Experiencing Léotard’s Sensational Body: Risk, Morality and Pleasure above the British Stage

Abstract

Early 1860s responses to Jules Léotard’s innovative solo flying trapeze performances span pleasure and excitement to provoking claims of immorality related to risk that seem strange today. I examine the relationship between risk, morality and pleasure in Léotard’s celebrity using newspaper reports and imagery, demonstrating how his celebrity reveals changing attitudes to the body. Audiences evaluated his performances depending on how they valued bodily pleasure and how they connected citizenship, religion, science and progress to athleticism. Considering Léotard alongside the wirewalker Charles Blondin demonstrates how Léotard’s performance and physique mitigated concerns around risk. Making sense of Léotard’s unfamiliar movements often involved processing conflicting physical responses and contradictory viewpoints. ‘Dangerous’ performances drew censure because they provoked these confusing experiences and risk-related concerns of audience coercion and desensitization. Resituating Léotard within the 1860s craze for ‘sensation’ on the basis of newspaper reports and affect, demonstrates Victorians’ bodily preoccupation. Wider risks in society alongside scientific advancements help explain Victorians’ increased focus on the body as they turned to bodily health in the face of urban threats. Against this background, experiencing performers’ embodied vicarious risk enabled Victorians to rehearse, not avoid, the thrills and dangers of Victorian life.