Fossett's, who have set up tent at Imma for Christmas, have led a campaign to recognise circus as art, writes Sara Keating

The ringmaster enters the ring, and with an arm extended embraces the crowd. Acrobats paint pictures with their bodies in the air, their limbs spelling out the promised word to the crowd: "amazement". Contortionists fold their bodies into fantastic shapes: chairs for clowns to sit down upon, ladders for trapeze artists to climb up upon, bodies for jugglers to toss up and catch and throw into the air again. A ballerina pirouettes across the precipice of a thin rope suspended in the air. A strongman lifts the audience's expectations higher. And the ringmaster, sparkling in sequined coat and tails, spins the whole spectacle on the tips of his fingers.

The rituals and displays of circus performance can be traced back as far as ancient Rome, where tumblers and jugglers provided pre-show entertainment at chariot-racing festivals and gladiator matches. Wild animals and wilder athletes battled it out in the arenas of purpose-built amphitheatres, and during the interval acrobatic performers distracted the audience as legionnaires mopped up the blood and spread sawdust on the ground for the next event.

The formal circus tradition, as we know it today, however, evolved from more civilised equestrian displays in the 17th century, which were a staple of popular entertainment throughout Britain and America. Various theatrical forms were gradually added to the sequence of trick-riding displays, with clowns, contortionists, story-tellers, tightrope-walkers, singers and dancers joining the menagerie. These performers were drawn from a range of highly skilled disciplines. There were physical clowns from the Italian Commedia del' Arte tradition, professional dancers from ballet schools, and trained trapeze artists and musicians.

As the 20-century dawned a wondrous mix of sound, lighting, performance and science was added to the spectacle, transforming the modern-day circus tent into a theatre of technical wonder, where an audience was immersed fully in a world of illusion that would change their perceptions of the possibilities of the human body. The Quebecois company Cirque de Soleil, founded in 1985, have been the leaders in these latest developments, and their integration of narrative and production concepts into contemporary circus performance has changed perceptions among artistic communities of the potential of circus performance as an artistic form. However, the popular appeal of the circus still hampers its reputation in cultural circles: popular entertainment still struggles to wield the significance of art.

WITHIN IRELAND, Fossett's Circus has been at the forefront of the campaign to recognise circus as an art form. Its recent campaigning has resulted in a series of changes in cultural policy regarding circus in the past few years. In 2003 an amendment to the Arts Bill was passed, making a special place for circus as an independent art-form within the parameters of its cultural remit.

The Arts Council subsequently recruited a consultant specialist to oversee the grant applications and development plans of Irish circus organisations, and in 2006 gave a total of €130,000 to five organisations under its Circus, Street Art and Spectacle funding scheme.

Charles O'Brien, who has been working with Fossett's Circus since 1999, is delighted with the recent arts policy developments. "Circus as a cultural form has always been perceived differently as an art form in Europe than it has been in Ireland and the UK. Until 1999, when we started campaigning for recognition for circus, Ireland had been about 50 years behind the rest of Europe in recognising circus as an art form. In France circus is seen as theatrical art. In Italy it runs parallel with Commedia del' Arte. And you have these beautiful purpose-built circus buildings over Europe; hippodromes in Lisbon, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Amsterdam. But circus was never really seen as having any value in Ireland. However, when the government responded to our campaign by amending the arts bill and recognising circus as a stand-alone art form, they put us further ahead than anywhere else in Europe, which still sees circus very much as a subset of theatre."

For Fossett's Circus, however, the reform of cultural policy is only one strand of what they hope to achieve by putting circus at the forefront of cultural dialogue. They also want to change public perceptions, which typically regard circus as silly spectacle or child's play rather than a serious artistic craft. Having set up camp at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham for the Christmas period, Fossett's Circus hope that their performance pursuits will gain public recognition as a modern art form as well.

"The amendment of the arts bill, the arts council funding, these are just paper transactions," O'Brien says, "and they're very valuable transactions, of course. But we need to change the public perception, and the arts community's conception, of what circus can be. There is an implied imprimatur if somewhere like Imma hosts a circus. It gives us access to a cultural audience, people who just wouldn't come to Booterstown, but are coming to see us in Imma and are being blown away by what they see. Importantly, Imma also opens out into an area accessible to more traditional circus audience: families from areas such as Bluebell, Inchicore, Drimnagh, Crumlin." The democratic ticket price of €10 for all shows is an added incentive against the boundaries that are often set up between "cultural" and popular audiences.

O'Brien, himself a "josser" (circus-speak for an outsider) who came to the circus late in life, was attracted to circus precisely because of its "hybrid cultural form" and its potential to engage with non-traditional arts audiences.

"People often see circus as pure variety, but all the performers are as highly trained as dancers," he insists. "The clowning is a branch of Commedia del' Arte and mime. Physical acrobatics has a lot in common with dance. The white-faced clown plays musical instruments. But the power of circus has nothing to do with the individuals; what is created by the whole experience is more than the sum of its parts. Something magical happens when the tent goes up. The people seem larger than life. And when a child comes in through a hole in the tent wall and they see something that they didn't expect to see - that's the art of circus."

However, the art of circus is threatened by practical limitations, as well as the limits of its public reputation. The development boom in Ireland has dramatically shrunk the size of public spaces where circus tents can be pitched, while animals are being gradually phased out of the repertoire of travelling circuses because the smaller sites don't offer enough space for animals to be kept in adequate conditions.

THE DEARTH OF training opportunities for circus performers in Ireland is another pressing issue, threatening the development of contemporary circus performance as an artistic craft. While Edward Fossett, once a performer and now artistic director at Fossett's Circus, speaks fondly of circus as a "hand-me-down craft", the reality is that circus itself provides the only training facility for circus performers in Ireland. Many of the performers are recruited from elsewhere, and at the Fossett's Christmas Circus performers have come from all over Europe and as far away as China.

Irish circus performers who desire formal training, meanwhile, look to the Belfast Community Circus, established in 1985, or further afield to Europe or Russia for training opportunities. According to the circus community in Ireland, however, there is a need for a formal training facility within the Republic, and one of the mid-term priorities of the Arts Council's circus policy is to develop a circus arts school.

Even if cultural audiences haven't yet come to terms with circus as a contemporary art form, traditional audiences remain strong, particularly because there are none of the constraints of artistic reverence that a theatre audience or gallery visitor is subjected to in the hallowed halls of modern art institutions. Contemporary circus performances are punctuated by spontaneous applause and late arrivals, while audience participation before, during and after the show is actively encouraged.

At the Fossett's Christmas Circus, for example, it sounds like the canvas roof of the big top will cave in at times with the weight of the audience's whistles and shrieks of disbelief and delight. It doesn't, of course, and a hushed silence falls for the grand finale, as a lithe and limber acrobat is suspended by a rope from the circus dome, her spinning body throwing multiple shifting shadows across the marquee. In the dim lights of the circus tent, they are like transient abstract paintings, and as she pirouettes 30 feet to the floor, the shadows elongate and then, in a moment, disappear.

Fossett's Christmas Circus is at Imma, Kilmainham, until Jan 7: Mon, Tues and Wed at 7.30pm, Sat at noon and 3pm, and Sun at 3pm and 6pm. All tickets €10.

Shining lore Circus superstitions

Circus folk have many strange beliefs about what can bring bad luck, and there is a series of rules that performers should take heed of backstage and onstage.

Do not whistle in the dressing room.

Never eat peanuts in the dressing room.

Never move a wardrobe trunk once it has been put into place.

Always enter the ring with right foot first.

Never sit on the ring facing out.

Make sure that an elephant's trunk is pointing upwards in a photograph.

They also believe that accidents happen in threes, so breaking just one of the conventions above could spell potential doom for the circus company. However, it is said that hair from the tail of an elephant will bring good luck, so all might not be lost!