Circus Art: An Aspect of Cross-Cultural Dialogue

Svetlana Shumakova
2015 Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies  
The paper examines the problem of cross-cultural interactions; within this context circus art is analyzed. Art in general and especially circus art can be considered as a field of dialogical communication and as a way of giving new human experiences, spiritual values and worldviews. It is hypothesized that circus art is a complex polyfunctional social and cultural phenomenon, which inherits communicative properties of art. It is possible and desired to study circus art in the context of
more » ... ltural dialogue. The article deals with modern cultural situation and its orientation on cultural dialogism; it also displays general factors that form the role of circus art in the cross-cultural interaction. Circus art as a certain cultural phenomenon was investigated in the Ukrainian humanities, originated from the kindred Russian-language humanities, by V. A. Vladimirov (Vladimirov, 1987) , A. Z. Zhytnytskyi (Zhytnytskyi, 1985) and S. M. Makarov (Makarov, 1974 ). 1 Regretfully, there is no study devoted exclusively to the role of circus art in the cross-cultural dialogue yet. The paper aims to reveal and analyse the main factors forming the role of circus art in cross-cultural dialogue. Culture develops itself by dialogueness, which is its fundamentally immutable property. The problem of cultural dialogue is considered to be very acute, since today's cultural situation with the domination of the global and the current development of cross-cultural communication systems broadens the horizons of cultural interactions between nations and peoples. By virtue of its importance and integrative functions in today's communicational processes, art is regarded as significant in cross-cultural dialogic interactions. Circus art stands out in the complex, open, multilevel communication system of art by taking us beyond the routine and opening up of new horizons of possibilities. It shrinks the distances between people, carrying live communication, which is essential in today's people's life, when live communication is being replaced by virtual communication that becomes more and more significant over time. Circus art uses the language of tricks, that is completely void of verbal characteristics, but at the same time being meaningful and expressive. The semiotic system of circus art has no limitations typical for natural language, and this fact widens the communicative possibilities of circus art. The trick language of circus art is not only understandable, but also has a high level of emotionality (especially in tricks related to risk for life and health of an artist, which increase viewers' empathy and eventually lead to the unity.) Circus art is a complex polyfunctional cultural occurrence that displays the world view, world perception and mentality in performance cultural forms. This mentality manifests itself in the hierarchical system of people's ideas, views, estimations, tests, cultural canons and the ways of thought expressing. Thus, in speaking of circus art, we first of all mean by it a cultural phenomenon; therefore, its analysis is possible at the culture-logical level. --------- 1 The studies on the problem of "inclusion" in dialogic strategies should be also noticed, see in the References: M. Bakhtin Circus art influences the sphere of the formation of values and moral visions. In order to investigate the cultural potential of circus art and its function in cultural dialogism, I will first analyze the modern cultural situation and its orientation to dialogue. Cultural Situation Modern globalization and integrative social and cultural processes, caused by the communication revolution, originate the macro systemic transformation of the civilization. No culture is capable of functioning properly when being isolated from other cultures. Nowadays, a new tendency appears in culture: striving not only for conscious cultural creations, but also for the unification of created cultural and artistic meanings. Artistic communication transmits artistic texts, dialogic by their structure, so that the common ground could be found in dialogue. Gradually, a new civilization paradigm is being formed, in which information comes on line in the light of high technology, and intellectual skills realization -in the light of creative activity. These circumstances give rise to the formation of the environment that creates the communication field of cultural dialogue tending to cultural integration. Consequently, today's globalization processes, which are of an integration character, refer to cross-cultural dialoguing. These processes differ from each other by their intensity at the level of complex systems (local cultures) as well as at the level of cultural areas (for instance, spiritual, artistic.) In relation to culturology, globalization, as judged by the ways of its manifestation,
doi:10.29333/ojcmt/2503 fatcat:6d22wrcox5g7bng2rauyy27vbe