THE GRAVITY OF FREEDOM: CONTEMPORARY CIRCUS THROUGH A BLACK LIBERATORY LENS. THE MAKING OF MINTY FRESH CIRCUS
- Monique Martin
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
by Monique Martin
In the long arc of American performance history, the circus has always held a strange and shimmering place—part spectacle, part sanctuary, part mirror. It is a world where gravity can be bent, where bodies speak beyond language, and where outsiders have historically found a stage when other doors remained closed. Yet even within that liminal world, Black performers have been both central and sidelined: essential to its evolution but rarely allowed to shape its narrative.
Minty Fresh Circus, which I conceived and direct, is a contemporary circus grounded in Black imagination, movement, and history. It is far more than a performance—it is a reclamation of lineage, a laboratory of possibility, and a living meditation on what freedom feels like when imagined, embodied, and performed.
Combining Sankofa philosophy, Afrofuturistic aesthetics, and a driving score that pulses with ancestral memory, Minty Fresh Circus asks:
“What does freedom feel and sound like when your only access to it is your imagination?”
Tracing the Threads of Black Circus History
The myth of the American circus as an egalitarian playground—open to anyone daring enough to fly—is only partially true. Black Americans have been part of circus history from the very beginning, yet their stories are often eclipsed by more familiar narratives of European showmen or white American impresarios.
Early Black Circus Artists
Beginning in the late 1700s, Black acrobats, aerialists, equestrians, and dancers performed in traveling shows across the U.S., sometimes as enslaved labor, sometimes as “novelties,” and sometimes as celebrated artists whose names were lost to history. Their skills, often rooted in African movement traditions, set the stage—literally and metaphorically—for what American circus would become.
20th-Century Pioneers
Despite barriers, Black performers continued to innovate:
Goliath, a legendary strongman
Mrs. Mae Miller, renowned for daredevil equestrian work
The King Charles Troupe, the Bronx-born unicycling basketball act that made history inside Ringling Bros.
Their artistry is foundational to American circus—yet rarely acknowledged as such.
The Muse Brothers of Truevine
Minty Fresh Circus honors George and William Muse, African American albino brothers from Truevine, Virginia, kidnapped in the early 1900s and sold to a traveling circus. Their incredible yet harrowing lives remind us of the vulnerability and exploitation faced by Black performers, even as they contributed to the spectacle and wonder of American circus. Learn more here.
Acknowledging UniverSoul Circus
The journey of Black circus in the U.S. would be incomplete without recognizing UniverSoul Circus, founded in 1994 by Cedric Walker. Performing under the traditional big-top tent, it fused spectacle with Black music, dance, and cultural celebration. While historically including animals (though now significantly reduced), it brought Black audiences into the circus world in a vibrant, joyful, and affirming way.
Minty Fresh Circus, however, emerges from a different lineage: contemporary, devised circus that prioritizes narrative, symbolism, and collective creation. It centers Black bodies not only as performers but as architects of a new circus language—rooted in Sankofa, Afrofuturism, and radical liberation imagination.
Why Minty Fresh? The Power in the Name
Names carry history. Names are spells. Names are instructions for how to walk into a story.
Minty Fresh is drawn from Araminta “Minty” Ross, the birth name of Harriet Tubman, whose life embodied the radical pursuit of freedom, self-determination, and collective liberation.
Minty — the young girl forced into labor, constrained by law, violence, and fear
Fresh — the futurity she insisted upon, the new worlds she birthed each time she guided someone from enslavement in the south to freedom in the north
Together, the name is both homage and instruction: to honor the past while inventing a future, to make liberation tangible, imaginative, and embodied.
Creating Oasis Spaces and the Language of Collective Movement
Minty Fresh Circus is built on the idea of sovereign safe spaces, or “Oasis” spaces, drawing inspiration from:
the hush arbor, clandestine spiritual gathering places in the antebellum South
the modern-day cookout, a site of intergenerational joy and community
the Black church, historically a space of refuge, empowerment, and healing
These spaces inform the ensemble’s choreography, particularly through collective movement metaphors such as murmuration, flocking, and V-formation. Like birds moving together in silence, these patterns evoke the disciplined, quiet coordination of Black history—from Harriet Tubman’s escapes to the Great Migration. Silence becomes strategy, unity becomes survival, and collective flight becomes poetry in motion.
Black Joy as Subversive and Music as Medicine
In Minty Fresh Circus, Black joy is radical, subversive, and collective. It asserts existence, resists erasure, and amplifies daring, adventurous movement. Music is medicine, a source of resilience and vitality, carrying the weight of history while creating space for freedom. Every aerial feat, floor sequence, and partnered lift pulses with rhythms and movements drawn from African diasporic traditions, urban vernacular, and social dance. The body becomes both archive and experimental instrument, demonstrating that freedom, joy, and risk can coexist.
Building a New Circus Language
While the circus world often defaults to Eurocentric technical vocabularies—Russian bar, French trapeze, Italian juggling—Minty Fresh Circus centers Black movement traditions as a primary lineage:
West African polyrhythms and footwork
Diasporic dance forms from Africa, the Caribbean, Americas, and U.S.
Hip-hop, jazz, house, lindy hop, social and contemporary dance drawn from lived experience
Each performer embodies history, memory, and futurity. Hand-to-hand partnering becomes interdependence. Aerials become testimony. Collective murmuration embodies strategy, silence, and liberation. The ensemble creates a new circus language—one that feels both familiar and entirely new.
The Development Journey: From Idea to Touring Ensemble
Minty Fresh Circus was conceived not as a series of tricks but as a world of liberation in motion. The creative process unfolded in four phases:
Research and Ancestral Grounding – Delving into Black circus history, oral histories, archives, freedom narratives, and Afrofuturist theory
Ensemble Building – Recruiting performers with both technical mastery and the capacity to co-create a lineage-defining work
Devised Creation – Exploring weightlessness, flight, and collective movement as metaphors for liberation
Touring Model – Engaging communities through performances, workshops, and talkbacks, building access to audiences historically excluded from the performing and circus arts
This journey reflects the ensemble’s intention: to craft a fresh, contemporary circus that honors history while reimagining what circus can be.
Why This Circus Matters
Minty Fresh Circus insists on imagination, joy, and sovereignty as radical acts. Black bodies onstage become sites of wonder, innovation, and liberation. Circus is reframed not as escapism, but as a medium for collective memory, communal strategy, and embodied freedom. Through its choreography, music, and devised acts, Minty Fresh Circus demonstrates that Black performers are not just participants—they are architects of its next chapter.
A Future Made Possible by the Past
Every leap, inversion, and collective breath honors the artists who came before—the ones who juggled, contorted, danced, rode, and built magic under impossible conditions. Minty Fresh Circus is both tribute and refusal: a tribute to those who carved space in impossible circumstances, and a refusal to let their stories remain footnotes.
Like its namesake, Minty—Harriet Tubman—the circus leads the way forward while keeping its eyes on the ancestors. It reminds us that freedom is not a destination, but a practice. Not abstract, but deeply embodied.
Minty Fresh Circus is an invitation to imagine differently, move collectively, and soar beyond what we’ve been told is possible.
Monique Martin's "Minty Fresh Circus." Photos by Mark Garvin
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As a propagator of art, culture, and ideas, Monique Martin brings her passion and experience in community building through the arts to elevate and instigate. An independent artist, curator, producer, and marketing consultant, she has partnered with, produced for, and performed @ Joe’s Pub, Disney Theatricals, Apollo Theater, New Victory Theater, Southbank Centre/UK, The Shed, Hip Hop Theater Festival, NJPAC, Queens Theater in the Park, and HBO. Monique has created the successful series’ Urban Griots and Soul Erotica for Joe’s Pub and toured both nationally.
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