This week, a story about connection through theatricality and a night at the circus.
For Persephone, La Clique is both home and family. She shares childhood memories spent in circus cabaret wings, sketching and watching performers she now calls colleagues.
The episode also features Harley Mann, custodian of Na Djinang Circus, a First Nations led contemporary troupe. Blending Indigenous themes with Western circus traditions, Harley explores “identity” and how “failures”, both choreographed and accidental, bring authenticity to circuses, blending superhuman feats with human vulnerability.
Ending the episode is David Bates, Persephone’s father and founder of La Clique. Walking down the memory lane of La Clique’s past and its iconic Spiegel tent, the father-daughter look toward the future of circus and cabaret, celebrating its ever-evolving nature and its power to bring joy, and provoke thoughts.
Under the circus lights, we are all part of the act—each gasp, each clap a heartbeat in the night; a legacy that pulses wonder across generations.
This story was produced by Phoebe Adler-Ryan. With special thanks to Harley Mann, David Bates and Persephone D’Arbela Bates for sharing their stories.
You can see La Clique at the Sydney Opera House until November 17.
Find out more about Na Djinang and their next tour dates at: https://www.nadjinang.com.au/
Music Credits
This story featured Kotoba, Usufruct, Primordial by Nuisance from the Free Music Archive.
And music from La Clique including Hurry On Down by Madam And The Rent Party, Curtain Call by La Soirée and the La Clique Trailer theme.
Transcript
Phoebe: It’s a Friday night and the Opera House studio is heaving. Crowds are filing in to La Clique’s opening night of its 20th anniversary show. La Clique is a circus cabaret variety show that emerged in Australia in the early 2000s. There’s a hubbub as people fill their seats, grab drinks, and this tension begins to build.
We’re right in the front row, surrounding a circular stage about two metres by two metres. , two figures appear in the crowd. They’re dressed in a mix of blacks and camo, but with quite fun makeup, and they’re unfurling a plastic wrap, like a long thick sheet of glad wrap, and indicating that the front row should hold this up.
Like a plastic shield. The lights dim and suddenly a man in a bowler hat is on the stage. He welcomes the audience to his show. He is the founder, the great showman of the circus. Just as suddenly as he appeared, he sprints off into the crowd and is followed by two figures, the stagehands who handed us this ominous piece of plastic.
One of them is a young girl. And, despite the fact that most of the time she’s in the shadows, she holds herself with this enigmatic energy, just like a performer
Um, uh. She is as much a part of the machinery of illusion and entertainment that is about to take place as any of the other performers.
But she’ll be in the wings tonight. Her name is Persephone. And this show isn’t just her job, it’s her family.
Persephone: As far as my life and my 19 years of existence, La Clique was also the one constant wherever we were.
Even from when I could first walk, you know, helping flyer shows, greeting patrons, um, uh, clearing chairs, maybe sitting on the bar and just, um, watching the goings on and sketching them.
that was the home, that’s where I grew up. That’s where, I would, play and, , draw and, , when I was older, do homework and everything just in a boost in the corner while things were going on.
It’s my life, it really is.
Persephone: They’re very much, Like my family, actually. It’s like being the baby of a very large, um, family them watching me grow up and in turn me watching them and artists evolve, um, and, and now we’re colleagues 20 years later, still working on the same show, but with new artists coming in and some of the artists at the Sydney Opera House who are heritage artists, they’ve known me since I was a baby.
One of them, Mirko, actually, he, um, he knew me when I was seven years old and he was fresh out of circus school when he first performed in La Clique and now in 2012. And all these years later, he’s now married to Toyden, the incredible straps artist and bass girl.
So they’re both married in the same show now. And they’ve just had a baby of their own a year ago and we celebrated, um, uh, the baby’s birthday. So now it’s the next, next, next generation being brought into the family as it were. La Clique’s presented at Sydney Opera House now 20 years later, very much in its original form from 20 years ago. What is always changing are the artists.
I think Australia doesn’t necessarily always realise what an incredible, arts community there is in Australia.
There’s so much wonderful new Australian work being created by so many creators.
It’s such an incredible community of artists always pushing boundaries, always evolving.
Phoebe: In fact, down at the Melbourne Fringe this week, another homegrown circus act will be unfolding. Najinga is a First Nations led circus, and they’ve got a new work on called In Place.
I sat down with the founder and self described custodian, Harley Mann, who has Wakka Wakka heritage. Just like Persephone, by the time he could walk, Harley was immersed in the world of circus and performance.
Harley: I’d been doing circus sort of all of my life as a kid.
As a young person I went to the Catapult Youth Circus Festival where, um, we had a kind of a combination of professional, um, Uh, I remember seeing Circo and Cassis and GOM at those festivals.
And, you know, that’s where you kind of get to see, people doing the work and doing it incredibly well. Um, and that’s super inspiring.
And, and I had kind of been studying and really trying to do well in my education, my secondary school, get the kind of marks to do something like chemical engineering, and I was doing circus as a hobby.
And then I thought, Yeah, I would take a gap year. And so I did the Certificate of Circus Arts and from there it kind of spiraled out of control.
It’s a 32 hour a week course, and then you have this sort of weird, like, eight hours of time, um, where you kind of can’t really hold up a job, you can’t study something else, so instead I was like, well, I’ll fill it with more circus, and all of a sudden those eight hours were 20 hours. And then from there you’re like, Oh, this is a full time job.
We were sort of saying we’re making First Nations Contemporary Circus, but I think in terms of looking at the form and looking at the things that we’re doing, we’re actually making Western Contemporary Circus with First Nations themes.
Because of a kind of a deficit within the sector of not a, not a lot of First Nations artists practicing the form, uh, massive influence from Western circus and Western circus having, you know, a lineage and a history and a, and a kind of roots that First Nations circus doesn’t have. So at the moment we’re kind of going through the process of going, well, what does it look like to be sort of specifically black circus? How does that change the acrobatics? How does that change the dramaturgy? How does that change the way that we see and view the work?
Phoebe: I went along to see the opening night It took place at Footscray Arts Theatre, where they have an outdoor amphitheatre. There was beautiful lighting, music, recorded voiceover, but really the centre of the performance was a troop of acrobats who performed together to achieve all kinds of unbelievable feats of human strength, flips again and again and again through mid air, catching one another, forming human pyramids, balancing on each other’s shoulders.
Harley: I think circus is a broad term. It’s like being like, uh, how do you define human? I just think it’s not narrow enough. From there you can go contemporary circus. Then you can go First Nations contemporary circus, and you can go First Nations contemporary circus with a kind of dance, physical theater twist.
We try to use a broad term to categorize very specific things. And that’s where the confusion comes into it. You know, um, I think it’s just about sort of specificity. , And also the abandonment of that and kind of going, who fucking cares, you know, right?
Like at the end of the day, if it is, if we call it circus or we don’t call it circus, it’s more a marketing ploy than it is anything. What we’re engaging in is a kind of sense of, storytelling or kind of, uh, artistic ceremony where people come together and breathe together and their hearts beat together.
And there’s a kind of relationship in that. Circus comes from the word like circle or circus Maximus. Uh, and to be in a circle, which is also the same way that a lot of like Corroborees or, or dances, um, ceremonies come together. Like there is this kind of collective-y ness to it. .
Clapping is a kind of key example where sometimes when a, an incredible trick is happening, people clap. , But clapping releases tension. It’s like laughing at a joke it’s like laughing at a funeral. It’s like, it’s super intense and I don’t know how to deal with it and so I kind of release that tension.
But if you can find a way of holding that tension and keeping people at the point where they, they, they, They can’t clap because they’re worried they’re going to kind of drop the trick or they’re going to break the thing, or they’re just their hearts in their mouths. Then as you drive towards the end of the show and you give them the moment of going, okay, now we release the tension all at once.
That’s when people stand on their feet.
Phoebe: There was this one moment in particular where I felt this electricity that Harley is describing on the night. the acrobats were creating another human pyramid. They climbed onto the shoulders of their fellow performer and attempted to walk in a circle around their colleague’s head, balancing their feet one after the other like a tightrope, but on the performer’s shoulders.
They took their first step, and then their second,
but then they fell off. They shook themselves off, and climbed back on, and tried again, and fell off, and then they tried again, and fell off again, and eventually, they moved on with the choreography.
But all through this sequence you could feel the audience around you suddenly paying attention in a different way. Was this meant to be happening? Surely not. Surely we’re not here to see failure. I asked Harley about this moment. Were things meant to go wrong?
Harley: That’s a choreographed fail in the show, so, um, It’s like, it failed slightly too many times last night. Um, the idea is that it keeps going, it keeps going. It’s about repetition and like not giving in to the kind of machine and kind of going, I’m going to turn and turn and turn and turn until I fall.
And then the machine’s going to push me back in and I’ve got to keep turning. But as everything like nerves and things don’t go to plan and sometimes you’re tired and you don’t land the trick. , but also on top of that. There’s a couple of general rules, there’s like a rule of three, , and there’s also a thing of like, if you fail a trick two times and you get it on the third time, it’s so much more satisfying than if you get it on the first time, because it exposes the kind of difficulty and the humanity within it, right?
I think that Circus is most magical when you get to see the extraordinary physicality of superhuman ness, Um, juxtaposed with the most kind of vulnerable humanness, which comes from failure, exposure, being hurt, being vulnerable, versus being incredible and being able to do things that people don’t think the body should be able to do.
I’ve always been fascinated with this. As a young person, what, what is strength, right? Like, yeah, you might be able to beat me in an arm wrestle, but I will swim faster than you. And how do we compare these kinds of versions of strength?
And I think like even, even the idea of getting out of bed in the morning requires an amount of strength and requires a kind of resilience and endurance to just get through life and the strength embedded into it. in everything that we do. I think because we live in a kind of, patriarchal society, we associate it with like masculine forms of strength that are kind of of the body and brute.
But it’s like actually this thing of like getting up and falling off a trick and going again and again and again has a resilience and a strength and a desire to keep going and commit to a thing. , which is, I think, Arguably, as more kind of exciting than lifting something really heavy.
Phoebe: Na Djinang and La Clique are very different performance groups in some ways, but there was something that resonated in this idea of superhuman feats of strength, even simply in the form of resilience that an audience is coming together to witness.
I was curious to understand whether this special relationship between the audience and a performer was something that Persephone also saw in La Clique
Persephone: it will be an environment where you are welcomed into our world and um, and encouraged to take part in and be, be a part of the show almost as well as such an …the audiences are such vital parts of the show, so it’s very much a connection between both of them, um, that will happen. They will be hula hooping in a way you’ve never seen it before. It involves butter, um, popcorn. I don’t want to say too much more, but there, you will see, Juggling, there’ll be, uh, juggling, foot juggling.
There’ll be aerial. One, one artist, L. J. Miles, is bringing, uh, tension straps, which is a new aerial apparatus that he’s created himself that has never been seen in Australia before, which is sort of a combination of, uh, I guess, pole dancing, straps, uh, silks, it’s all sort of an evolution now and that will never have been seen before, so there will be brand new aerial, people will be over your head and some acts will get under your skin and something, some things might even get below the belt, it is just an incredible, It’s an experience.
It’s not just a show. It’s an experience. There’ll be things you see that you didn’t know were possible and you do not know how to do.
And people are going to go wild, I think.
Phoebe: It strikes me that the tension isn’t only in the unbelievable feats that we see unfold before us on stage. It’s in the whirlwind of emotions that you’re experiencing as the show unfolds before you. It’s a bit like scrolling on TikTok. One moment you’re unable to look away. The next, you’re laughing. The next, you’re so disgusted and slightly terrified that you kind of wish you could actually physically scroll away out of your seat.
But the best you can do is shut your eyes.
Instead of cute animals and influencers talking to you, you have kind of sword swallowing,
Persephone: there will be, um, fire breathing, there will be, uh, uh, contortion, you get a taster of sort of every little element of circus and cabaret all mixed into one. It’s a pick and mix and you can go there and the wonderful thing is because the acts are in short form, you know, about four or five minutes each, if there’s something on there that you’re not really connecting with, that’s okay because chances are the next thing, there’ll be another one coming along in five minutes
Phoebe: Harley and Persephone are so comfortable with this space of discomfort and not knowing exactly what’s next, or even exactly what you’ve signed up to as an audience member. I think this comfort with discomfort is partially because circus is almost always new. It’s not quite the same as going to the theatre. You’re never going to sit down and see Hamlet twice. Almost every single show, or season, is a brand new idea. There might be a different troupe. New tricks. But not only that. There is that added question mark of whether things will go right or wrong on the night, and how you’re going to respond, both as a performer and an audience.
Persephone: Cabaret is organic. It’s not stagnant. So it’s, it’s always, it has a life of its own and is always growing and evolving. it’s not a script that will be done again and again and again.
It is always a different, message. People are always trying new things. Things are always changing and evolving. So, live entertainment is wonderful, because night to night, you’ll see something completely different.
Harley: It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what to expect. We need to become comfortable being uncomfortable and just go. And if you don’t like it, leave like, that’s fine. But at least you’re kind of pushing your boundaries in that way.
We made a work maybe three or four years ago called Arterial, which is an all First Nations work about country. And this is a non, non all First Nations work also about country, but in a kind of really different way. And I would say this work feels more complex. I guess, and, and as a, as an artist, and as you develop and grow, you start to see things through more lenses, Arterial is very much about like connecting to country and what that means and, and how that feels and what that looks like. And, um, in place is much more about
Connecting to this country in the context that it exists now. , where does the kind of colonial influences enter us? Are we immune to being influenced by kind of subjugation and hierarchy and power as cultural people or are we kind of infected by this sort of same thing and trying to push those things further and further?
I love the idea that there is no North Star. It’s just this idea that, We shouldn’t be where we are forever, and we should let other people do better than us because they probably will.
Um, and let the company be kind of run by the next generation of kind of circus artists and creatives that have a more interesting and exciting story to tell.
Phoebe: In the spirit of handing down the baton, I sat down with Persephone and her father, David Bates, the man who opened the show in the top hat.
He is the founder of the Clique.
Together they reminisced about the past, present, future, and legacy of the Clique, which in many ways has been defined by a Spiegeltent, a large circus tent that has travelled the world and hosted the Clique performances over the past two decades. I was curious to understand what kind of traditions they hoped to preserve in their multi generational circus family.
David: I was playing in an Australian jazz band a marvellous, um, singer called Madam Pat Thompson. We ended up forming a jazz band that then toured all over the place. And one of the places that we ended up was at the Edinburgh International Jazz Festival, and the jazz festival used the famous Spiegeltent as one of its venues.
I was talking to the owners of the Spiegeltent at the time and said, gee, you know, this would be just fantastic, a piece of genuine, early 20th century European culture, and it’s a mobile structure, wouldn’t it be fantastic to bring it to Australia?
And they said, oh yes, we’d love to see it in the New World countries, but at the moment we’ve got to hire it and get it used, because they’d only just bought it. And so I said, could I hire it off them the following year and do a season at the Edinburgh Fringe? And that was in 1996, I first used the famous Spiegel 10th Fringe.
And I hired it off them. them On a whim really, because I had an instinct to, um, to be a producer, but I didn’t have any money, and so it was really based on the wing and a prayer and a, on the smell of an oily rag really, and so the famous Spiegeltent slowly started to infiltrate my life and take over my life. As part of the Edinburgh Fringe program, we’d always do a late night club.
And a lot of the um, artists that used to appear in the late night club, That we’ve sort of found in, amongst the festival were were really fantastic artists. They had a really great five minutes, but a lot of them were buskers and a lot of people that we made connections with were people out of, you know, the London Cabaret or late night subversive kind of club scene and, and eventually I realised that there was a amazing array of artists that, that didn’t have a show, a long term, term show, context to put their acts into.
And so that’s how La Clique evolved. One of the most beautiful things about the famous Spiegeltent is like any old theatre, it’s ghosts of its past, so 105 years of ghosts are inside the famous Spiegeltent, and you can definitely feel them when you walk in the front door. In fact, when you open the containers, there are two containers.
One is the, is the substructure, which is steel and aluminium and it’s, it’s like a, you know, the, the fabric of a, of a building. And then you open the second container and that’s when the, that’s where the ghosts live. And you can definitely feel them as they come out and like an old theatre. When you walk backstage in an old theatre, you can feel the history inside it.
And the famous Spiegeltent definitely emits and carries with it that sort of heritage
Persephone: I think carrying on the tradition of La Clique as it evolves as well, I like performing, but I also very much enjoy, uh, directing and things. And I love, I very much envision continuing to evolve the genre of cabaret and circus in the future
I don’t think I could imagine doing anything else. I mean, I’ve got a good imagination, but even, all roads lead back, I think. I’m incredibly privileged to have access to a performance venue and to a show.
And I think it’s really important to continue it. And I couldn’t imagine, uh, let, letting it die or fizzle out. I want, I want it to always continue.
People are always evolving the genre in their own, in their own way, by transforming rooms, by adding narratives to it. It’s wonderful to see how the circus arts community globally uh, has taken the re emergence of variety in cabaret, That before then had really sort of died, died off, um, at least in, particularly in Australia and now it’s creating brand new work, um, that isn’t, that’s inspired by La Clique but now really turning into its own thing as well.
It’s wonderful.
I think you can never have too much of the performing arts. I think you can never have too much music. We’re a very musical household. Even when there isn’t a project and we’re just at home, you can often hear Papa tinkling on the keys. And then my mother will just grab her tenor recorder and start playing along. And then maybe I’ll, I’ll, hum along as well. they’re an essential and defining human activity and they really must be protected at all costs despite everything going on in the world. , they just bring joy to people all around the world, also making people think as well.
Harsh times and maybe in uncertain times now more than ever, having a show like Black League that just is pure joy, pure entertainment, just puts a smile on your face, puts a look of wonder on your face is what we really need.