Peta Tait is chair of Theatre and Drama at LaTrobe University, Australia. Her previous publications include Circus Bodies: Cultural identity in aerial performance (2005) and Wild and Dangerous Performances: Animals, emotions, circus (2012)

Katie Lavers is a director and producer of inter-media circus, as co-founder and director of Skadada circus company.

List of illustrations -- List of contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: circus perspectives, precedents and presents /PETA TAIT AND KATIE LAVERS -- PART I -- Perspectives -- Aesthetics -- 1 Aesthetics /HELEN STODDART -- 2 The staging of actions: heroes, antiheroes and animal actors /PAUL BOUISSAC -- 3 An epic of new circus /MARTINE MALEVAL, translated by JANE MULLETT -- 4 The man in the red coat: management in the circus /RON BEADLE AND DAVID KÖNYÖT -- The clown -- 5 Clowns and clown play /LOUISE PEACOCK -- 6 Diminutive catastrophe: clown¿s play /MAGGI PHILLIPS -- Cross-arts -- 7 Circus music: the eye of the ear /KIM BASTON -- 8 Art and androgyny: the aerialist /NAOMI RITTER -- 9 When the future was now: Archaos within a theatre tradition /ROBERTA MOCK -- Gender and sexuality -- 10 Respectable female nudity /JANET M. DAVIS -- 11 A queer circus: Amok in New York /MARK SUSSMAN -- Race -- 12 Celebrated, then implied but finally denied: the erosion of Aboriginal identity in Australian circus, 1850s to 1950s /MARK ST LEON -- Sideshows -- 13 Freaks of culture: institutions, publics and the subjects of ethnographic knowledge /RACHEL ADAMS -- 14 The Jim Rose Circus Side Show: representing the postmodern body in pain /CARRIE SANDAHL -- Child performers -- 15 Sensational imbalance: the child acrobat and the mid-Victorians /BRENDA ASSAEL -- Spectators -- 16 Ecstasy and visceral flesh in motion /PETA TAIT -- 17 Marginal body: the British acrobat in reference to sport /YORAM S. CARMELI -- PART II -- Precedents -- Origins -- 18 The circus and nature in late Georgian England /MARIUS KWINT -- 19 The American circus /DON B. WILMETH -- 20 P.T. Barnum: the legend and the man /A.H. SAXON -- 21 Notes on the Mexican¿American circus /NICOLÁS KANELLOS -- 22 The circus and modernity: a commitment to `the newer¿ and `the newest¿ /GILLIAN ARRIGHI -- Politics -- 23 Bending the body for China: the uses of acrobatics in Sino-US diplomacy during the Cold War /TRACY YING ZHANG -- 24 When pigs could fly and bears could dance: a peculiar institution /MIRIAM NEIRICK -- 25 A contemporary history of circus arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina: the post-dictatorial resurgence and revaluation of circus as a popular art /JULIETA INFANTINO -- Physical exceptionalism -- 26 To reach the clouds: my high-wire walk between the Twin Towers /PHILIPPE PETIT -- 27 Thus Spoke Zarathustra /FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, translated by R.J. HOLLINGDALE -- Animal performers -- 28 Why circuses are unsuited to elephants /LORI ALWARD -- 29 View from the big top: why elephants belong in North American circuses /DENNIS SCHMITT -- PART III -- Presents -- 30 Female circus performers and art: the shift to creative art forms and its implications /MAGALI SIZORN -- 31 The resilient body in social circus: Father Jesus Silva, Boris Cyrulnik and Peter A. Levine /KATIE LAVERS -- 32 Risk, danger and other paradoxes in circus and Circus Oz parody /PETA TAIT -- 33 The Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas: an American strip-tease /LOUIS PATRICK LEROUX -- 34 Contemporary Nordic circus: introduction to the art form /TOMI PUROVAARA -- 35 Contemporary circus research in Québec: building and negotiating an emerging interdisciplinary field /LOUIS PATRICK LEROUX -- Selected Bibliography -- Index.