Theater in the Sky: Philippe Petit's Unique Art of Theatrical Highwire Performance

Many forms of theater deserve greater recognition among students and participants of the theater. In the following article, I would like to introduce the art of rope dancing in general, and the theatrical high wire performances of Philippe Petit in specific to a wider theater-oriented audience. In the theatrical literature the lack of studies that concentrate specifically on highwire performance shows that wire walking is not considered as a theater art form, yet the highwire act of Philippe Petit belongs in the world of the so called real or established theater. He is today the only performing theatrical highwire artist and by describing his performances I will show the relations and parallels to the better known theater on the ground. We can find a definition of wirewalking in Philippe Petit's book On The High Wire: Whoever walks, dances, or performs on a rope raised several yards from the ground is not a high-wire walker. His wire can be tight or slack; it can bounce or be completely loose. He works with or without a balancing pole. He is called the rope dancer. Whoever uses a thin wire of brass or steel in the same way becomes a low-wire artist. There remains the one whose performance is a game of chance. The one who is proud of this fear. He dares to stretch his cable over precipices, he attacks bell towers, he separates mountains and brings them together. His steel cable, his rope, must be extremely tight. He uses a balancing pole for great crossings. He is the Voleur of the Middle Ages, the Ascensioniste of Blondin's time, the Funambule. In English we call him the High-Wire Walker. The history of rope making is as old as mankind. A rope is an assemblage of fibers, filaments, or wires compacted by twisting or braiding into a long flexible line. Archeological finds of implements and weapons suggest that rope making was already known in the Paleolithic Period. I assume that simultaneously with rope making came the attraction and the challenge of rope walking, possibly the first step to realizing the dream of flying. The first pictures of rope dancing in the Western World can be found on vase paintings of the ancient Greeks. I did not find evidence of rope-dancing in the Roman Circus Maximus, perhaps because the Roman Empire focused on strength and competition rather than on poetry and art to entertain its people. But in the Middle Ages rope-dancers and high-wire walkers achieved renown and participated in most outdoor fairs and various Funambules (high-wire walkers) performed their acts through all Europe. As we can see on old engravings, church towers, because of their physical height, and their magical and religious context were the main forum for such performances. For example, in 1385, the king of France, Charles VI, hired a funambule to celebrate his marriage with Queen Isabelle. The funambule crossed the river Seine on a tightrope from the church of Notre Dame to another building: "singing, jumping and practicing gymnastics..." (Buckby 15). Unfortunately, we do not know his name. It seems that the historian, who recorded the event in the 14th century, did not consider the artist's name important enough to mention. In the late eighteenth century, Philip Astley, among other entertainers, established the first modern circus in London. In the early 1830s, the wire-rope or cable was first developed in Saxony, probably by Wilhelm Albert, and slowly replaced the traditional hemp rope. With the rise of circuses all over the western world, a lot of funambules and rope dancers switched from outdoor performances to the popular circus arena, where they not only could perform regularly, but also could earn a living. Thus began a new generation of wire walkers that learned and developed their skills within the circuses. …