Garder les pieds sur scène

• Main Authors: Florence Bourneton, Marie-Pierre Chopin, Marine Cordier, Marina Honta, Samuel Julhe, Émilie Salaméro
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université Catholique de Louvain 2019-12-01
• Series: Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques
• Subjects: artists; dance; circus; professional paths; transitions; temporal and corporal dimensions
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/rsa/3609

This article approaches the strategies used by artists working in the dance and circus sector to prolong their on stage activity. If maintenance in a career is complex for all artists, it is that much more so when the activity exposes their bodies to wear early on. Two dimensions are examined: on the one hand, how artists readapt their trade to spare their bodies (by means of a “negotiation” under the auspices of their collective work agreement); and on the other, how multi-activity and self-employment mitigate forms of precarization in their trajectories. The data studied also illustrate a process of redefinition in ways of envisaging themselves as artists at the very time stage activity is no longer exercised or not in the same way. More generally, our analysis here will focus on the objective resiliencies of ageing used by choreographic and circus artists, and the ways in which reference to on stage artistic engagement can be extended beyond actual stage activity.