sunny day was very different to the rain and the wind… There were great days of both, actually.
Why did you stick with the bridge?
Petra: We asked ourselves the same question, probably every day of the residency: why did we choose this particular place in a cold and rainy city like Copenhagen? But it became our personal challenge: we decided this, we are going until the end and we’ll see what will happen. It was our choice and we wanted to explore it until the end. It was this huge adventure, not only artistically but also emotionally: what are our limits and what are we able to do for the sake of the art?
Elliot: I feel like I really saw and met a lot of people; we kept encountering people on the bridge. It’s nice the be in the public space and to be really immersed in the city. This combined with the pushing on the edge… yeah… I won’t forget it.
Petra: It was one huge experience. With strong moments, for example standing on the highest point of the bridge, in the wind and rain, suffering, being lost in our research, not knowing what to do next, nothing works, but you feel the air and the rain that’s falling on you and you’re just present with your emotions, people start to take pictures and ask ‘what are you doing?’, but you are just standing there for yourself, you are standing in the presence. That part was really beautiful. Just be present and take the feeling of the bridge, of the people, the sea.
Elliot: I will never forget standing on the top of that bridge, in the pouring rain. It’s so surreal and you have to surrender to that. It’s an incredible feeling.
When it came to the public presentation, we only saw Petra perform. What can you tell us about this?
Petra: Actually we were both performing.
Elliot: Yeah.
Petra: But in our own way. For both of us it was a performance. Each of us took some things of the residency. For me it was standing on the top of the bridge, walking to the edge, jumping in the water and do some trapeze. That was the part that I felt. And Elliot presented something that he felt, something that he learned from the 12 days, in the form of a speech.
Elliot: Instead of creating something for this sharing moment, I was more interested in documenting the time. If I was to share something in my ‘medium’ (dance), it would have needed a lot more work and research. I didn’t see the value in throwing something together, although it means everyone else could have experienced my process in a particular way. It was a very conscious choice. And I would still call it a performance, but I understand it was a bit leftfield and unexpected – for me also. But I go back to this thing of spending time on the bridge, being there, being with the frustrations, the successes, the weather, the people coming and going… I think I was more interested to share these things.
I would have liked to see you dance on Grace Jones together. I mean, there was no real visible cooperation as a duo, right?
Elliot: On the public presentation there wasn’t, no, but we have some videos of us dancing on the bridge, I am sure.
Petra: Yes, and I want to add them to our logbook, but I still have some editing work to do. Those were really beautiful moments of freedom.
Apart from the bridge, what have you learnt from each other?
Petra: As I am a circus artist I have always learnt to be impressive, to do the best tricks, to do something beautiful and impress people. During these 12 days I learnt that sometimes you need to breath and to connect with yourself, be here in the moment, with your emotions.
Elliot: I second this in a reverse way. There’s something great in the ability to say ‘I’m going to do a trapeze act on the bridge’ and to bring a sense of vision, which I don’t have so much – I wish I had that. It was really interesting to work with someone who had that kind of ability to project. That’s something I take away from this. How do I talk about things existing in a really concrete way without them actually happening yet. The opportunity comes later to actually make them happen. And also something about living the emotion of everything very honestly. Also generally allowing the collaboration to be what it was, to not force the sense like ‘this is what we should be doing’ or ‘we need this because this is what a collaboration looks like’.
Petra: I think we got a really difficult job as we are two performative artists; we are both playing with our bodies and we want to be seen, but we have different visions and methods. It’s difficult to find something ‘new’ from this. It’s not the same as collaborating with a visual artist, for example.
That’s interesting, because Thalia and Villads – also a dance-circus duo – had the same feeling: being almost too close in their respective art forms, and then it comes down to vision and aesthetics.
Elliot: I think it’s some sort of responsibility of my art form to be messy, in the sense that it can be so many things. It can easily encompass almost any form of artistic expression within its umbrella, which is very challenging to collaborate with. There’s always a lot of possibility, all very intangible, hard to perceive and hard to label. Compared to circus arts, which for me always felt very real and tangible, with bold propositions. So it was a lot of meeting each other in the creative languages that we speak.
Would a more intense form of mentorship have been a good idea?
Petra: Our two mentors were great, but yes, I think we needed more mentoring. A lot of times we were lost, we didn’t know how to put our ideas together. We needed someone to put us on the way, to give us advice on how to do certain things. We are young artists, we’re a complete mess. Sometimes I was really hysterical because of the uncertainty of what we were doing and how we were going to present it finally.
Elliot: When you think of the project it’s really crazy what we all did. I mean, all of these artists are taken out of their normal habitat, dropped in a city they don’t know, with artists they don’t know, with mentors they don’t know, with an art form they don’t really know. All the tools they normally have to support the work they make, are gone. So yes, more mentoring would have been great. Or at the very least someone to reflect back what we’re doing.
Was the sharing moment – the public presentation – something you stressed about?
Elliot: We both stressed, yes. Did we have to stress for it, probably not. It’s tricky, because I do think there’s something really nice about a presentation; it channels one’s focus. A bit. In research I always get the feeling I can be lost in the process. The beauty of a presentation is that it forces you to make choices. Having this said, I also felt really aware of my normal pattern – I’m used to present something and be very concrete… So I think the sharing is good, but again, maybe we needed some more support to get to that point and to make it less intimidating.
Petra: Did we stress? Yes, a lot. Should we have stressed? Not that much. I think the public presentation was a nice choice, it’s definitely an important part of the project. It forces you to go somewhere, to not get completely lost. And I really loved seeing the presentations of the other duos.
Elliot, what do you think of circus as an art form, now you know it a little bit more?
Elliot: I have the feeling there’s a lot of transformation going on. I really admire the strive for desire in circus. Watching Petra in her relationship to practicing is really incredible. To see this continuous motion of working on something, in this very precise and focused way… there’s a beautiful clarity in it. It seems to me like an art form that’s fairly easy to explain. That’s my outside perspective as a dancer, because dance is impossible to explain. One of the massive challenges of dance is how to talk about it with people outside the dance bubble, and how to engage those people to our art form. I think circus doesn’t quite face the same challenge because it deals with something more relatable. Which is fantastic.
Petra, how do you see dance after these 12 days?
Petra: Well, I know that in dance there is a lot of work and lots of different styles, but what I perceive as dance for myself, as a circus artist, is liberty. The feeling of being present. Doing something that’s impossible to explain. Going with your emotions and present them through movement. To be free.
You don’t have the same feeling when you’re doing circus?
Petra: In some parts, but not always. When I’m doing circus there is always a risk. If I don’t concentrate I can fall down and hurt myself. In my technique I have to be present because of the risk. When I’m dancing I’m present in another way. That’s something I discovered during the residency and I will definitely do it more in the future.
Does dance also mean liberty for you, Elliot?
Elliot: It’s a tricky question… I didn’t spend time on the trapeze, but I did go on the edge of the bridge and spend some time hanging on things, and I think when you engage with something for the first time, or early in one’s process, it’s much easier to perceive it in a sense of freedom and opportunity. I have to say I don’t find a great deal of freedom in the dance work I do. Sometimes I find it unexpectedly, but ‘free’ is not the right word. It’s all very charged, it’s not relaxed.
Petra: Our visions on dance are of course not quite the same. I don’t do it every day, it’s not my job. Elliot is a professional dancer.
Elliot: Now I think about it, when I go to a club and dance for fun, then I definitely feel ‘free’, feel the liberty of doing that.
Probably I have a classical view on contemporary dance, but for me it was striking that none of the 3 dancers of Circus Without Circus actually ‘danced’ at their presentation.
Petra: I think the dancers are overwhelmed by the spectacular side of circus. But I have to say: don’t be eaten by circus! Dance is also very spectacular, but in another way. Circus is about incredible tricks, but it lacks emotion. Don’t be eaten by circus.
Elliot: I had some acrobatics in my dance education, and dance in Belgium has a lot of risk to it, but yes, I sometimes felt like a shit circus artist who can’t do the really impressive spectacular things. But you’re right, there’s a different quality to find in both. Maybe next time all of us, all the dancers of Circus Without Circus, will have a different perspective on how to do this. (laughs)
Interview by Maarten Verhelst (October 2021)