You think you know the circus. Maybe you read Water for Elephants. Maybe you went to Cirque du Soleil. Maybe you have distant childhood memories of a too-dark arena, too-loud noises and… OK, that last one is probably just me.

Let’s expand our idea of the circus a bit, to include a troupe of self-described “fire fairies, clowns, musicians, and all types of other magical and fantastical creatures” who not only entertain, but aim to empower and uplift youth, enrich communities, and build cross-cultural relationships through arts education and performance art. San Francisco-based Dreamtime Circus is this kind of circus, and I caught co-founder Chris Dunn between jaunts around the globe.

Your troupe’s performances are so mystical, with more than a touch of the surreal. Who or what are your biggest influences?

We have a large troupe and a lot of people have creative input into our productions, so I’ll just give a couple of personal influences. One is Slava, the famous Russian clown. His work is beautifully surreal without losing the audience in the abstract, and his clowning draws real emotional responses from the audience. Another influence is the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, who I think is a master at using the surreal and absurd to ultimately tell a story with a serious message.

Chris, tell us about Dreamtime Circus’s upcoming tour of Ecuador and Peru.

We plan to tour in Ecuador and Peru for about four months beginning in late 2009.  Unlike our 2007/2008 tour of India — when we stayed in each place for just a couple of days, traveled frequently, performed for thousands of people in dozens of communities, and covered a huge portion of the country — in South America we want to try something new and spend more time in each place we visit which should allow us to get to know each community better.  We’ll teach circus arts to kids over the course of several days, not just in a one-time workshop.  We’re planning to put together a show at each stop where the local kids get to perform with us, and show their new performance skills to their friends and families.  We think this will be a great way to boost the self esteem of the kids, bring the community together, and create an opportunity for genuine cross-cultural learning and exchanges. We also plan to coordinate each stop on the Peru and Ecuador tour with local environmental, indigenous rights, social welfare, and educational organizations.  Virtually every organization we have contacted is excited to work with us, and we are discussing ways in which our circus tour can help further their respective missions.

Is there a collaborative or other kind of project that you would love to do in the future? A “pipe dream” project?

In South America we hope to collaborate with a lot of local performance artists and musicians, either performing back to back or spending enough time with local troupes to choreograph joint performances that blend the artistic style of the local troupe with our style of circus storytelling. I think this will create a really unique show for our audiences and create a space for the artists to learn from each other.

As for a pipe dream project, to be honest, I’d just like to do a lot more tours and reach a lot more communities.  It’s entirely possible.  There are thousands of performers that would jump at an opportunity to perform and teach arts in a remote part of the world if we could pay for their flight and basic travel expenses.  And there’s certainly no shortage of places that would love to have a free circus come to town.  Our vision is to some day have enough of a regular funding stream to send 2-3 tours out to different parts of the world every year while maintaining arts programs locally in the San Francisco Bay Area year round.

How do you define “success”? What has been your greatest success to date?

I would define success as the point in which an artist truly realizes their vision.  No doubt the biggest success for the Dreamtime Circus was fully realizing our vision for a tour of India.  It took the work of about 70 artists and volunteers to raise the funds and plan the tour and then 36 artists traveled with the troupe for at least a portion of the six-month tour where we put on 40 free performances and a dozen or so free circus workshops.  I think we proved to ourselves we could do something seemingly impossible and we provided a bit of circus magic for thousands of people throughout the country.  It was a transformative experience for many of the people we came into contact with and for many of us within the troupe as well.

How do you know when you are having some impact on members of your audience?

I think it’s possible to tell how engaged our audience is by how strongly they are reacting during the performance, but the feedback we get after our shows is also really helpful.  Sometimes the impact has been greater than I would have imagined.  The message of our “Between Worlds” show was essentially this: live your dreams.  We had several people tell us that after the show they felt inspired to do just that.  One person had just given up on living in San Francisco because she wasn’t doing what she wanted to be doing and was barely making enough money to live here.  Then she saw our show and started to think about her life differently and decided she was going to stay in San Francisco and just do what she wants to be doing and believe that she can make it work. On one hand, I never believed to have such an immediate impact, but on the other hand that was a big part of the intention we put into the show and I think it’s great that some people really took it to heart.

In India, there were some moments when our impact wasn’t clear, like when the event turned into a mob of chaos after one show.  Fortunately, those shows were rare, and we usually felt our performances had a really positive impact on our audience.  Of course, sometimes the content of the performance wasn’t as important as the simple fact we were there doing any performance.  But, when a community leader from a slum in Delhi came up to me after a show with watery eyes and thanked me with all his heart for providing an opportunity for the community to just come together and laugh together, I figured we were having the kind of impact we intended.

What motivated you to become a member of Fractured Atlas?

I became a member because we were looking for a fiscal sponsor and Fractured Atlas seemed like the best organization to go through.

What would you say is the artist’s role in society?

It is to inspire a transformation of human consciousness by shifting perspective: shining light into darkness, finding darkness in the light, and opening doors that others didn’t even know existed.

Learn more about Dreamtime Circus, and see more videos of past performances, on their website: www.dreamtimecircus.org

Video: Dreamtime Circus, “Fiery Fantasma”, May 2007.
Featuring Kfire, Matt Walker, and Chris Dunn. Music from the song “Living Dolls” by Nox Arcana.
Edited by KFire.

Still Photos (top to bottom):
1) Dreamtime’s “Circus for Change” tour at a school in Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu, India. Photo by Bronwyn McBride.
2) “Between Two Worlds” show, San Francisco. Photo by Anthony Peterson.
3) At a show in East Bandra, Bombay, India. Photo by Kristy Evans.