The Embodied Journey of an Idea: An Exploration of Movement Creativity in Circus Arts

Knowledge about embodied creativity is in its infancy. In circus arts, performers are nowadays ‘owning’ their creativity making this performance domain fruitful to study embodied creativity. Building on socio-cultural creativity perspectives and radical embodied cognitive sciences, the current study aimed at exploring movement creativity by tracking the journey of embodied ideas in a Circus School. Specifically, this research questioned how the interactions between actors, audiences, affordances, and actions support the emergence and evolution of movement ideas. A narrative ethnographic research design, gathering process observations in situ, was used to scrutinize the movement ideas generated by student-artists, teachers, and artistic advisors over a 4-month period. Reflexive thematic analysis led to the design of an exhaustive mapping which illustrates the key findings. Namely, the journey of an embodied idea is influenced by stimulating spaces and collaborative socio-cultural environment which ignite the actors' desire to create. This desire, in turn, unfolds into multiple ideational pathways paved with research strategies (e.g., improvisation, constraints, variability) and emotions (i.e., pleasant and unpleasant). Embodied ideas then go through an assessment process leading (or not) to its growth. Results are discussed in light of embodied, pedagogical, and emotional considerations offering an alternative to the conceptualization of idea.