ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the cultural space of mood is created by circus in collaboration with music. In a comparative analysis of nostalgia in Circus 1903, cheerful exuberance in Cirque de la Symphonie and Laughter and Tears, and melancholic sadness and violent anguish in Circa’s Il Ritorno, this chapter also encompasses work by Circus Oz, and Cirque du Soleil. It is argued using these examples that the artistic process of circus sets and resets mood in each act and throughout the show. Through the variation between acts and music, the circus show reestablishes an overall mood and deviates from its typical cheerful mood most noticeably with poignancy. While staging a cheerful mood has been fundamental to the success of traditional circus, recent circus and its music contributes a far wider range of moods, including those of melancholy and despair. Such circus moods create connections to recent political shifts within culture. Mood is considered to be an intangible emotional quality that is neither focused nor directed but can be perceived in artistic production by audiences so that artistic mood in circus has a unifying quality.
