The Big Top and travelling circus

This subject covers the multiple realities that intersect and need to be distinguished from each other. The terms at stake continually develop in an eminently complex geography and history, finally composing a sort of geometry of a rubber leaf. This expression defines the topology and study of spatial deformations. This science of continual transformations that stretch, unfurl, invert, twist and manipulate objects without breaking them, and "neither separate that which is united, nor stick together that which is separated," is suited to our subject, for there is something homothetic with the big top and with the circus. Talking about covering is appropriate, given that the big top is a portable shelter, a transportable structure that can be dismantled, and is composed, generally, of poles and a large canvas, anchored into the ground by pegs. The big top is a continual curved surface that envelops and generates spaces and sub-spaces, provoking a particular relation between the show and its abode, artists and audiences, inside and outside, interior and exterior, city and show. The terminological study is interesting as it specifies lexical roots and opens up to synonyms and analogies in a precious metaphoric and metonymic game.

An examination of this type of structure enables us to distinguish between a big top with poles (umbrella or marabout tent with one pole, a big top with two, four, six etc. poles), a big top suspended from arches, a free-standing big top, a bamboo-big top, and an inflatable bubble, while considering the tent in a broader sense, i.e. as a textile structure, of which the big top has become one of the main figures. The cartographic study of places dedicated to the circus in France also reveals the confused realities between permanent and travelling circuses, a basic variation in the image of the human condition, between place and displacement.

In this way, the perfect correspondence is established between the big top, the circus and travelling, mainly from this all-important, circular performance space that is the ring or arena, multiplying occurrences, connotations signs, and appeals to an imaginary universe activated by engaged realities.

A popular art from, local entertainment, family outing, show for everyone, source of emotion, and variety act of physical disciplines, the circus reflects childhood, travel, dreams, and otherness. Such are the usual rather resilient clichés born of what is commonly called the traditional or classical circus, which in fact has modern origins (the circus is an 18^th century invention, as opera is a 17^th century invention).

Big top, tent, camp, caravan...

The French term chapiteau comes from the old French chapitel, from the latin capitellum, describing in architecture, "the part of the top of the column that rests on the shaft" (Littré). It is derived from capitulum, meaning little head, hat, hood, and a diminutive of the noun caput, meaning the head of a man or an animal, and, in the figurative sense, extremity, point, summit, main part, chief, and from the adjective capitalis, describing that which concerns the head. By extension, "one can talk of "cornices" and other crowns that are set above sideboards, wardrobes and other works; of the upper part of an alembic, in which the steam rising from the cucurbit condenses; a piece of cardboard in the shape of a funnel, placed at the top of a torch to catch any drops of wax; of a cornet placed at the top of a flying rocket, etc." (Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française, 8^th edition, 1932 to 1935). Imagining the circus big top as the appropriate receptacle for the condensation of steam rising from the cucurbit is pretty creative: the emotional crescendo that fills it proves it. The radical – cap or – chap is a homonym for a false friend that is nevertheless interesting, stemming from the verb capere which means to take, contain, enclose, and which gives the terms capable, and capacity, whose meaning finds resonance with the notion of the big top. Hat and big top sit atop a head that is bubbling over with creativity, crowning it in some way. It is interesting to establish a link between the big top crown and that of the Charles Garnier's Opera stage.

Emile Littré's Dictionnaire de la langue française published in 1973-1877 did not give the term chapiteau the meaning of a canvas structure destined for the circus. The 9^th edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française (volume 1, published in 1992), belatedly provides the current circus definition: The circus big top, the tent in which the performance in held." This meaning has been used since 1919 to describe that canvas structure of the travelling circus, which is a sort of tent. This use was conveyed by the introduction of this accepted meaning in normal dictionaries. The Anglo-Saxon word big top reflects the idea of the summit.

The structure of the big top, either circular, elliptical, quadrangular, and with or without rounded extremities, is generally composed of poles, surrounding posts, a large specially designed canvas, and sometimes, intermediate poles called cornices.  This structure is held in place by pegs (originally wooden pegs, then large steel stakes), which are inserted all around it, and propped up with ropes and straps. In some cases, a cupola tops the big top. This typical and changing structure is itself a historical variation on a form of vernacular and makeshift habitat: the tent, the principle of which dates back to the origins of humanity. A portable shelter composed of a cover (canvas, hide, leaves) and a standing structure, the tent differs from another type of makeshift habitat, the hut, in that the tent can be taken down, moved and put up again, whereas the hut is rebuilt at each step using materials found on the spot. Note that the Greek term for tent is σκηνή (skênê), which describes the actor's house, a canvas hut tangent to the orchestra, a circular space in the genesis of theatrical spaces in Greece.

As populations became more and more sedentary, a new use was found for the tent, in the form of military camps. The specific use of a certain type of tent by the circus was another example. Another use was tourism, with the development of camping, a word that appeared in 1903. Currently the tent has a well-documented humanitarian use.

A camp is a temporary installation in a given space. The circus camp is composed of one of more big tops, caravans and locomotion and traction vehicles. The caravan (originating in the 17^th century) or verdine, is a car transformed into a dwelling, pulled most often by horses, related to the lifestyle of nomadic or fairground populations. The adventure of the Cirque Bidon showed, as early as 1974, the lasting appeal for the young generation of the day for this nomadic lifestyle: François Raulin's team still live in horse-drawn caravans. One of his last shows in 2013 was named Vite ralentir and was performed outdoors.

The place of the circus in cities can be defined as: part central and part marginal. The big top has often been set up in town squares, but had gradually been relegated to the outskirts of the city. In 1990, the Big Top at la Villette, one of the major spaces for contemporary circus shows in Paris, was an expression of the desire to reintegrate the urban fabric. Such spaces are included more and more in town planning programmes.

Obviously travelling is related to transport. The development of the big top was linked to that of methods of transport, first of all the railway, then cars, vans, and lorries. In this way, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, canvas big tops began to replace the constructions or semi-constructions that characterised circus architecture.

A canvas structure – initially named a canvas tent – was first used in the circus in 1825 in the United States, and was derived from military tents, a cone shaped tent with one pole, or a two-pole tent. Then came the circus tent, or big top, which was exported to England in 1838. That was the origin of the term "American tent." The American influence was also felt strongly in the crystallization of the modern circus and the landscape that it created in cities, with, mainly, the European big top tour of Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show On Earth, in London in 1889 at Crystal Palace, then in 1897 and 1902 in the big top, except in Paris where it was set up in the Galerie des Machines on the Champ de Mars.

And in fact the term barnum came to be used as a noun. The use of the big top became more widespread after 1870, encouraged by the development of railways and cars, as well by technical progress: improvements in pole techniques, and lighter canvasses enabled higher and bigger tents. The invention of aerial disciplines such as the trapeze, requiring greater height, made use of these new possibilities. The new circus and the contemporary circus were notions forged in the 1980s and 1990s, and they emerged at the same time as the street arts were calling on the fairground arts, giving rise to new aesthetics that drew on the fringes of other art forms, mostly the visual arts, dance, theatre, music and opera.

This transformation was also due to an economic change driven by a crisis in the traditional circus, which was trapped in the televisual image stemming from La Piste aux Etoiles from 1956 to 1978. In 1978, the governing ministry for the French circus changed Agriculture to Culture, meaning that the circus would now benefit from a modernisation fund and public aid. In 1983, Jack Lang confirmed and specified the elements of a public policy in favour of the circus arts, open to encouraging creation and innovation.