ANIKA BAINES // ANIKA BAINES
- Circus Kapel
- Oct 17
- 2 min read
September 2025
ANIKA BAINES || ANIKA BAINES
About you/The performance: As a maker I am trying to find ways to connect my love of circus with my love of burlesque. I have found that there are very few artists within the Netherlands who are combining circus and burlesque in a way that doesn't end up just being 'sexy circus'. A huge part of burlesque is the costumes and the technique that you use to take them off. In a good burlesque act, it should be almost seamless in the transition between movement/technique and the choice to remove, for example, a glove. Doing technique in the aerial hoop already takes so much focus, that adding on the removal of a glove would require the right technical element combined with the right style of glove to make that same transition seamless .In my work I would love to be able to create a piece where it you don't see circus and burlesque but one style (circlesque). I want to have the artforms so intertwined that you can't separate the circus from the burlesque. Goal of residency: I am researching how I can combine my circus technique with my burlesque background to create clean ways to remove costuming within an act whilst doing my circus discipline? I currently remove my costume and then do the act. In this residency I am deep diving into how to remove the clothing during circus technique so that it becomes a fluid transition between the two artforms, instead of removing the costume and then doing technique. I am searching for ways that are both clear to the audience and follow more of the 'tease' route as well as ways where it is 'impossible' to figure out how a certain item was removed as it was so well incorporated within the technique.
I am deep diving into costuming with a focus on costume removals and releases so that the articles can be removed easily but won't come off when I don't want them to, for example, whilst I am doing circus technique.
About the Circus Kapel:
It is a quiet space that allowed me to throw myself fully into my research without having to worry about being interrupted or disturbed.
